STRANGE LANDS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 123, 26 May 1936, Page 9

STRANGE LANDS

THE WORLD’S WONDERS AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION , An extraord.nary exhibition of picture's, perhaps the most amazing and unusual ever brought to this Dominion, is now on view in a shop in the Hastings Moore’s Building, Guyton Street, opposite the Grand Hotel. It is a selection from 10,000 studies taken by Mr B. Pospisil, a distinguished author and traveller of the Czechoslovakian Museum and Geographical Society, during his life-long explorations in the strangest and least-known corners of the world. He is among the most widelytravelled men who have ever come to this country, having traversed more than 70 countries of everv continent. It would be impossible to give an adequate description of the vastness of Mr Pospisil’s exhibition. Even a cursor? glan'ce of the 1600 exhibits shows that the unique displav has been arranged with wide discrimination, and that it has a definite, educational value, beside? being a valuable contribution to several branches of geography. Siam, with the sacred white elephant Cod on human milk, Soviet Mongolia with the Valiev of Death, where the wild dogs eat the dead thrown on the desert; Tibet, lhe Roof of the World, with her demons and secrets; the forbidden Mecca of Islam; Japan, with her military might and martial spirit; China, ancient and modern with opium dens, bandits, ni rates. and her colossal struggle with Westernisatior.; jungles of Malaya. Philipnir.es. Sumatra. Dutch East Indies, with savages living in trees, in caves, or in floating houses. Amazing scenes from the world’s back doors and little-known corners, 'rhese are but a few glimpses of Mr PospisiXs exhibition. Tn pursuance of his- scientific vocation. Air Pospisil suffered rnanv hardships and met with manv perils among the head-hunters in Formosa and Borneo, his life often hanging on a thread, as one sees in a screened-oIT portion, where nnlv adults are admitted and which is nick-named “Chamber of Horrors. ’’ Here one secs the headhunters’ gruesome activities Chinese executions in public. ghasUv tortures, and other exhih't •