Julius Beerbohm

Julius Beerbohm (1854 – April 1906) was a Victorian travel-writer, engineer and explorer.

He was the son of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm (1811–1892), of Dutch, Lithuanian, and German origin, who had come to England in about 1830 and set up as a prosperous corn merchant. He married an Englishwoman, Constantia Draper, and the couple had four children. Julius Beerbohm's older brother was the renowned actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree; his sister was author Constance Beerbohm. A younger half-brother was the caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm. His half-sister Agnes Mary Beerbohm (1865–1949), who became Mrs Ralph Neville in 1884, was a friend of the artist Walter Sickert and modelled for him in his 1906 painting Fancy Dress. His nieces were Viola, Felicity and Iris Tree.

A European engineer, Beerbohm travelled to Patagonia in 1877 as part of a group sent to survey the land between Port Desire and Santa Cruz. His 1881 book Wanderings in Patagonia; or, Life among the Ostrich Hunters is the account of the time he spent there. In the book he vividly describes the natural history and geography of the country which he labelled 'the last of nature's works'.

Beerbohm travelled across deserts and through jungles with the native Indians, the people Ferdinand Magellan had come upon in 1520 when he discovered the country. Beerbohm details a trek through this notoriously hostile terrain and overcomes snowstorms and mutiny, survives a flood and encounters "ostrich" hunters, puma, and swans. A rank amateur, Beerbohm had no previous knowledge of the land, its flora and fauna. Fortunately, for the most part of the journey he travelled with several old hands at ostrich hunting: the memorable Isidro, the Frenchman Guillaume, and the Austrian Maximo.

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