| General Note |
- General note - Born in Vienna on March 18, 1850, Von Drasche was the son fo a prominent autrian industrialist, Baron Heinrich von Drasche-Wartinberg, and became Baron himself in 1883 in castle Inzersdorf at the foot of the Alps. Like his father who pioneered the manufacture of pottery and introduce modern kilns , he was the owner of a brickworks; but it was as a young geologistthet he visaited the Philipppines in 1875-1876. Making an extensive study of volcanoes and volcanic formationsin the Far East, he spent two months on the islands of reunion ( Boubon) and Mauritius in the Indian Occean, six months in Luzon, and three in the interior Japanbefore crossing the U.S. in November 1876to return to Vienna where he published The Island Reunion, "Bourbon in the Indian Ocean" (Die Insel Reunion,Bournbon im Indischen Ocean) and "A bit toward a geology of the island of Luzon",(Eine fragmente zu einer geoloie der Insel Luzon) in 1878. Arriving in Manila in December 1875, von Drasche headed north accross the central plain in Pampanga, twice crossed the Zambales cordillera, and then struck into the interior of the cordillera Central from Lingayen. He proceeded eastward as far as the Caraballo Sur, then headed north through the military destricts of Benguet, Lepanto and Bontoc, and returned to the coast at Vigan through the military province of Abra. The journey gave him the opportunity to add details of the area to the rough Coello map both from personal observationand the charts made available to him by the military governors, and he published two maps of Northern and Southern Luzon at the scale of 1:1,000,000 in the Fragmente zu einer geologie which won a high praise in the scientific circles as the book itself did. He also published his own brief impressions of the Cordillera journey as "A few words about the Military districts of Benguet, Lepanto, and Bontoc on the Island of Luzon and their inhabitants" in 1876. When he took up landscape painting in middle age and made something of a name for himself, his temperas and oils ran to such subjects as "old castle on the chalk-cliffs" and a whole series entitled "Springtime". He died in Castle Inzersdorf on July 4, 1923.
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