Description

Joseph Francis Rock (1884-1962), indefatigable traveler, explorer, botanist and ethnographer, was not only a very successful plant hunter but also a celebrated expert on the Naxi culture in Yunnan, Southwest China. He published the results of his studies in a number of articles, both for a larger audience, e.g. in the National Geographic Magazine with stunning color photographs, and in extensive monographs for the academic community. In addition, he documented his travels in field diaries, which were not meant for publication but to supplement his books and articles in the form of vivid travelogues. Hartmut Walravens has already published a number of Rock's materials, a phytogeography of SW China, correspondence with other scholars and several field diaries. These travel diaries contain descriptions of two trips Rock undertook as part of his expedition to Southwest China from 1924 to 1926 on behalf of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, which he organized from Chone in Gansu Province (famous for printing of the Chone Kanjur, a corpus of the Lamaist Canon in Tibetan). Both travelogues are of great interest - the first, which led from Gansu via Xining to Qinghai (Kuku Nor, "Blue Lake") largely through desert-like country, was successful not for the dendrologist but for the geographer and the ornithologist (Rock collected also for Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology). The second trip describes the hasty travel from Chone to Shanghai, when foreigners were advised to leave China for security reasons; the circumstances were adventurous and did not offer many opportunities for collecting. Nevertheless, the expedition was able to recover around 20,000 botanical specimens and 1,000 bird skins. With maps and index.