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Post by nomad on Mar 11, 2016 10:31:55 GMT
The Wollaston Expedition to the Snow Mountains of New Guinea. I have written elsewhere, a synopsis of A.F.R. Wollaston and his expedition to the Snow Mountains of New Guinea. In this new article, I have given further details of Wollaston's New Guinea adventures, so that readers might understand a little of the dangers, this intrepid explorer and his companions experienced who went on such a hazardous journey. Alexander Wollaston who was known to his friends as "Sandy", was not related to the early English Entomologist; Thomas Vernon Wollaston (1822-1878). This article consists of three other sections. 2. The 1912-1913 Wollaston New Guinea Expedition. 3. The Lepidoptera collected by the New Guinea Wollaston Expedition. 4. Wollaston and the Strange Case of the Papuan Skulls. An Introduction ; The Snow Mountains of New Guinea and the 1909-1910, British Ornithologists' Union New Guinea Expedition. The Snow mountains are part of the Nassau Range and are situated in Western New Guinea. In 1623 the Dutchman Jan Carstensz, sailed along the Southern Coast of New Guinea and was astonished to see a snow capped peak glistening on the far horizon. That mountain named after the 17th Century explorer, the Carstensz Pyramid, is at 4,884 meters, the highest Peak of the Island. When Carstensz returned to Holland and told his countrymen what he had seen he was roundly laughed at. I first read about the Snow Mountains of New Guinea when I found a book in an old second-hand bookshop. This 1963 publication was called ' I come from the Stone Age' and was written by the legendary Austrian explorer and mountain climber 'Heinrich Harrer'. Harrer had set off in 1962 on a three part expedition to Dutch New Guinea. The first part of Harrer's expedition was to the Snow Mountains which he reached from the north, his goal being the unclimbed Carstensz Pyramid. When Harrer made the first successful ascent of the Pyramid, there was still tribal warfare among the natives, they used stone axes and the Carstensz area was still a pristine wilderness. The American owned, Freeport giant Grasberg mine, which today has scarred the area irreparably and has polluted the rivers, was then thankfully for Harrer and the local native Amungme people, an ecological disaster of the future. Ironically it was the Dutch explorer, the geologist Jean Dosy during the Anton Colijn Expedition of 1936, that found the rich mineral deposits on the Ertsberg Mountain below the Carstensz Pyramid. Colijn and his party made the first successful ascent of the Carstensz Peaks but in three attempts they could not climb the highest summit, the Pyramid. Today, the Snow Mountains are really no longer that, global warming has seen the internal snow and glaciers of that mountain range recede and then vanish and they are only dusted from snow from time to time. Half a century before Harrer, another explorer the Englishman 'Alexander Frederick Richmond " Sandy " Wollaston' [1875-1930], set off on his own expedition to the Snow Mountains of New Guinea. Wollaston had been an ardent lover of nature from an early age and made a collection of butterflies and moths, he was also passionate about Ornithology. Wollaston became a keen mountaineer and explorer and during several expeditions, he made important collections of insects, including many new species of lepidoptera for the British Museum and for Lord Walter Rothschild's private museum at Tring. Wollaston qualified as a medical doctor, a profession he disliked intensely, to gain access to major expeditions and with his skills as an all round naturalist, Sandy Wollaston became a good candidate for such enterprises. After, an expedition to Africa, Wollaston joined the ill-fated British Ornithologists' Union Expedition of 1909-1911 to Dutch New Guinea. Walter Goodfellow was the leader of the BOU Expedition and the objective of his large party was to reach the Snow Mountains of the Central Ranges by travelling up one of the rivers from the south coast. Wollaston was appointed the expedition doctor and was also to be in charge of the entomological and botanical collecting parties. The BOU had originally planned to use the Utakwa (Oetakwa) River to reach the Snow Mountains but because a Dutch military Expedition had the same intention and, as a result of colonial competition, the British were directed to the much less promising Mimika River. Here the BOU expedition began to flounder in the lowland swamps and rainforest and there was much death and illness in the large party. Even the butterflies were scarce, Wollaston wrote in desperation " The myth that a tropical forest was where birds of wonderful plumage flashed from tree to tree and brilliant butterflies flitted among exotic blooms was born in a globetrotters' hothouse. You may travel for many miles in this jungle and never see a flower or a butterfly" Somehow the entire BOU lepidoptera collection was destroyed except for 600 specimens of Heterocera. After 15 months, the expedition finally made it to some lowland foothills and Wollaston had a tantalizing view of the Snow Mountains that were still 40 miles distant and as unreachable as the moon. Before he left New Guinea, Wollaston was able to travel to the Utakwa River where he met the leader of the Dutch Military Expedition, Captain Van der Bie. The Captain told Wollaston that although he had only reached the foothills, the river offered the best possible route to the Snow Mountains. Van der Bie's expedition had hoped to find a route that would result in the first crossing of the Island. This is an Intriguing meeting because with the Dutch Military Expedition was the now legendary collector 'Albert Stewart Meek'. Wollaston referred to Meek as the Australian collector although he was in reality a fellow countryman. Did the two men meet, it is quite possible that they did, considering they had both collected for the Rothschilds, although if they did the details of their conservation remains unrecorded. .
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Post by wollastoni on Mar 11, 2016 12:25:02 GMT
Fantastic I love this guy ! And here is the delicate Delias wollastoni from New Guinea :
Is AFR Wollaston linked to the Madeiran Pieris wollastoni too ? And why ?
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Post by nomad on Mar 11, 2016 12:39:43 GMT
Is AFR Wollaston linked to the Madeiran Pieris wollastoni too ? And why ? No. See the above, " Alexander Wollaston who was known to his friends as "Sandy", was not related to the early English Entomologist; Thomas Vernon Wollaston (1822-1878)". The latter collector is linked to the Madeiran Pieris brassicae wollastoni Butler, 1886. See archive.org/stream/annalsmagazineof5171886lond#page/430/mode/1up
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Post by nomad on Mar 11, 2016 13:35:11 GMT
Thomas Wollaston. Similar to A.F.R. Wollaston only in that they both collected insects and shared the same surname. T.V. Wollaston was a bit of a bible basher and accused Darwin of trying to Supplant the Bible with his Origin of the Species.
He had some dandy haircut but being an entomologist he may be worth an article.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Mar 11, 2016 15:21:39 GMT
The Lepidoptera results of the expedition can be read/downloaded here: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/12594I have a copy of the original here, and interestingly the text volume has a slightly larger page size than the plates volume. Adam.
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Post by nomad on Mar 11, 2016 15:59:54 GMT
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Post by nomad on Mar 12, 2016 8:26:22 GMT
The 1912-1913. A.F.R. Wollaston Expedition.
Undaunted by his experiences during the BOU Expedition, Wollaston was back in New Guinea during 1912 and 1913. This time Wollaston would be the leader of his own expedition, which was financed with the funds left over from the BOU New Guinea enterprise and those that were provided by the Royal Geographical Society and Lord Walter Rothschild. Wollaston main goal was to climb to the summit of the Carstensz Mountains and where possible make zoological collections at the camps that were set up along the way.
Wollaston left England in May 1912, arriving in Singapore during June where he met the English Zoologist Cecil Boden Kloss [1877-1949]. Kloss the curator of the Kuala Lumpur Museum in Malaya, had been engaged to join Wollaston's New Guinea venture. The curator was an expert on the birds and mammals of Southeast Asia and an experienced traveller, having explored a number of Islands including the Andaman and Nicobar Archipelagos. Wollaston then went on to travel into the interior of Borneo to hire a strong party of Dayaks. These fierce head-hunting warriors had proved their worth as carriers on the Hendrikus Lorentz Expedition to explore and climb Mt Wilhelmina in 1910. The Dutch provided Wollaston with a large military escort, consisting of four sergeants, native solders and convicts that were under the command of Lieutenant Van der Water. In New Guinea, Wollaston would travel up the Utakwa (Oetakwa) and Setakwa Rivers from the south coast which the Dutch had used two years previously under the command of Captain Van der Bie.
The 270 strong Wollaston expedition, reached the Utakwa River from Ambon in a ship provided by the Dutch in Java. During September, the members of the expedition set about building a base camp for his party 20 miles inland from the mouth of the river. Here the Dayaks busied themselves making the expedition canoes. Two further depot camps were then established up the Setakwa River. The highest depot was at Canoe Camp, which was the farthest possible place that could be reached by the expedition's canoes. Later, Wollaston regretted not using the main Utakwa River, because he found that rapids and large fallen trees were frequent along its branch the Setakwa River. Although no natives were found to be living along the banks of the Setakwa River, others living by rivers elsewhere in this region visited his camps. Most were peaceful but some were hostile. Wollaston recorded that " These people used to appear and disappear in the most unaccountable way, and they caused us considerable inconvenience by waylaying and trying to steal things from the canoes. On one occasion they laid a tree across the river, and a large number of them rushed down to attack the canoes in such a determined fashion that firearms had to be used to drive them away". On another occasion, a party of Paupans attacked a group of dryaks in their canoes. The dryaks disembarked and ran away with loss of much vital expedition stores and equipment..
By November, west of the Setakwa Canoe Camp, the expedition were struggling over limestone ridges in foothills. Water was scarce on these dry ridges and here the pitcher plants were a welcome sight and quenched their thirst. Wollaston found two of the huts that the collector A.S. Meek had built which had roofs made of palm leaves and they were still watertight after two years. The Wollaston party made good use of Meek's huts and made a supply camp here. This camp site on the few clear days had a fine view of the Carstensz range, Wollaston called it Observation Point. Observation point at 2500 feet was the highest camp made by Meek although he collected up to 4000 feet. Meek had found that the moths here were numerous and he made a fine collection but the butterflies were disappointing. Meek was unable to proceed further due to lack of suppliers and he had to rejoin the main Dutch expedition.
Wollaston and Kloss returned to base camp to rest and gather more supplies and then by December they had crossed from Observation Point to regain the main Utakwa River. The first Mountain Papuans were encountered as the expedition reached the Tsinga Valley. The people living in this valley were called the Amungme and proved to be friendly, greatly assisting the expedition by showing them the correct paths to use. As the expedition reached the upper Tsinga valley it was impossible to follow the roaring torrent because of steep waterfalls and diversions had to be made where the party hacked their way from almost impenetrable Jungle. Higher up, the river trickled between giant boulders and a wet Christmas was passed, Wollaston wrote " dog tired, but drank a bottle of Lord Rothschild Champagne and blessed him".
By late January, Wollaston mentioned that " the trees became smaller and less dense. There were casuarinas and coniferous looking trees and flowers were more numerous". Between 8000 to 11000 feet, Wollaston and Kloss found the country singularly beautiful. Along one stream, Wollaston wrote that the " banks were covered with flowering shrubs, and many flowers were of familiar appearance, a small geranium, a sort of meadow sweet, a little blue gentian and numerous terrestrial orchids". Wollaston, Kloss and Van der Water and a small party of dyaks then had to struggle through dense wet moss forest interrupted by deep bogs. Without their native Amungme guides, Wollaston admitted they never would have found a way through the forest to the open rocky grassland above.
Wollaston wrote " This morning there were clouds and fog with occasional rain, but we got to the foot of the snow, and worked along one of the terraces of rock to the west for half a mile to an ice flow, then we had a choice of steep rock or an even steeper ice climb. There is no easy way up to the ridge ".
Wollaston knew he was beaten, on the first day of February he had reached 14.866 feet and was a mere 500 feet below the ridge that separated the East and West Carstensz peaks. Wollaston was bitterly disappointed. If he had two other climbing companions, Wollaston mentioned that he might have got up but Kloss was no climber and had never been on snow. One wonders why Wollaston never took other climbers but to his backers this was principally scientific expedition and not a mountaineering one. Also, I believe that Wollaston had hoped that as was the case with Lorentz on Mount Wihelmina there would be a snow slope to walk up to the summit. Although, Lorentz was only interested in being the first to reach New Guinea snow and turned his back before reaching Mount Wihelmina's summit. Wollaston wrote bitterly " I need not here dwell upon our feelings of disappointments we slowly stumbled down to our camp again. I had known well the southern face of Carstensz for three years, and I had often dreamed of reaching the ridge and seeing unknown country beyond unfold itself range by range, higher mountains still, perhaps, who knows? To have the prize withheld when it was nearly within our grasp, was almost more than Christian patience could bear ".
But worse was to follow, later in his diary for the 8-10th February he tells us, " From No 6 Camp down to No 3 Camp was a walk that I shall remember as long as I live. Soon after starting we came across the body of a man not long dead, then the bodies of two women, one child and another man. On further, many more bodies lying in ones and twos-some dead on the track - some in rock shelters, and some in roughly made hunts of leaves;one or two had been buried, but most had been left where they lay. All this had happened in the last three weeks, for these bodies were along the same ground we had passed three weeks earlier. The whole business is very distressing and hard to explain ".
Wollaston who was a trained doctor found no marks on the bodies on the dead Amungme who had died. He thought that these dead natives had run out of food on there way back from his lower camps to their homes in the mountains and has died of starvation, although their copses were not emaciated. Chris Ballard (2001) suggested that these Amungme may have also died from diseases such as malaria caught at the lower camps as happened on the Colijn 1936 Expedition to Carstensz. In both instances, many of the Amungme rushed off to meet the advancing expeditions, as they believed that these white strangers was a sign that hai, their Paradise on earth had arrived. On their journey down to the lowlands they took little food as they thought they would be well provided for, however the Wollaston Expedition, with their limited stores, could not feed them all. A likely scenario during the Wollaston Expedition is that as the Amungme returned to their homes in the mountains, already weakened by hunger some Amungme had contracted a virulent malaria or other disease in the lower camps which killed them.
Wollaston also mentioned " The rest of the month of February was spent in different places in the mountains in making collections of animals and plants, and in March we returned by degrees to our base camp on the Utakwa River in readiness to leave the country in April ".
As Wollaston set off for his base camp, he escaped death by a hair's breath. During his journey down the river in a canoe, he wrote on March 9th. " River rather full, canoe bad and small. Four miles down, in the worst and deepest of the rapids, we touched a sunken tree, upset, and the canoe went careering bottom up down the River, a Dayak and I clambered on to it, went along for a 100 yards until we approached one of those big fallen trees lying over from the bank into the water. The Dayak sprang away from the canoe telling me to do the same, but I was hampered with clothes and not a great swimmer at best; so I got caught in some of the underwater branches of the tree, was dragged deep down to where it was horrible and quite dark, and after a desperate struggle I freed myself and came up half dead. I was then carried along by the current at a hideous pace, now and again touching the bottom with my feet, but utterly helpless. After nearly half a mile I found myself in a strong rapid of about 2 feet deep, running over large stones. I was too exhausted to stand up, and my boots (Moccasins) were too slippery to grip the stones. I half lay down, but the water in my cloths dragged me along, so I kept in a sort of half-kneeling crouched position. In this manner I was slowly dragged along the stream towards another swift and deep rapid, which certainly have been the end of me, had not the Dayak caught sight of me, clutched me out of the water and dragged me to the bank where I felt pretty bad for some time ". .
Although Wollaston was thankful to be alive, when the canoe capsized, he lost all his maps, all the valuable instruments loaned to him the Royal Geographical Society, his Sanderston Camera with his Zeiss Lenses, his Congo medicine chest that was used by Shackleton during his Antarctic Expedition and during the BOU New Guinea Mimika Expedition but worse of all Wollaston lost his diary written from December 8th onward which contained all of his valuable notes, many that he could not remember when he later rewrote his diary.
Wollaston must have left New Guinea with very mixed feelings, having just escaped with his life, but such was the courage of the man, he planned to return to Carstensz during 1914 but the catastrophic conflict of World War One put an end to that idea. Sandy Wollaston would never return to New Guinea.
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Post by mygos on Mar 12, 2016 8:50:36 GMT
Incredible story, thank you Nomad A+, Michel
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Post by deliasfanatic on Mar 12, 2016 14:57:34 GMT
Excellent article - one of your best yet!
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Post by nomad on Mar 12, 2016 15:40:04 GMT
Thank you deliasfanatic and mygos. I am pleased that you enjoyed these sections of the article.
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Post by mygos on Mar 12, 2016 16:58:44 GMT
These guys were real adventurers and I am always fascinated with their stories, especially when these are documented so well with period photographs ...
A+, Michel
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Post by trehopr1 on Mar 12, 2016 17:36:37 GMT
Wow, that's what I call a very intriguing and fascinating story. Hard to believe these early pioneering adventurers would want to subject themselves to such hardships for the love of discovery. You really are "the best" there is when it comes to entomological history. And your detective work is equally amazing indeed ! Bravo Nomad ! !
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Post by wollastoni on Mar 12, 2016 17:49:53 GMT
Brilliant article ! Thank you so much, Peter.
Wollaston is one of my heroes !
And as you also showed his fellow Cecil Kloss, here is the delicate Delias klossi. My friend Bernard Turlin did catch one during our common expedition to the Pass Valley in W. Papua.
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Post by nomad on Mar 12, 2016 18:35:41 GMT
Wow, that's what I call a very intriguing and fascinating story. Hard to believe these early pioneering adventurers would want to subject themselves to such hardships for the love of discovery. You really are "the best" there is when it comes to entomological history. And your detective work is equally amazing indeed ! Bravo Nomad ! ! Thank you for your kind comments. I would have to agree Michel, those photographs are amazing for the time and they were all taken in very difficult circumstances by either Wollaston or Kloss. They greatly add to the article. By the way, have you noticed that in their New Guinea expedition portraits, that both Kloss and Wollaston have cut their trousers into shorts. This was done because when they were jumping in and out of the canoes, the water weighed them down. However, Wollaston mentions that when he first did this, his knees became a mass of blisters due to the exposure of the sun.
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Post by wollastoni on Mar 12, 2016 19:01:06 GMT
I remember having been very badly hurt by the sun when in New Guinea. I forgot to take with me the UV protection cream and during a small 5 day treck, my arms were burnt, more than red : violet ! In this part of the world, the sun is very powerful (especially now with the ozone hole)
After that small treck, I finally found a Nivea UV protection in a small shop of Wamena.
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