Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Arctic Ocean, in 1833, 1834, and 1835; Under the Command of Capt. Back, R.N.

RARE NARRATIVE BY THE SURGEON & NATURALIST ON THE BACK EXPEDITION

First edition. Two volumes bound in one. Four plates, including two frontispieces and one map. 8vo. Modern half morocco and marbled boards, spine gilt, small old library stamp on each title-page and p.27 of each part, stamps on title-page mostly erased, otherwise internally clean. Very good. xv, [3], 312; viii, 321, [1]pp. London, Richard Bentley,

"Dr. King's narrative is full of the details of Indian life, as it was presented to the members of Captain Back's expedition. He looked at the same transactions with the natives, and the same phases of their character which Captain Back portrays, from a different point, and their coloring to his eye bears another tinge. His journal, filled with descriptions of interviews with the Chippewyans, Crees, Dog-Ribs, and Esquimaux, is therefore exceedingly interesting even after the perusal of Captain Back's narrative. Although every chapter is largely devoted to incidents associated with the natives, and anecdotes illustrative of their character, Dr. King yields the whole of Chapter XII to an examination and relation of the present condition of the tribes inhabiting the Hudson's Bay territories. King does not attempt to conceal the chagrin he felt, at the cool absorption of his own careful researches in the narrative of Captain Back. In the splendid work of that really eminent explorer, there appears a little, and but a little of that want of generosity which the relation of Dr. King insinuates. Both give the most minute narrations of the peculiar traits of the Northern Indians, their destructive wars, their wasting from disease, and famine, and debauchery, all of which are directly traceable to their communication with the whites. Dr. King, however, finds in them traces of some of the nobler, as well as the more tender emotions, the possession of which Captain Back somewhat superciliously derides. Dr. King very justly reminds him that the gallant Captain owed his life, and that of his entire party, to the devotion and self-denial, through two long starving winters, of the Chippewyan chief Akaitcho. This remarkable Indian deserves an honourable fame.  While his tribe in common with himself were starving, he shared with Captain Franklin in his two expeditions, and with Captain Back in a third, the scanty food, which his superior hunter-craft enabled him to obtain, when the duller white reason failed. Captain Franklin would never have sailed upon his fateful voyage, but for the humanity of Akaitcho, as he would have perished of starvation on his first exploration" (Field).

 

"King, surgeon and naturalist of the Back expedition that descended the Back River to the arctic coast of Canada, includes much material similar to that contained in Sir George Back's Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition, 1836, with additional detail on birds, mammals, and fishes, especially as observed near Fort Reliance" (Arctic Bibliography). Most notable from a historical perspective is King's charge that Capt. Back appropriated his own research and that Back's conclusions were less than exact. King praises at great length the aforementioned Chipewyan chief Akaitcho.

 

Arctic Bibliography, 8708. Field, 831. NMM, 857 (ref). Sabin, 37831 (calling for 7 plates); Streeter Sale, 3705; Wagner-Camp, 62.

Stock Code: 224102