Furness, William Henry, 1866-1920

Between 1895 and 1901, William Furness, III., Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., and Hiram M. Hiller made a series of extended trips to Oceania, South and Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Furness, Harrison, and Hiller all received degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and donated or sold to the University Museum substantial collections of ethnographic, archaeological, and skeletal material acquired on the voyages. The Furness, Harrison, and Hiller collections, particularly those from Oceania, are extensive and reasonably well-documented for their time.

During the four voyages, Furness, Harrison, and Hiller traveled to China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Burma, Thailand, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. No complete single chronicle of all four voyages exists, but a rough itinerary can be pieced together from the journals (chiefly Hiller's) and from notes made by all three travelers. Voyage I (1895-1896) and Voyage II (1897-1898) are the most completely documented since nearly all of Hiller's and some of Furness' journals are present in the collection. Voyage III (1899-1900) and Voyage IV (1901) are more sketchily documented. Long stretches of these voyages are recorded only in the form of rough notes scribbled in small notebooks by Hiller and Harrison. Furness, Harrison, and Hiller did not always travel together, further complicating the difficulties of compiling complete and accurate itineraries. Chronologies for each of the four voyages have been developed based on available material and these chronologies are appended to this Note. The chronologies are most reliable for the early voyages and least reliable for Voyage IV.

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