p. 65, re Scott’s Northern Party: Levick used to read aloud in the evening, first a chapter a night of David Copperfield, then the Life of Stevenson, then Simon the Jester [William Locke novel]. That was their library, and thus rationed lasted them about half way through the winter…. On Sunday nights they sang with a religious bias.
p. 81, Lincoln Ellsworth on the Wyatt Earp in 1931: He stocked the ship with books about the frontier marshal and those lawless days. The Norwegian crewmen who knew English translated the books to the non-English speakers….
p. 97-8, re Greenland Expedition of Alfred Wegener, Loewes and an Inuit named Rasmus: the favorite reading of this trio seems to have been Schopenhauer and Goethe.
Chapter 8: “Records of Travel” on the importance of record keeping to all explorers who want their exploits and discoveries known.
p. 127, on the failed Mikkelsen/Erichsen expedition: at one point their major task “was to get back to the cache they had made before their desperate dash to Danmarks Hut, and recover their records. They found everything except Mikkelsen’s diary which had been eaten by a bear.”