Description:

Andrews Roy Chapman

3pp TLS on “Third Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History in Cooperation with the American Asiatic Association and Asia Magazine” letterhead on watermarked Kent’s Dundee Linen cream stationery signed by early twentieth-century paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews as “Roy Chapman Andrews” in center of third page. With several corrected typographical errors and a hand-added exclamation mark on the second page. In very good to near fine condition, with overall light toning and expected folds. Light scattered pencil marks throughout and a few rusted paper clip impressions on first and third pages. Each page measures 8” x 10.5”.

 

Sharpless Dodson Green, a public school administrator from Trenton, New Jersey, wrote Roy Chapman Andrews, the Director of the American Museum of Natural History and the Leader of the Third Asiatic Expedition, in early 1925. Green frequently contacted notables of the day to engage with his high school-aged pupils. These famous explorers, authors, scientists, politicians, and personalities were asked to give life advice or to serve as mentors to the students.

 

Chapman replied from Peking, China on March 15, 1925, “just before leaving for the unknown regions in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia”. “There are a great many things which I should like to say to them [the students] as a result of my work in exploration, but I think above all things thorough PREPARATION is of the greatest importance”, Andrews wrote. “If a man is leading an Expedition into the field he is doomed to failure unless he has thoroughly prepared himself for every eventuality … School work of any kind is a preparation for the Great Adventure on which every young man or woman sets out to explore life … Some of you are certain to become explorers, in the future, if not in unmapped regions of the world – certainly in business and financial life”.

 

Roy Chapman Andrews (1884-1960) has been likened to a real-life Indiana Jones. The intrepid outdoorsman practiced taxidermy to pay for his college tuition. Andrews wanted to work so badly at New York’s preeminent American Museum of Natural History that he accepted a job as a janitor there while simultaneously earning his Master’s Degree in Mammalogy at Columbia University. Andrews honed his exploration skills in the East Indies, filming and writing about his experiences. Andrews is best known for numerous expeditions he conducted in China and Mongolia during the 1920s.

 

In 1922-1923, a few years before corresponding with S.D. Green, Andrews and his team discovered an intact fossil of a giant hornless rhinoceros in the Gobi Desert. The dinosaur was discovered standing upright, and had probably died in quicksand. A little over a year later, Andrews and his team unearthed nests of dinosaur eggs. The secret of Andrews’s success? Preparation. “The thirty-five men in my party go with a feeling of assurance because they realize that every possible thing has been done to provide for their safety and comfort … ”, Andrews wrote.

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