The Big Game of Central and Western China - Harold Frank Wallace FRGS, RZS - First Edition 1913

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The Big Game of Central and Western China – Harold Frank Wallace FRGS, RZS – First Edition 1913

Short Description

Being an Account of a Journey from Shanghai to London Overland Across the Gobi Desert by Harold Frank Wallace.

A first edition published by John Murray, London in 1913. Royal octavo, 318 pages after preliminaries and including appendices and index.

Bound in original yellow cloth covered boards with decoration and facsimile signature of author to front. Top edge gilt. Some rubbing externally and a hint of glue in the front hinge. A very good copy with barely a mark internally. A sought after travel and hunting account written in a very readable style. Well illustrated with a frontispiece and 22 illustrations from drawings by the author (very talented) and thirty-eight illustrations from photographs.

In 1911 the author accompanied the experienced George Fenwick-Owen into the interior of China. Their primary objective was to secure a specimen of the Takin of which then little was known in the west, along with a collection of smaller animals for the British Museum. Their journey lasted precisely one year. The course of their journey had to be varied because of the outbreak of the Revolution. The book on the whole is well balanced towards a special travel account with excellent observations on the topography, the people, customs, manners, law etc the latter could not be more demonstrated by the sad image of the man caged for opium crimes.

Chapters include … the Call of the Red Gods; Shanghai; the Father of rivers [Yangste]; Hwa-Shan the Flower Mountain; Sian -Fu the Magnificent; Notes on caves and the Home of the Takin; Fensiang-Fu an inland town; Modern Rehoboam and His Capital; the Western Kanus; Rumours of war; On the Fringe of the Desert and Across the Desert. Animals sought include the aforementioned Takin … White-maned Serow; Roe deer; Wapiti; Przewalski’s Gazelle; Mongolian Gazelle etc.

The appendices make interesting reading with Field Measurements; Estimates of Expenses and Tables of Distances and Stages.

Central and Western China in 1911

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