A thoughtful and imaginative tour of the Alaskan landscape, past
and present, by a laureate of the tundra. In 1899, writes Lord
(Fishcamp: My Life on an Alaskan Shore, 1997), "the Bill Gates of a
century ago," Edward H. Harriman, funded an exotic dream vacation
for himself: he fitted a steamship "with motor launches and canoes,
a piano and organ, weaponry for hunting, horses and tents, cases of
champagne and the requisite thin-stemmed glasses, a library, the
latest audio and visual equipment," along with a 65-man crew and
the livestock to feed them. Added to this roster were some of the
nation's leading naturalists, writers, and artists - C. Hart
Merriam, the mammalogist and head of the US Biological Survey;
Edward Curtis, the photographer of American Indian life; George
Bird Grinnell, editor of Field and Stream and a founder of the
Audubon Society; John Muir, the naturalist and wilderness
philosopher; and John Burroughs, also a naturalist, who was one of
the country's most popular writers. Lord reconstructs their witty
and learned journey as this latter-day Solon and his entourage
traveled across the Far North, calling on native fishing villages
and gold-rush camps, collecting samples of animal and bird life
that would enrich the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution and
other museums, and chronicling all that they saw. Lord has no small
adventures herself as she retraces the Harriman Expedition's steps,
including a memorable encounter with a grizzly bear; she also notes
all that has disappeared in the century since the Harriman party
came to Alaska, including many species and many Native American
cultures and languages. A beautifully written contribution to what
might be called the literary history of science, on a par with Ivan
Doig's Winter Brothers and Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams. (Kirkus
Reviews)
In 1899 Edward Harriman, the railroad tycoon and most powerful man
in America, assembled an elite crew of scientists and artists and
took them on a two month survey of the Alaskan coast. Its 126
members included mountaineer John Muir, nature writer John
Burroughs, biologist C. Hart Merriam, naturalist and Alaskan expert
William Dall, bird artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, ornithologist
George Bird Grinnell, and photographer Edward Curtis. The
expedition returned with 100 trunks of specimens and over 5000
photographs and coloured illustrations. The scientists produced 13
volumes of data that took 12 years to compile.
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