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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Geographical discovery & exploration
Inuit elders who grew up in camps on the shores of Frobisher Bay
can tell you what happened when Martin Frobisher arrived with his
vessel in 1576: "He fired two warning shots into the air. So right
away there were some grievances." Frobisher's shots were the
opening salvos in the search for the Northwest Passage, a search
that lasted for more than four hundred years and riveted the
Western world, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth
century. In Encounters on the Passage, present day Inuit tell the
stories that have been passed down from their ancestors of the
first encounters with European explorers.
In many of these stories the old cosmogony is still in place,
with shamans playing starring roles opposite "the strangers
intruding on the Inuit lands." Dorothy Harley Eber presents stories
told to her about the expeditions of Sir Edward Parry, Sir John
Ross, Sir John Franklin, and the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen,
and sets them squarely in historical context. In the case of the
disasterous Franklin expedition, new information opens up another
fascinating chapter on the Franklin tragedy. Collected over twelve
years on visits to communities in Nunavut, these remarkable stories
of expeditionary forces and their dealings with native peoples will
be new and exciting reading for those interested in the search for
the Northwest Passage, the Franklin tragedy, and traditions of oral
history.
Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage
across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson
shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up
the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along
possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark led this expedition of 1804-6. Along the way they
filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the
geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the
trans-Mississippi West.
This volume includes Lewis's and Clark's journals beginning in
August 1803, when Lewis left Pittsburgh to join Clark farther down
the Ohio River. The two men and several recruits camped near the
mouth of the Missouri River for five months of training, acquiring
supplies and equipment, and gathering information from travelers
about the trip upriver. They started up the Missouri in May 1804.
This volume ends in August, when the Corps of Discovery camped near
the Vermillion River in present-day South Dakota.
Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage
across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson
shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up
the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along
possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark led this expedition of 1804-6. Along the way they
filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the
geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the
trans-Mississippi West.
The late-summer and fall months of 1805 were the most difficult
period of Lewis and Clark's journey. This volume documents their
travels from the Three Forks of the Missouri River in present-day
Montana to the Cascades of the Columbia River on today's
Washington-Oregon border, including the expedition's progress over
the rugged Bitterroot Mountains, along the nearly impenetrable Lolo
Trail. Along the way, the explorers encounter Shoshones, Flatheads,
Nez Perces, and other Indian tribes, some of whom had never before
met white people.
Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage
across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson
shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up
the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along
possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark led this expedition of 1804-6. Along the way they
filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the
geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the
trans-Mississippi West.
After a rainy winter, the Corps of Discovery turned homeward in
March 1806 from Fort Clatsop on the mouth of the Columbia River.
Detained by winter snows, they camped among the friendly Nez Perces
in modern west-central Idaho. Lewis and Clark attended to sick
Indians and continued their scientific observations while others in
the party hunted and socialized with Native peoples.
Launched as part of the United States participation in the first
International Polar Year, the Greely Arctic Expedition sent
twenty-five volunteers to Ellesmere Island off the northwest coast
of Greenland. The crew was commanded by Adolphus W. Greely, a
lieutenant in the U.S. Army's Signal Corps. The ship sent to
resupply them in the summer of 1882 was forced to turn back before
reaching the station, and the men were left to endure short
rations. The second relief ship, sent in 1883, was crushed in the
ice. The crew spend a third, wretched winter camped at Cape Sabine.
Supplies ran out, the hunting failed, and men began to die of
starvation. At last, in the summer of 1884, the six survivors were
brought home, but the excitement of their return soon turned into a
national scandal-rumors of cannibalism during that dreadful, final
winter were supported by grisly evidence.
"Abandoned" is the gripping account of men battling for survival as
they are pitted against the elements and each other. It is also the
most complete and authentic account of the controversial Greely
Expedition ever published, an exemplar of the best in chronicles of
polar exploration.
This two-volume work by Theodor Koch-Gr nberg (1872 1924), director
of the Ethnographical Museum in Berlin, tells the story of his
major expedition to North-West Brazil and describes the indigenous
tribes and the local geography. In contrast to Koch-Gr nberg's many
monographs and essays on the same subject, this book is directed at
a lay readership. Koch-Gr nberg states his aim of correcting a
false impression of the indigenous peoples drawn from 'novels about
Indians read during one's youth' and the accounts of his
explorations are permeated by a deeply-held respect for the
humanity he encounters. Although its primary interest to scholars
lies in its anthropological and ethnographical content, the text is
full of botanical, geographical and linguistic detail, interspersed
with photographs taken by the author. Volume 2 (1910) describes the
S o Felippe region and includes an index and appendix with records
of climate, flora and fauna.
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