p. 64-65, walking towards St. Petersburgh: A sigh escaped me as I ejaculated a last farewell, till, startling at the expression of my weakness, I resumed my journey with slow and melancholy steps. It was ten o'clock (for I had now a watch), and I had reached six miles. The night was beautifully clear, though rather cold from the effects of a northern breeze; while the moon was near her full. I looked at the beautiful luminary, and actually asked myself whether I were, as had been asserted, under the baneful influence of that planet. Smiling that I received no reply, I then considered my projects and intentions, and the conduct I ought to follow; and, sitting down at a fountain on the Poulkousky hill, I read to myself a few lessons, which the time and the occasion seemed to inspire. “Go,” said I, “and wander with the illiterate and almost brutal savage—go and be the companion of the ferocious beast!—go and contemplate the human being in every element
Narrative of a Pedestrian Journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary, from the Frontiers of China to the Frozen Sea and Kamchatka.
- Arctic Reading: Russia
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750.
- Arctic Reading: General
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Deep Freeze: the United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica’s Age of Science.
- 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
A comprehensive historical account of the development of Operation Deep Freeze and the IGY, dense but well-written. The first eight chapters give the historical development of the American stations: McMurdo, Little America V, the South Pole, and the three more remote gap stations. Chapters 9 to 11 the major scientific areas of research: meteorology, the physics of the atmosphere, and geology/glaciology, making the scientific details clear to the lay non-scientist. The final chapter is about the experience of life on the ice, an evocative account for anyone who was there.
The Southwest Pacific since 1900: A Modern History.
- Heroic Age 1901-1921.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
This survey of the history of Australia, New Zealand, The Islands, and Antarctica includes a substantial chapter on “The Heroic Age” (p. 561-91), a derivative but very serviceable summary. Unlike some others he ends the Heroic Age with the completion of Shackleton’s Endurance debacle in 1916 rather than with Shackleton’s death on South Georgia in 1922 during the Quest expedition. His summary of the age rings true: “Thus ended the Heroic Age in a wild burst of blazing ambition, disaster, valor, fortitude, squalor, squabbles, and tragedy” (p. 591).
On Snow-Shoes to the Barren Grounds,
- 1894-95 US Overland Journey of Casper Whitney in the Barren Lands.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. 360, on the Chipewyans on Athabaska Lake: It is headquarters of one of the four districts into which this vast fur-bearing land of one million square miles is divided by the Hudson Bay Company; the chief forwarding point for the merchandise which the company sends in for trade, and the fur the Indians send out as pay; a general distributing post-office of the four yearly mails which reach this land, where man is but a mere track upon the snow, and not above one hundred of the roughly approximated ten thousand read English writing. It is the most important North-land mission of the Roman Catholic Oblates Fathers, and it is practically the northern boundary of the Cree and the southern boundary of the Montagnaise Indian family, which in its various branches spreads toward the Arctic Ocean.
Farthest North.
- 1893-96 Norwegian North Pole Expedition (Fridthof Nansen aboard Fram).
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
On Nansen’s 1893-96 Fram expedition and the first wintering over.
In the Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship
- Whalemen's Reading
An account of a disastrous voyage in 1841-45 under Captain Howes Norris (until he was murdered for good cause) on the Sharon out of Fairhaven, Mass.
My Antarctic Honeymoon: A Year at the Bottom of the World.
- 1946-48 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
One of two women on Finn Ronne’s 1947-48 Weddell Sea expedition, the other being Edith Ronne, his wife. A rather unflattering portrayal of Ronne as well as Ronne’s wife, the other woman.
Mawson’s Antarctic Diaries.
- 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Introduction emphasizes Mawson’s faith in “Providence,” and notes that his very survival reduced the emotional impact that Scott’s death had on the public: World War I, followed by world depression, diverted public interest from the achievements of Douglas Mawson and other scientists and explorers in the Antarctic, and formed a break between the ‘heroic era’ and the ‘mechanical era’ in the history of Antarctic exploration. (p. xlii).
High Arctic: The Story of the British North Greenland Expedition.
- 1952-54 British North Greenland Expedition (Commander James Simpson).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Captain Banks was in the Royal Marines and was Officer-in-Charge of a Weasel team on this 1952-54 expedition.
Lord Anson’s Voyage Round the World: Performed in the Years 1740, 41, 42, 43, and 44.
- 1740-44 English Naval Voyage to South Seas and Round the World (under George Anson aboard Centurion).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
How the “Mastiffs” Went to Iceland.
- 1878 British Voyage to Iceland (aboard Mastiff).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
The Mastiff was a yacht owned by John Burns (Lord Inverclyde) who took a group of men aboard his yacht on a trip to the Faroes and Iceland in 1878. Trollope wrote this story of the voyage and published it privately in the same year. Although hardly Polar, Iceland is certainly an interesting exemplar of the print culture of the North. Rather sardonic account of summer trip to Iceland in 1878 aboard the Mastiff, Trollope calling the passengers the Mastiffs.
National Library of Scotland. Archives.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
McClintock Notes : [Murray 12604 1736] McClintock to Murray, generally showing McClintock’s involvement in every detail of the publication of his work.
The Whale and the Supercomputer: on the Northern Front of Climate Change.
- Whalemen's Reading
A traditional Eskimo whale-hunting party races to shore near Barrow, Alaska, while their trapped comrades drift out to sea on ice that should still be solid. Elsewhere, a team of scientists transverses the tundra, measuring the thinning snow every ten kilometers in a quest to understand the effects of albedo the heat-deflecting property of snow that helps regulate the planet's temperature. Journalist and lifelong Alaskan Charles Wohlforth here crystallizes how climate change isn't an abstraction in the far North; it's a reality that has already dramatically altered daily life. He describes how Alaskan Natives and scientists attempt to reconcile their radically different ways of observing changes in the environment, and the implications for us all. (Daedalus Books Description)
In Nation Named for Ice, Poets Are Just Getting Warmed Up.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
On Iceland (pop. 330,000) as a nation of devoted if sometimes amateur poets: Icelanders are unusually prolific readers and writers, and books of verse tend to sell very well in Iceland. Poetry was the third-largest category of books published in the country in 2014, after fiction and the arts….