Stock ID #176720 Funafuti or Three Months on a Remote Coral Island: an unscientific account of a scientific expedition. MRS T. EDGEWORTH DAVID, CAROLINE.
Funafuti or Three Months on a Remote Coral Island: an unscientific account of a scientific expedition.
Funafuti or Three Months on a Remote Coral Island: an unscientific account of a scientific expedition.
Funafuti or Three Months on a Remote Coral Island: an unscientific account of a scientific expedition.

Funafuti or Three Months on a Remote Coral Island: an unscientific account of a scientific expedition.

London. John Murray. 1899. Stock ID #176720

Frontispiece and 15 full page black and white photographic illustrations, two engraved text illustrations, route map, [xvi] + 318 pp (including a 6pp postscript on the scientific results of the expedition by Professor Bonney), original gilt and black decorated olive cloth boards, top edge gilt, several leaves unopened, offsetting to the endpapers and occasional spotting in the text, the cloth lightly flecked and wear to the foot of the spine, one gathering and the final endpaper opening at the hinge, but sound; a good copy.

A spirited travel account. Caroline Edgeworth David accompanied her husband Tannatt William Edgeworth David, then a young assistant government geological surveyor based in Sydney, on his journey to Tuvalu where he was to conduct a geological survey.

T. Edgeworth David was famously to accompany Shackleton to the Antarctic and along with Douglas Mawson and Forbes Mackay was tasked with finding the south magnetic pole. His survey on Tuvalu earned him career fame and membership of the Royal Society, “The remains of shallow-water marine organisms brought from the bottom of the hole, finally 340 m deep, gave striking support for Charles Darwin's theory that coral atolls had grown progressively on slowly sinking platforms" (ADB).

Caroline David's robustly "unscientific" account of the voyage includes a section on local music with a transcription of "thirty-one native songs", indigenous customs, cooking, natural history and local practice. She concludes of her husband's survey "I hope these mysterious hauls will help...to decide the point for or against Darwin".

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Price: $175.00 AU

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