FAR RIDGES: A RECORD OF TRAVEL IN NORTH-EASTERN BURMA 1938-39. By J.K. Stanford.

1944 1st edition. 8vo (139 x 220mm). Pp208. B/w photographs, end-paper maps. Blue cloth, blind-ruled border and gilt motif to upper board, spine titled in gilt.

" It was given to few ex-officials before the present war [1939-45] to revisit, as free men, the Burma in which they had toiled for years, and to be sure, not many wished to do so. ...'One day,' I used to vow to myself, 'I will go back as a free man to that secret bog at Ulauk. I will search for the forest on the Sittang where Oates found a hundred miles of pelicans nesting. I will revisit that tiny volcanic marsh where the stilts nest in Shwebo. I will watch the bison and sambhur on the Pidaung plain, or try my luck with the mahseer at N'sop or on the Nanthawa. I will visit the Hleaw when the geese have just come down, or the Dawnas, or the Kaukke reserve, or the Mergui isles and a dozen other enchanted corners of the province. I will go and see and not have to hurry away again". Stanford's opportunity came unexpectedly when he was recruited onto the American Museum of Natual History's Vernay-Cutting expedition, exploring the Myitkyina district and collecting specimens, where Stanford had spent four years as a colonial administrator, "during which I had contended, in an amateur fashion, with its queer problems, which ranged from jade-mining to human sacrifice, from slavery to 'dead-fish-taxes' or elephant control, from game-sanctuaries to opium-running on a most lordly scale, from 'unadministered areas' (perhaps forgotten, perhaps too expensive to run) to sugar-cane and earthquakes".