Shifts and Expedients of Camp Life, Travel and Exploration

LORD, William Barry; and BAINES, Thomas

Horace Cox, 1871

[First Complete Book Edition] Hardcover. Quarter bound in contemporary leather over brown cloth boards. Gilt Royal Engineers Library seal on front board. 5 raised bands; red leather spine label with gilt title. Shelf wear/ bumping/rubbing to extremities. Binding shaken. Front joint cracked at tail. Text block binding solid. Royal Engineers Library stamp to FEP, frontis and title page. Previous owner's blind stamp to title page. Profusely illustrated including woodcuts. Unmarked pages.

Shifts and Expedients was first published in 1868 in serial form (of 17 parts), with the first book form published in 1871. William Lord and Thomas Baines intended Shifts and Expedients to be a wide-ranging manual of instruction on the art of surviving in, and enjoying, the great outdoors of the nineteenth century. Pooling their considerable experience of strange lands they produced an encyclopaedia of practical living for the aspirant explorer of a hundred years ago.

Contents: 1. Outfit to Take Abroad; 2. Boats, Rafts, and Make-Shift Floats; 3. Working in Metals; 4. Huts and Houses; 5. Extempore Bridges and Makeshifts for Crossing Rivers or Ravines; 6. Timber and its Utilisation; 7. Sledges and Sledge Travellers; 8. Boots, Shoes, and Sandals; 9. Waggons and Other Wheeled Vehicles; 10. Harness and Pack Animals; 11. Cattle Marking; 12. Hints on Hygeens and Camels; 13. Water, and the Sap of Plants; 14. Camp Cookery; 15. Fish and Amphibious Animals; 16. Poisoned Weapons, Arrows, Spears, & c.; 17. Tracking, Hunting, and Trapping; 18. Palanquins, Stretchers, Ambulances, & c.; 19. On Sketching and Painting Under the Ordinary Difficulties of Travel; 20. The Estimation of Distances and Hints on Field Observing; 21. Hints to Explorers on Collecting Preserving Objects of Natural History; 22. Ropes and Twine; 23. Bush Veterinary Surgery and Medicine