Lubaantun is a unique city in the Mayan world as it is built out of precisely carved blocks of stone without the usual plaster-cement facing. Lubaantun contained several large pyramids partially destroyed by earthquakes and a large amount of artifacts. Gann shared Mitchell-Hedges belief in Atlantis and lost civilizations (pre-Mayan) in Central America and the Caribbean. Lots of good photos, maps and diagrams from the 1920s.

OTHER

ANCIENT CITIES AND MODERN TRIBES: EXPLORATION AND ADVENTURE IN MAYA LANDS ~ London: Duckworth, 1926. 256 pages. Illustrated from 52 photographs.  "Account of the author's journeys to such Maya ruins as Chichen Itza, Ichpaatun (discovered by Gann), Coba, Lubaantun, and Copan (with Sylvanus Morley in charge). 

The History of the Maya from the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Thomas William Francis Gann, Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson ~ Charles Scibner's Sons, New York - 1931 -264p
Contents include chapters on Origin of the Maya and Religion. 
Discoveries and Adventures in Central America 
Maya Indians of Southern Yucatan and Northern British Honduras
eText: Thomas Gann in the Maya Ruins by J E Thompson

BIO
Dr. Thomas Gann was an English-trained medical doctor best remembered for his work as an amateur archaeologist exploring ruins of the Maya civilization. He was a medical officer in British Honduras (Belize) from 1894 to 1923 and was heavily involved in the study of Maya archaeology. He carried out the first excavations of several major Belize sites, and published the results in several volumes. Knowledge of the Maya past was limited in Gann’s time, but his contributions were important. The artefacts he collected remain forceful images of the Mayas’ great achievements long ago.

He had already achieved fame from his quest to find Dr. Livingstone, and in 1888 he led an expedition to come to the aid of Mehmed Emin Pasha. In Darkest Africa is his account of what happened.

The Pasha was born Edward Schnitzler in Germany, had assumed the title "Emin Effendi Hakim" (the faithful physician) while employed as a doctor in Khartoum, and had later been appointed the local governor in the southern Sudan.  He had been forced from Khartoum into retreat to the shores of Lake Albert by a revolt led by the Islamic holy man known as the "Mahdi." Stanley had met Emin on an earlier expedition, and was felt to be the logical choice to lead this new campaign.

Volume One of this two-volume set details the political events that lead up to the revolt, and the progress of Stanley from the mouth of the Congo River to Lake Albert (in present day Uganda) a journey of over 1,400 miles. They traveled by steamers (one being the Stanley, of course), and they had their own steel frame "canoe," which could be broken down into sections for portage. Legends about dwarves living in the forests of central Africa had been widely circulated, and Stanley was certain he had met them in the tribe of the Pygmies near Fort Bodo, one of his most exciting encounters. He also provides descriptions of the wide variety of native peoples, villages and terrain through which he traveled. Marching through the forests he writes:

    …sections of the primeval forest separated each village; along the track were pitfalls for some kind of large forest game, or bow-traps fixed for small animals, such as rabbits, squirrels, rats, small monkeys. In the neighbourhood of each village the skewers were plentiful in the ground,…The main approaches to the many villages were studded with these poisoned skewers, which made every one except the booted whites tread most gingerly. Nor could the Europeans be altogether indifferent, for slightly leaning, the skewer was quite capable of piercing the thickest boot-leather and burying the splinters of its head deep in the foot…

Stanley and his men had to contend with disease, desertions, and lack of food, as well as attacks upon them by hostile natives. In an incident that later led to questions about Stanley's judgment, he left a detachment of men at Yambuya to await the arrival of a promised 600 porters with orders for them to rejoin the main party. They never did, and he is careful to document his version of the affair in this book.

Volume Two chronicles Stanley's reaching the Emin Pasha and finally persuading him to abandon Lake Albert in 1889. Again he is zealous in his reporting, including accounts of a personal nature such as his attack of inflammation of the stomach, as well as those of greater interest to the general reader. Again they contend with disasters: at one point they must feed 130 people on a thin butter and milk broth for days on end, at another they fend off a surprise ambush. In all, 1,500 people made the journey that ended in Bagamoyo (present day Tanzania). They travelled through the legendary Ruwenzori range (Uganda), which few Europeans had seen, and which had been the subject of much speculation by everyone from Greco-Roman to medieval Arab scholars:

    …The fables that have been woven about it; its relation to the dear old Nile…the Nile of the Pharaohs, of Joseph, Moses, and the Prophets; its being the source whence so many springs of the Nile issue -- its being the creator of the "Sea of Darkness," Lake Albert Edward, from whose bosom the Semliki -- Nile to the West, and the infant Kafur to the East -- emerge…the very mountain before whose shrine Alexander and Caesar would have worshipped -- if the poets may be believed; its rare appearance out of the night-black clouds; its sudden and mysterious apparition…its quaint title -- the Mountains of the Moon, so often sought in vain; its massive and rugged grandeur, and immense altitude: all these explain why Ruwenzori demands more than a brief notice.

Stanley verified that the Semliki River linked Lake Edward to Lake Albert, which was big news to those interested in the sources of the Nile. It took them sixteen days to cross the Semliki valley region:

    During that time we had ten separate rainfalls, several of them lasting over nine hours, while it thundered daily. Besides this, when we issued out of the forest, and clung to the grassy foot of the range, at a few hundred feet of altitude above it, we observed that, as far as we could see, the forest extended unbroken, except by the numerous banana plantations…No winds could cool this portion of the valley, or waft the vapours away and clear the atmosphere from an entire corner of the compass, owing to the extent and great height of Ruwenzori…

This is an extremely important book for all those interested in the history of Africa, both for its descriptions of indigenous peoples and terrain and for what it reveals about the imperialist attitudes that shaped the course of events. And not to be entirely irreverent, but if you visit Stanley's grave site in England, you'll notice that his is a giant stone, surrounded, it seems, by pygmy stones. We think that Sir Henry Morton Stanley would find this a fitting tribute to his stature.

    Were I suddenly to be called away, how little, after all, the world would know of me! My African life has been fairly described, but only as it affected those whom I served, or those who might be concerned. The inner existence, the me, what does anybody know of?

Stanley's purpose in writing the autobiography was to inspire young boys growing up under such difficult circumstances as he himself experienced. Stanley's early life was painful and bleak -- an illegitimate child, he was sent to a workhouse at a young age because his family found him too much of a burden. There he was beaten and abused, but nevertheless received a fairly good education. While the circumstances of his childhood are certainly sad, it is amusing to hear this famous explorer's dramatic flair for self-pity: "...I was not sent into the world to be happy, nor to search for happiness." The first nine chapters are dedicated to Stanley's early life, and help to illuminate the events of his later distinguished career. He escaped the workhouse, traveled around the U.K. a bit, and then went off to sea and became a soldier in America.

In the second part of the book, Stanley's wife edits together the threads of narrative contained in his later journals. In these chapters we get a more immediate account of the events as they happened than we get in his other books. Some of these stories are brief but telling, and his wife fills them out with notes afterwards: "Judge drunk; tried to kill his wife with hatchet; attempted three times. -- I held him down all night. Next morning, exhausted; lighted a cigar in parlour; wife came down -- insulted and raved at me for smoking in her house!" Other anecdotes are more detailed, as when Stanley tells of the Indian wars in Western America or when he describes his time on the Greek island of Syra. Regardless of how he recorded it in journals, Stanley always found adventure in his many years of wandering.

For those who know something of Stanley's other work (such as In Darkest Africa, also available from The Narrative Press), his autobiography will be fascinating, and provides much different perspective from what we already know. Find out what was really going on in his mind as he journeyed through Africa in search of Dr. Livingstone:

    Fatal Africa! One after another, travellers drop away. It is such a huge continent, and each of its secrets is environed by so many difficulties, -- the torrid heat, the miasma exhaled from the soil, the noisome vapours enveloping every path, the giant cane-grass suffocating the wayfarer, the rabid fury of the native guarding every entrance and exit, the unspeakable misery of the life within the wild continent, the utter absence of every comfort, the bitterness which each day heaps upon the poor white man's head, in that land of blackness...

Commerative Medal of  Carl Akeley

Commerative Medal of Carl Akeley,  created for PT Barnum dated 1886

BIOGRAPHY
Carl Ethan Akeley was an American naturalist and explorer who developed the taxidermic method for mounting museum displays to show animals in their natural surroundings. His method of applying skin on a finely molded replica of the body of the animal gave results of unprecedented realism and elevated taxidermy from a craft to an art. He mounted the skeleton of the famous African elephant Jumbo. He invented the Akeley cement gun (1911) to use while mounting animals and the Akeley camera which was used to capture the first movies of gorillas. He improved the motion picture camera for working in nature. Akeley also wrote several books, including stories for children. He was awarded more than thirty patents for his inventions. 
He instigated the establishment of a preserve for gorillas in Rwanda. In the 1920s Akeley made a large specimen collection, part of the American Museum's famous African mammal hall. He died of fever in the Virunga mountains during his fifth expedition to Africa while working towards the mountain gorilla diorama. He is buried in Africa.
 

Akeley barely escaped death in Africa  after being pinned to earth by an infuriated elephant

Akeley and the leopard he killed bare handed

Web Refs
Akeley Taxidermy Page
Wikipedia Entry

Web Refs
Historical Lantern Slides
 

Whitney writes of early travel and adventures in the jungles of Siam, Sumatra, Malay, India and Burma with descriptions of  the Klawngs of Siam, Phra Ram, hunting with the Burmese Karens, human tree-dwellers, the lost Seladang of Noa Anak, camping in the jungles, the Sakai and their poisonous darts, Malayan dancers, women, and villages, tiger drives in India and much more. Included are hunting adventures along with the travel but it is mainly a travel book. 

New York Times Revew: October 21, 1904

Others
Flowing Road ~ J.B. Lippincott Co. - 1912 
Musk Ox, Bison, Sheep And Goat