Quadrant, 2006
Review by Dr. Milton E. Osborne

Article reproduced here with their kind permission

FILLING THE GAPS ON THE MAPS
Encyclopedia of Exploration, 1850 to 1940: The Oceans, Islands and Polar Regions, by Raymond John Howgego; Hordern House Rare Books, 2006, $245.

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WITH ALMOST bewildering speed, the third volume of Raymond Howgego’s Encyclopedia of Exploration has appeared, covering a century of exploration of the oceans, islands and polar regions, from 1850 to 1940. It is, once again, a polymathic achievement, testifying to the compiler’s energy, language skills and his own dedication to a life of travel to the far corners of the earth. For Howgego, an Englishman, is no armchair traveller. As he records the achievements of past explorers and travellers he does so with the insight into what it means to have rounded the Horn, to have seen where Speke found the source of the Nile, and to have crossed the Torugart Pass from Kyrgyzstan into China. A background as a teacher of physics underlines his concern for accuracy, but it his yen for travel that shines through in this, as in previous volumes. Small wonder that his achievements have led to his becoming a Councillor of the Hakluyt Society.
As Howgego makes clear in his introduction to the book, the century under review was distinguished by several distinctive characteristics that set it apart from the periods treated in his earlier two volumes. From 1850 onwards travel and exploration increasingly extended beyond the temperate continents to encompass regions that had been visited before, but frequently only briefly. Of particular interest for an Australian readership is the extent to which the exploration of the interior of New Guinea took place after 1900.
For a broader Australasian audience it is noteworthy that New Zealand’s South Island falls within the category of being part of the later phase of exploration. Although the North Island was well known by the middle of the nineteenth century, it was after 1850 that the South Island was charted, as gold miners and graziers moved across the central mountain spine to the western part of the island.
The period covered by this third volume also saw the emergence of photography as a recording tool, the eventual use of aircraft for aerial mapping, and the increasing presence of women among the ranks of long-distance travellers, not least the indomitable Isabella Bird.
As the son of a geologist who studied under Sir Tannatt William Edgeworth David and who still holds memories of meeting Sir Douglas Mawson as a child, for me the sections on the exploration of the Antarctic hold a special fascination. Reading of David and Mawson, of Shackleton and of Scott, it is sobering to realise that their heroic endeavours took place barely a century ago and to contemplate how severe were the privations that they overcame.
The sections dealing with the exploration of New Guinea are no less fascinating. Nowadays there is a disturbing lack of Australian interest in that great island, except by those who support the “Free Papua Movement” in ways that imperil Australia’s relations with Indonesia. For instance, how many Australians are aware of the early expeditions that opened up the interior and are detailed here: the work of Charles Karius and Ivan Champion in 1926 and 1927, and of Jack Hides and James O’Malley in 1935?
Dwelling on the regions of the world just noted reflects the reviewer’s interests, but there is something in this volume for everyone. While the ill-fated expedition of John Franklin in search of the Northwest Passage was covered in the second volume of the encyclopedia, the first series of search expeditions have their rightful place in the present volume. The extent to which much of the Pacific remained outside the claims of European and American powers until late in the nineteenth century is made clear. As Howgego correctly observes, “British and French governments saw little urgency in taking responsibility for what they regarded as distant collections of small islands of scant economic value ...”
As with the previous two volumes, there is a real pleasure in coming upon an explorer or traveller whose name and exploits were previously unknown to this reader. I cite just two, Elizabeth Bisland and Hector James. The first sprang from Louisiana’s plantation class, worked with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, and then for its rival, John Walker’s Cosmopolitan. When, in 1889, Pulitzer decided to sponsor an attempt at a round-the-world travel record by his employee Nellie Bly, Walker sent Bisland off as a competitor in the opposite direction. Missing a boat in Le Havre, Bisland arrived back in New York four days after Bly had returned in seventy-two days, to miss out on Bly’s fame, and to retire to genteel anonymity.
Hector James, whose name will undoubtedly be known to New Zealanders, was born in Edinburgh, where his lawyer father was an associate of Sir Walter Scott’s, for whom the elder James translated and transcribed old manuscripts. Although trained as a medical doctor, James made his name as a geologist and his importance as an explorer comes, unusually, from expeditions in both Canada and New Zealand. In the latter he played an important part in opening up a crossing from the west to the east coast of the South Island, in 1863, under severe conditions, later becoming the director of the Geological Survey and Colonial Museum in Wellington.
The volume, like its predecessors, is beautifully produced, robustly bound, with the present-day rarity of silk marker ribbons. It is a credit to both the compiler and to its publishers. It is striking to record that once the final volume in this series is published, the total of text will run to some four million words, which will make the encyclopedia one of the longest single-authored works in the English language. With quality matched to length, it is a notable achievement that this publication should be taking place in Australia.
Milton Osborne, an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Asian Studies, the Australian National University, and visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute, has written extensively on the exploration of the Mekong River. He reviewed the previous two volumes of The Encyclopedia of Exploration in the April 2003 and December 2004 issues. All three volumes are available from www.hordern.com.