From 1910 to 1913 A. F. R. Wollaston took a part in a couple of expeditions in New Guinea, to the Snow Mountains of Netherlands New Guinea. The main aim was to climb the highest mountains there as well as to collect biological and ethnological specimens. There he succeeded in climbing to within 150 m of the summit of the Carstensz Pyramid, at 4884 m the highest peak on the island, and one not summited until 1962. He is commemorated in the names of a bat, a skink (lizard) and a frog from New Guinea. After the second expedition, Wollaston wrote a detailed account of the journey and adventures, but he was strictly careful to give only True Relations and Descriptions of Things.

This work is an exciting account of the author's thrilling adventures in New Guinea. A. F. R. Wollaston was an English medical doctor, botanist, and explorer. Wollaston decided to spend his life on exploration and natural history. He traveled broadly and wrote books about his travels and work. He includes vivid descriptions of the place, his experiences, and his interactions with the people. Wollaston took part in the BOU Expedition to the Snowy Mountains of Netherlands New Guinea in 1910–11. The primary goal was to climb the highest mountains there and collect biological and ethnological specimens. The expedition was unsuccessful in its chief aim mainly because of the muddling by the Dutch authorities. Later in 1912 and 1913, Wollaston led a second expedition popularly known as the Wollaston Expedition to New Guinea.

Between the 1870s and the 1930s competing European powers carved out and consolidated colonies in Melanesia, the most culturally diverse region of the world. As part of this process, great assemblages of ethnographic artefacts were made by a range of collectors whose diversity is captured in this volume. The contributors to this tightly-integrated volume take these collectors, and the collecting institutions, as the departure point for accounts that look back at the artefact-producing societies and their interaction with the collectors, but also forward to the fate of the collections in metropolitan museums, as the artefacts have been variously exhibited, neglected, re-conceived as indigenous heritage, or repatriated. In doing this, the contributors raise issues of current interest in anthropology, Pacific history, art history, museology, and material culture.