David Mason Fine and Rare Books

Carl LUMHOLTZ Among Cannibals An Account Of Four Years' Travels In Australia And Of Camp Life With The Aborigines Of Queensland.
London: John Murray, 1889. First edition. Tall 8vo., orig. green cloth with pictorial gilt decoration on the upper cover and spine, xx, 395, 28pp.ads. With 29 plates including 4 chromolithographs, and two folding maps (at rear). This copy has been professionally recased with repairs to the spine ends, inner hinges reinforced, some rubbing but certainly a very good copy.

The Norwegian, naturalist, anthropologist and explorer Carl Lumholtz spent four years in Queensland from 1880. First based at Gracemere, he travelled in western Queensland, then to the Valley of Lagoons and finally to the Herbert River area of northern Queensland where he spent long periods travelling, camping and hunting with the Aborigines, in many cases with groups previously untouched by white people. He collected four new species of mammal including Dendrolagus lumholtzii, a Tree Kangaroo, and Pseudocheiris herbertensis, the Herbert River Ringtail Possum. His account of his travels, Among Cannibals, contains detailed observations of Aboriginal life. Later he became important as an anthropologist in Mexico and Arizona, then as explorer, naturalist and anthropologist in two years travel in Borneo. The Lumholtz National Park in the Herbert River area, including Wallaman Falls; it is a fitting memorial to him. (Queensland Naturalist, 2006)."