The Land of Desolation
Being a Personal Narrative of Adventures in Greenland
Cambridge Library Collection - Polar Exploration Series

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.