SCOTLAND, 1847. Convalescence doesn't suit Professor Forbes. When one of his former students appears exhausted at his door, telling stories of bloodthirsty gamekeepers and a mythical glacier in the heart of the Cairngorm mountains, he can't resist the chance for another adventure. Forbes is soon involved in the chase of his life - with perhaps one last chance to make his name before it is too late. This is a tale of life in the Scottish mountains before mountaineering began.
The fifty-odd years of Scottish history dominated by the Jacobite Risings are amongst its most evocative and whilst the last battle, Culloden in 1746, is deservedly remembered as a national tragedy, the first battle on the braes of Killiecrankie was unquestionably the most dramatic.It was very much a Scottish battle. The later Jacobite risings would be launched against kings and governments in London. Killiecrankie, on the other hand, pitted Scot against Scot in the last bloody act of the bitter religious struggle known as The Killing Times.Killiecrankie saw the first, and most successful, Highland Charge, as the clansmen broke the line of the Governments redcoats in the twinkling of an eye, and though outnumbered the Jacobites achieved a stunning victory. The Highlanders, however, suffered debilitating losses of almost one third of their strength, and their leader, John Graham the Viscount of Dundee, was killed.The Jacobites continued their advance until stopped by Government forces at the Battle of Dunkeld a little more than three weeks later. Though the Jacobites had failed, the struggle of the Highland clans to return the Catholic James, and his successors, to the throne of Scotland and England would continue for the next two generations.
Two climbers. One victor. O.G. Jones and Aleister Crowley are rival mountaineers, both brilliant and ambitious, but with a very different concept of honour. It's 1896, but not as you know it. Mountaineers use new and revolutionary equipment, risking death for intangible rewards. Nobody has ever climbed a major Alpine north face before. Only an extraordinary man would want to. Crowley seeks revenge; Jones seeks redemption. Together their journey will take them to the most lethal mountain wall in the Alps, where Jones will face a terrible choice: risk death and dishonour, or allow Crowley to triumph and destroy everything he believes in. Adventure and deception, the Victorian spirit of progress, and the savage beauty of the wild combine to make this a tale of the mountains unlike any other.
This immaculately and painstakingly researched book, through its biographies of Oxley, Evans, Fraser and Harris explains the impulses that drove these men to explore and map the colony, to collect, identify and categorise its flora. But it succeeds in doing more than that because it also elucidates the motivations that drove them to become colonial entrepreneurs, farmers and businessmen, who in the pursuit of individual wealth advanced colonial prosperity. This important book makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Australia's European origins. - Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse
"Many of the papers in this volume present new and innovative research into the processes of maritime colonisation, processes that affect archaeological contexts from islands to continents. Others shift focus from process to the archaeology of maritime places from the Bering to the Torres Straits, providing highly detailed discussions of how living by and with the sea is woven into all elements of human life from subsistence to trade and to ritual. Of equal importance are more abstract discussions of islands as natural places refashioned by human occupation, either through the introduction of new organisms or new systems of production and consumption. These transformation stories gain further texture (and variety) through close examinations of some of the more significant consequences of colonisation and migration, particularly the creation of new cultural identities. A final set of papers explores the ways in which the techniques of archaelogical sciences have provided insights into the fauna of the islands and the human history of such places."--Provided by publisher.
