NORDENSKIÖLD, Nils Otto Gustaf and Dr. Johan Gunnar ANDERSSON. Antarctica or Two Years amongst the Ice of the South Pole. London, Hurst and Blackett, Limited; New York, Macmillan' 1905.
8vo. Publisher's original green cloth, image of penguin on ice-flow blocked in black to upper cover, reprised to spine, lettered in gilt; pp. xix, 608; portrait frontispiece, 4 colour plates from originals by F.W. Stokes, numerous black and white illustrations from photographs and drawings including many full-page, 4 maps including 3 folding; light rubbing to extremities, shelfmark labe removed from spine, faint trace of humidity to lower outer corner to a few sections of the volume, otherwise a very good copy; empty posted envelope addressed to Nordenskjöld, dated 1926, loosely inserted.
First edition in English. In 1895, a decision was made at the International Geographical Congress in London to divide exploration of the Antarctic regions between the several interested nations. The three expeditions - English, German and Swedish - that resulted from the decision succumbed to the appalling weather conditions in the Antarctic summer of 1902-3, none more so than the Swedes. Nordenskjöld, the Swedish leader, here narrates how his party, cut off by the weather, waited while the Antarctic and Andersson's search party attempted their rescue by sea and land. Both attempts failed and all three parties were forced to winter over. 'The lot of each of the three parties … the wonderful circumstances that attended our reunion; and our return to the world of the living, on board a vessel belonging to a foreign nation [the Argentine Uruguay], form a chapter which is almost unique in the story of latter-day expeditions' (Preface).
Spence 861; Rosove 240 ('very scarce').
Provenance; John H. Roscoe (1915–2007), American geographer and aeronautical engineer. He took part in two expeditions to Antarctica with Admiral Byrd and served as scientific adviser to Byrd and used aerial photography to analyze many glaciers, mountain peaks and other places in Antarctica, which formed the basis for many maps and names that he gave these places.
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