[ Photographs ] (Travel) Pacific Album containing 117 photographs documenting an English captain's travels to English colonies in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, that includes images from Fiji 6, New Zealand 3, Australia (12), Samoa 23), Ceylon (12),

[ Photographs ] (Travel) Pacific Album containing 117 photographs documenting an English captain's travels to English colonies in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, that includes images from Fiji 6, New Zealand 3, Australia (12), Samoa 23), Ceylon (12), Christmas Island 4 Ton- Gatabu Island 23), Fakaofo (14), and the tiny and uninhabited Phoenix Islands 2, as well as several unidentified locales, and featuring some fine studies of natives and, in particular, "belles" of the various islands, as well as portraits of chieftans and their families; seaports and harbors; the countryside, forests, a Ceylonese tea estate, the Blue Mountains and their falls in Australia; Tongatabu natives making tappa and kava; a pair of dramatic views ofapia Harbor in Samoa after the great hurricane of March 1889, and much more. Albumen prints, mounted one to 4 per page, recto/verso, from 7.5 x 9.5 to 2.5 x 3.25 inches,, the majority with meticulously scripted period captions, in ink, on mounts below images and some pages with fanciful titles, several photographs with later captions, in an unidentified hand. Oblong 4to, cloth-covered boards, scuffed; partially disbound. 1886-1889 E2000-3000 A chronicle rich with views providing a glimpse of natives and their habitats on some small and clearly undeveloped Pacific islands, all seen through the fascinated, yet decidedly imperialistic (and Anglophile), eyes of the captain of the "H. M. S. Egeria." With the exception of a small number of images of the ships officers, the captain's cabin, and an amusing group shouting Australians enjoying their Sunday afternoon pastimes in Hobart, the album is devoted to documenting native life, albeit with highly western captions, such as "one of the aristocracy of Apia," "Tongan Sweethearts," "Samoan belles," and the like.