travel

On 14 February 1842 Ludwig Leichhardt arrived in Sydney, Australia. His aim was to explore inland Australia and he was hopeful of a government appointment in his fields of interest. In 1848 Leichhardt and his companions vanished during his second attempt at crossing Australia from east to west. No trace of his expedition has been found. Nine separate extensive but unsuccessful searches were conducted over the next century. With no evidence whatsoever of Leichhardt’s fate, his disappearance created heroic mythology and resulted in a number of poems and novels (in German also), including Nobel Prize winner Patrick White’s Voss of 1957. Leichhardt left extensive and well-regarded records and publications about his travels. This is a sensitive and detailed account drawing on Leichhardt’s letters, journals, log books and personal diaries and covers his early years in Europe and his incredibly broad university education.

A beautifully presented book on the ten most significant natural history expeditions. Type specimens and art works housed in the Natural History Museum in London are used to illustrate this superb book. Highlights include Sir Hans Sloane’s voyage to Jamaica in 1687, Maria Sybilla Merian’s sojourn to Surinam in 1699 to record brilliant butterflies and bizarre insects and Mathew Flinder’s circumnavigation of Australia with one of the greatest of all natural history artists, Ferdinand Bauer. Also available in hardcover [stock id 28037].

This is an account of the author’s journey from the Cape to the Serengeti Plains and his search for an answer to the Old Timer, a Kenyan who foretold the end of the wild. Martyn decided on one more trip, but this time without an agenda, without a timetable and without preconceptions: with no purpose other than to know, to feel and to understand. The book is filled with insights of African elephants and antelope, and with portraits of a natural world inhabited by Bushmen, game wardens and scientists. Running through it is an outspoken and highly ethical regard for humankind’s relationship with nature. From his first contact with Bushman rock art in the Western Cape, the author is drawn into a spiritual journey as he grapples with the quandary of balancing our lifestyles with protecting the environment. His travelling companion, Stu, a fellow scientist and arch cynic, is nettled by this lack of rationality. Marooned together in their 4×4, the friction, humour and hardship of their journey carry the reader across the continent from one adventure to another, to the final revelation atop an isolated kopje in the heart of the Serengeti Plains.

In this book is all the information you need to find, identify, and learn about Brazil’s magnificent animal and plant life. Includes identification and location information on the most frequently seen animals. Colour illustrations of more than 500 of Brazil’s most common insects, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and fish. Information on Brazil’s habitats and brief descriptions of the most frequently visited parts and reserves in the Amazon and Pantanal regions.

Explores images of the tropical world – maps, paintings, botanical drawings, photographs, diagrams, and texts – produced by European and American travelers over the past three centuries. Bringing together a group of distinguished contributors from disciplines across the arts and humanities, this volume contains eleven illustrated essays.
The contrast between the temperate and the tropical is one of the most enduring themes in the history of the Western geographical imagination. Caught between the demands of experience and representation, documentation and fantasy, travelers in the tropics have often treated tropical nature as a foil to the temperate, to all that is civilized, modest, and enlightened. Covering a wide range of tropical sites in the Pacific, South Asia, West Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, the book will appeal to a broad readership: scholars of postcolonial studies, art history, literature, imperial history, history of science, geography and anthropology.