A Thousand Days in the Arctic
Harper and Brothers, 1899.
First US edition. 8vo. Publisher's dark navy cloth, lettered and ruled gilt, with pictorial upper cover. Two portrait frontispieces and eleven further plates, many illustrations in the text, plenty of which are full page. Five folding maps. A fine copy. Hinges perfect, contents fresh.
A comprehensive account of the Jackson-Harmsworth expedition of 1894-7 to Franz Josef Land, which was thought could provide a land route to the North Pole.
Having been rebuffed by Nansen from joining the Fram expedition, Jackson approached the newspaper magnate Alfred Harmsworth for funding, who duly obliged. Albert Armitage, who went on to deputise for Captain Scott in the Antarctic, was second in command, and the expedition set off in the summer of 1894. The expedition surveyed much of Franz Josef Land, and recorded upwards of 600 zoological species.
Though he did not make an attempt on the Pole, the expedition is notable for its rescue of Fridtjof Nansen and Fredrik Johansen, who had departed the beset Fram and found their way, by chance, to Jackson's camp. For his rescue of the two great explorers, Norway awarded Jackson the Order of St Olaf in 1898.
This record of the expedition, a tale of "well ordered survival, so impressed Roald Amundsen that he filled two exercise books with notes from it" (Howgego).
Due to the weight of the textblock it is most uncommon for copies to be as well-preserved as this example.
Howgego J1.
Stock ID: 42386
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