The Land of Desolation
Being a Personal Narrative of Adventures in Greenland

This 1871 account by a seasoned Arctic explorer recounts a leisurely voyage in 1869 along the coast of Greenland.

Isaac Israel Hayes (Author)

9781108071475, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 April 2014

372 pages, 42 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.1 cm, 0.47 kg

Despite the fact that his previous trip to the Arctic had left him gravely ill and with a permanently injured foot, the explorer and physician Isaac Israel Hayes (1832–81) immediately proclaimed his desire to return north. In 1869, aboard the steamer Panther, he was granted his wish. The trip was financed by the artist William Bradford (1823–92), who planned to use it as an opportunity to paint and photograph Greenland. First published in 1871, this account gives the reader the opportunity to survey the landscape, touching also on the history of polar exploration. It is illustrated with a number of engravings. Also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection are An Arctic Boat-Journey in the Autumn of 1854 (1860), Hayes's account of a gruelling episode during the ill-fated second Grinnell expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, and The Open Polar Sea (1867).

Preface
Part I. Ruins: 1. Ice and breakers
2. Free from dangers
3. A hopeful town in a hopeless place
4. Eric the Red
5. 'The Arctic Six'
6. Up the fiord in an oomiak
7. The ruins of Ericsfiord
8. The Northmen in Greenland
9. The Northmen in America
10. The last man
11. A disconsolate lover
12. The church at Julianashaab
13. A Greenland parliament
14. A Greeland ball
Part II. Palaces of Nature: 1. Ice and snow
2. Glaciers and icebergs
3. The solitary hut of Peter Motzfeldt
4. The glacier
5. Crossing the glacier
6. Speculations
7. Measurements of glaciers
8. The birth of an iceberg
9. A narrow escape
10. Icebergs critically examined
11. Man versus musquitoes
12. A picnic on the glacier
13. Bound for the Arctic Circle
Part III. Under the Midnight Sun: 1. Across the Arctic Circle
2. Beyond civilisation
3. Ice-navigation
4. Hunting by steam
5. Among the ice-fields of Melville Bay
6. The last white man
7. The fiord of Aukpadlartok
8. Upernavik
9. Disco Island
10. Jacobshavn
11. A week in Godhavn.

Subject Areas: Historical geography [HBTP]