reprinted

A curiosity reprinted

“A curious work” is how a second hand book catalogue would describe any copy of The Boy Travellers in Australasia it happened to have in its possession. And probably charge a fancy price for it, too.

Secondhand, The Boy Travellers is not worth a fancy price, but the strikingly handsome reprint published by the Charles Tuttle Company Inc., and available in Australia at a nominal $5, is worth owning firstly for pride of possession, and secondly for its curiosity value. There are more than 500 pages, containing more than 400 illustrations, securely bound in covers decorated in brilliant green Japanese silk. No doubt photographic reproduction of the text has kept the cost down, and the book has been printed in Japan, but one still won ders at the economics of the exercise.

The Boy Travellers in Australasia was first published in New York in 1889, one of a series of travel books apparently very popular at the time, written by best-selling travel writer Thomas W, Knox. The series used the device of describing life in various parts of the globe through the eyes of two youths and their “uncle”.

About one-third of the book des cribes Hawaii, French Polynesia, Samoa and Fiji, and the remainder is about New Zealand and Australia.

Although we are told in a new pre face by Charles Borst that author Knox had had an intimate knowledge of the area based on personal travel and research, it is unfortunately im possible to identify his personal ob servations, if any, from the great mass of secondhand material which he has shoehorned in. This difficulty detracts from the book’s value as a contem porary account of life on the Pacific Islands towards the end of last cen tury.

A similar detraction is in the lack of acknowledgement of source of any of the hundreds of drawings, although many can readily be identified as hav ing come from old books or prints.

Some, such as the inaccurate drawing

of Tonga’s Ha’amonga, must have been executed by artists who never set eyes on their subject.

But there is no lack of information in the book, even if we don’t know how reliable it is, and as “curious works” go, it is an example that makes interesting reading. Those in terested in Australiana rather than Pacificana should find it of most value. —EW.

(The Boy Travellers In Aus

TRALASIA. Distributed in Australia by Paul Flesch and Co., Melbourne. $5).

Living In New Guinea: Ex-

Sydney model June Macpherson uses a camera and an 11-year-old New Guinea girl to produce a colourful in troduction to New Guinea for young children. The first in a new series Here’s How 1 Live, Canoe to School, Discovering New Guinea with Kari and Kateo is a young girl’s somewhat bald account of daily life in any New

Guinea village.

(Canoe to School, Discovering New Guinea with Kari and Kateo. Ure Smith Pty. Ltd. $1.9&).