Unbeaten Tracks in Islands of the Far East: Experiences of a Naturalist's Wife in the 1880s

by Anna Forbes and Anna Forbes

Anna Forbes, wife of the distinguished naturalist, Henry O. Forbes, was one of those resourceful Victorian women who traveled to remote locales, lived a life of privation for months on end--observing everyone and everything around them--then published unassuming accounts of their experiences, which 100 years later still make interesting, entertaining reading. Unbeaten Tracks takes the reader from Batavia (then the capital of the Dutch East Indies) to Celebes, the Moluccas, the Nutmeg Islands, and finally Timur, where the book ends dramatically with the author, alone and stricken by fever, awaiting her husband's return from the dark interior.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019588857X
• ISBN13: 9780195888577
• Release Date: December 1987
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

A Great 19th Century Travelogue

Written by the wife of English naturalist Henry Forbes, this book is a highly enjoyable account of a woman's travels to Indonesia where she joins her husband to travel via Ambon, Banda and other remote islands of the southern Moluccas to the Tanimbar Islands, whose people were still hunting heads at the time. It must be among the earliest descriptions of the latter, and contains a wealth of information.After Maluku the couple travel on to Portuguese (now East) Timor.