LETTERS FROM THE WESTERN PACIFIC AND MASHONALAND 1878-1891 by Hugh H. Romilly (1893)

<p>Publisher's blue cloth binding with gilt titles to front panel and spine.</p>

xii + 384pp. Frontispiece + 16 plates. Near imperceptible spine repair and new endpapers. Contents clean and top edge uncut. Unread.

The author, Hugh H. Romilly, was Deputy Commissioner of the Western Pacific, and sometime Acting Commissioner of New Guinea. The letters are edited by his brother Samuel H. Romilly and includes a memoir. Introduction by Lord Stanmore.

'The bulk of the volume deals with the author's life in the Pacific Isles, most of which is recorded in a series of entertaining letters. The first of the South African communications is dated from Vryburg, June 7, 1891, and others are written from Palachwe, Macloutsie Camp, and Forts Tuli, Salisbury, and Victoria. They convey a good impression of pioneer life in Rhodesia during the first settlement of the country, and there is a short description of the abortive "Boer Trek." The author arrived back in England in January 1892, but died a few months later. The illustrations are mostly taken from drawings by A. L. Gordon, Esq., C.M.G., but there is a portrait of H. H. Romilly "from a wash drawing, by Leslie Ward 1891)." - Mendelssohn Vol.II, page 245