Unbeaten Tracks in Islands of the Far East – Experiences of a Naturalist’s Wife in the 1880’s –

“Anna Forbes was one of those resourceful Victorian women who travelled to places which were them remote and off the beaten track, led a life of privation for months on end, closely observing everyone and everything around them, and then published an unassuming account of their experiences which, a hundred years later, still makes interesting and entertaining reading.

Anna Forbes – the wife of the distinguished naturalist, Henry O. Forbes, who wrote A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago – suggests in the Preface to her book (originally published as Insulinde in 1887) that those not attracted to her husband’s work ‘because of the admixture of scientific matter, may find some interest in reading my simpler account’.

Now reprinted as Unbeaten Tracks in Islands of the Far East, the book begins in Batavia (now Jakarta) with a delightful description of the social life of the then capital of the Dutch East Indies; moves on to the large island of Celebes and its port of Makassar; to the Moluccas (famous for its cloves) and Ambon; to the Banda or Nutmeg Islands; and finally to Timur and its Portuguese settlement of Dili. The book ends dramatically with its author, quite alone and stricken by fever, awaiting her husband’s return from plant-hunting in Timur’s interior.

This long-forgotten book is ideal for the arm-chair traveller. Even today, a good number of the places described by Anna Forbes are difficult to reach except by the most indomitable.”