WHITE, Captain Samuel Albert

Voyage in an Arab Dhow on the East Coast of Africa. [Contained in] C.B.C. Annual 1911. Christian Brothers' College, Adelaide [cover title]

Adelaide, The College, 1911.

Quarto, [5] pages with 6 illustrations (from photographs).

Gilt-decorated textured green wrappers; minimal restoration to the head and foot of the spine; inside surfaces of the wrappers foxed, affecting the adjacent pages (with the last one also a little marked); an excellent copy.

Samuel Albert White (1870-1954), ornithologist and conservationist: 'Educated at several private schools, he claimed to have received his best schooling at Christian Brothers' College and retained allegiance to Catholicism.... During the South African War he had two tours of duty and was temporarily promoted captain, a title he used thereafter. In 1903 he made a big-game expedition in Africa and collected scientific specimens along the east coast' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography'). This CBC Annual is an impressive publication, running to 115 extensively-illustrated pages (including the inside rear cover advertisement). Apart from the standard fare expected in such works, there are 15 pages of advertisements at the rear, with most of them facing full-page illustrations of city, suburban and country views. Other articles include 'Aboriginals of Central Australia' by F.M. Dowdy (3 pages with an illustration), and 'Some Impressions of Woodlark Island, British New Guinea (Papua)' by E.T.C. Fitzgerald (3 pages with a portrait illustration). White's article stems from his 1903 expedition, and he gives the 'Boy's Own Paper' some stiff competition from the first paragraph: 'I had just come down the coast from Somalia Land, where I had been on a special service mission, to try and locate the channels through which the Mad Mullah [Mohammed Abdullah Hassan] was receiving rifles and ammunition. My mission was complete'.

Item #102299

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