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Mining/Geology

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  • A Strange Career – The Life and Adventures of J. G. Jebb – 1895

    A Strange Career – The Life and Adventures of J. G. Jebb – 1895

    John Gladwyn Jebb led as an adventurous life as could be possible. This book was compiled by his widow and carries the introduction of none other than possibly the greatest adventure writer H Rider Haggard.

    English born Jebb’s adventures began as a military man in India. Soon he was conducting privately funded explorations into Central and Southern America. Involved in numerous business dealings… helped to start White Line … was in involved in armaments. He moved to the US and the Wild West … bear hunting, gold mining and a few conflicts with local bandits and Indians. Off to Mexico to make his fortune gold mining (made it and lost it) and much of the later part of the books is about his times in Mexico padded a bit with history of the region.

    Published by Blackwood, Edinburgh in 1895 octavo, 271 pages, frontispiece of the great man, illustrated in a Victorian way by John Wallce. Pictorial boards nice but rubbed especially at the tips. Overall, still a particularly good copy of a book rather hard to find so.

    Inspiration for Rider Haggard – John Jebb Adventurer

    $50.00

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  • A Complete Treatise of Mines Etc – Henry Manningham – First Edition 1756

    An extremely rare works from a period when mining expertise was as much a military endeavour as for the extraction of resources.

    Lengthy title continues … extracted from the Memoires d’Artilliere. To which is prefixed, by way of Introduction, Professor Belidor’s Dissertation on the Force and Physical Effects of Gunpowder. Illustrated by a Variety of Copper Plates.

    A first edition of this work translated and compiled by mining engineer Henry Manningham. The original French by P Surirey de Saint Remy (1660-1716). Benard Forest de Belidor (1698-1761) was a hydraulics and ballistics expert. Born into a military family he later became Professor of Artillery at Aisne. He became an early expert on the calculus and its use in solving technical problems.

    Published by Millar, the Strand, London 1756. Octavo, xxix,168 pages with 21 folding copper engraved plates, elaborate engraved vignette on Dedication. Ex John Crerar Library with the odd stamp, later half leather binding somewhat worn, top edge gilt. Lightly toned, still a very worthy copy of a very scarce item.

    Early Mining Explained and the Use of Gunpowder Carefully Explained.

    $420.00

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  • Geological Survey Cape York, Horn Island, Possession Island Queensland etc –  C.F.V Jackson 1902 – Excellent Maps

    Geological Survey Cape York, Horn Island, Possession Island Queensland etc – C.F.V Jackson 1902 – Excellent Maps

    Queensland Department of Mines Geological Survey Report No 180.

    Report on a Visit to the West Coast of the Cape York Peninsula and Some Islands of the Gulf of Carpentaria also, Reports on the Horn Island and Possession Island Gold Fields, and the Recent Prospecting of the Cretaceous Coast of the Cook District.

    By C.F.V. Jackson, Assistant Government Geologist.

    Octavo, staple bound. 23 pages with images from photographs and four maps, a broader map of the regions and three folding coloured maps of the South Wellesly Islands (Bentick, Fowler and Sweers); the Horn Island Goldfield and Horn Island. Slight browning to map edges, still a very good copy of a scarce item. Good maps.

    As often the geologist travels significant ground taking in Cox Creek, Wilkinson range, Mitchell River, Wellesly Islands, Horn Island, Possession Island etc with good detail on the topography of the land and various anthropological finds along the way. He discovered aboriginal middens of enormous proportions estimated to have taken several hundred years to form. He mentions bauxite at Weipa … to become one of the world’s largest deposits of that mineral.

    Clements Frederick Vivian Jackson (1873-1955) was a very talented engineer, initially in the Civil file and then Mining. He designed an built bridges over the Bremer River near Ipswich and received the London Institute of Civil Engineers Prize for his bridge over the Burdekin an Charters Towers. He moved into the geology / mining filed and after conducting the work subject to this reports was involved in the geological survey of Western Australia. Returning to Queensland he rose to the highest position, that of State Mining Engineer

    Scarce report on important locations with excellent maps.

    $90.00

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  • The Antiquity of the Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania – The Discovery of Gold – Magnetism etc – Georgina King FRASA  – Sydney 1924

    The Antiquity of the Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania – The Discovery of Gold – Magnetism etc – Georgina King FRASA – Sydney 1924

    A self-published pamphlet by Georgina King of work previously published in the “Sunday Times”. Printed by William Brooks, Sydney and issued in 1924.

    Octavo, 23 pages, soft wrappers as issued, three illustrations in the text regarding aboriginals. Some age from use still a very good copy.

    The articles are as per the title … The Antiquity of the Aborigines of Australia and Tasmania – Two Stone Ages in Australia; The Discovery of Gold and How it was Found in Payable Quantities; Magnetism – terrestrial and Universal; Diamond and Their Origin.

    A most usual body of work. Georgina King (1845-1932) was an amateur geologist and anthropologist. As a woman she was excluded from the “professional” category e.g. she was not allowed to read her own paper at the Royal society of NSW. Her ideas were rather whacky though and make for interesting reading … they did not stop her becoming a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society. The daughter of Rev George King she was advised by him and naturalist Bennett not to marry if she wanted to get on in her chosen filed. She corresponded with Robert Logan Jack regarding geology and Huxley on natural sciences. In her eccentricity she blamed other for stealing her ideas, including Edgeworth David on her radical concepts of the earth’s formation and Einstein on the theory of relativity. She believed diamonds were fossilised marine organisms … quoting from the paper contained here …

    “Diamonds existed as marine organisms. They are composed of pure carbon, containing only a little hydrogen, and the most minute particles are often found in what were small cavities, perhaps their breathing apparatus; some were like feathers. The cleavages of the diamond were the gills of those marine organisms …”

    Her article of the aborigines is a lot more grounded. She was a friend of Daisy bates and provided financial support to Bates for her work among aboriginal people.

    Georgina King isolated Australian Scientist with some wild ideas and some interesting ones.

    $50.00

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  • Rocks and Minerals of Australia – Oliver Chambers

    Rocks and Minerals of Australia – Oliver Chambers

    Published by Methuen in Australia a first edition 1976. Very good condition. 246 pages with lots of images, diagrams and maps. And with the striking Crocoite on the front board – see our examples on this website.

    Or favourite “Observer Book” part of an Australian contribution to the series. A serious miniature work on the subject and the source of much of Voyager’s knowledge.

    The detailed maps at the end and connectivity to the narrative open up the enormous subject to the newcomer

    An expert in a day!

    $30.00

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  • Wings of Gold – How the Aeroplane Developed New Guinea – James Sinclair

    Wings of Gold – How the Aeroplane Developed New Guinea – James Sinclair

    No greater expert in his subject, James Sinclair’s formidable book about the exploration driven development of aviation in New Guinea. Covering the period from 1922 to 1942 during which New Guinea was the busiest place for aircraft movements anywhere in the world.

    Published by Robert Brown in 1983 in fine condition. Quarto, 326 pages a substantial book. Images to end papers and illustrated throughout with numerous period photographs, maps, facsimile documents etc. The aviation images are to die for.

    Expatriates will know the Leahy family and Jack Hides and pleased to see Frank Hurley standing on the Curtiss Seagull flying boat and a special image of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan just before they left Lae on their fateful attempt to cross the Pacific.

    Wings of Gold – Best book on the period vies with Sinclair’s Three Volume “Balus” as the best aviation book ever.

    $90.00

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