VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 07/07/1924 - HFSID 176044
Sale Price $625.00
Reg. $750.00
THE ARCTIC EXPLORER DISCUSSES SEAL HUNTING AND MENTIONS THREE OF HIS
BOOKS
VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON. Typed Letter Signed: "V.
Stefansson.", 1p, 8x10. Adelaide, South Australia, 1924 July 7. To
Mr. Charles S. McCombs, Dallas, Texas. Headed: "Permanent
Address/American Geographical Society, Broadway at 156th Street, New York, N.Y."
Begins: "Dear Mr. McCombs". In full: "Thanks for your
letter of May 16th and the pleasant things you say about my 'Eskimo' and
'Friendly Arctic' books. The newspapers seldom are right but the clipping
about Captain Bartlett's sealing is not as inaccurate as you may have
inferred. There are seals and seals. Some seals are not seals at all,
as, for instance, the fur seal which is a sea lion (fur seal being a popular or
trade name). You will find in the Antarctic books that you can walk up to one of
the seals and s hake hands with him. That may annoy but it will not frighten
him. It is perfectly true that on the floating ice beyond Newfoundland and in
certain other places sailors go on the ice with shotguns and even clubs and
kill thousands. You are right, of course, about the arctic seal proper as
found in the Beaufort Sea. No class or men could be more helpless under
ordinary conditions than the professional sealers, such as Bartlett. They
would have to go through a considerable apprenticeship before they would be
able to kill the first seal either by auktok or mauttok methods. Of course,
anyone can shoot seals in the water and then retrieve them with a manak. If you
liked these two books, why don't you try another? Borrow the 'Northward
Course of the Empire' out of some library. It is a small book, easy to read
and in a way my favorite." This letter mentions three of
Stefansson's books: My Life With the Eskimo, which detailed his
explorations from 1908-1912, was published in 1913; The Friendly Arctic: The
Story of Five Years in Polar Regions was published in 1921 (despite its
title, the Arctic was not friendly to the 17 men who died on the expedition
detailed in the book); and, The Northward Course of Empire was published
in 1922. The auktok method was used when hunting seals on top of the
ice; the Eskimo hunter would crawl up to them on his stomach to kill them.
Traditional seal hunting involved waiting near a seal's breathing hole in the
ice and killing it when it emerged for air. Artic explorer and scientist
Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879-1962) spent a total of ten winters and seven summers
exploring Canada's northern regions. Referred to as the "Prophet of the
North", he covered a distance of nearly 20,000 miles in his travels on foot
and by dogsled, living among and adopting the clothing and habits of the
native Inuit people. Stefansson, who became a lecturer at Dartmouth in the
1930s and 1940s, did much to change the image of the Arctic through his
lectures and writings, portraying the region as friendly and hospitable.
Captain Bartlett was ROBERT BARTLETT (1875-1946), also called "Captain
Bob" of Newfoundland, who made more than 40 voyages to the far North,
covering some 200,000 miles on Arctic waters. In 1909, when Admiral Peary
reached the North Pole by dog team, Bartlett had brought the Roosevelt
to within 133 miles of the Pole, and when the Karluk was crushed by
ice, Bartlett was responsible for saving a number of lives. Lightly creased with
folds, not at signature. Fine condition.
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