Jottings during the Cruise of H.M.S. Curacoa among the South Sea Islands in 1865.

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

London: Longmans Green and Co. 1873. Thick royal octavo bound in later decoratively blind-stamped calf (extremities a little rubbed). Spine with raised bands. Top edge gilt and other edges uncut. (xxviii 488pp.). With folding chromolithographic frontispiece; title-vignette; another full-page chromolithograph; 8 full-page wood engravings; numerous in-text engravings; 50 full-page natural history plates many of which are beautifully coloured; plus a folding chart of the South Sea Islands at the end. The folding frontispiece and the folding map are slightly foxed. Old ink erasure on half-title page. Julius Brenchley (1816-1873) began his career as a curate in his birthplace of Maidstone Kent. A trip to the continent with his father in 1845 appears to have engendered a great passion for travel in the curate for he passed almost the remainder of his life in wandering the globe. As is written in the Preface Brenchley travelled "sometimes in company sometimes alone - welcoming all sorts of hardships running all sorts of risks exposing himself to all varieties and extremes of climate and always finding himself at home and happy whether in the cities or the deserts in traversing the plains or climbing the mountains of distant lands." (pp. xii-xiii) Brenchley's travels took him from Europe to the Americas Northern Africa Asia Australia New Zealand and the South Pacific. In Hawaii he met French naturalist Jules Remy with whom he undertook the greater part of his subsequent travels. Whilst in Sydney in 1865 Brenchley accepted an invitation to join the voyage of the Cura‡oa by Commodore Sir William Wiseman who had been commissioned "for the purpose of displaying the British flag in the different archipelagos of the Western Pacific." (p. v) Published not long after his passing the present volume records Brenchley's impressions of the various South Sea islands including Norfolk Island Samoa Tonga Fiji New Hebrides (Vanuatu) Solomon Islands and New Caledonia; and is particularly notable for its rather wonderful ethnological and natural history plates.