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SOME NEW BOOKS. 



Nansen's Book. 



Farthest North, by Fridtjof Nansen, being the record of a voyage of exploration 

 of the ship Frain 1893-1896 and of a fifteen months' sleigh journey by Dr. 

 Nansen and Lieut. Johansen, with an appendix by Otto Sverdrup captain of the 

 Fram. Two vols., 8vo. Pp. xvi., 510 and xvi., 672, with 16 coloured plates, 

 4 folding maps, etched portrait frontispiece, and numerous full-page and text 

 illustrations. Westminster : Archibald Constable & Co., 1897. Price 42s. 



Not the telegrams, nor the lectures, nor even the Daily Chronicle 

 articles have spoilt our appetite for this vividly written and admirably 

 illustrated account of one of the most remarkable voyages of explora- 

 tion that the world has yet seen. It is not the results, or the 

 adventures, or the literary style that make the most forcible appeal 

 to all of us ; but it is the fulfilment step by step of a plan boldly yet 

 deeply laid, and worked out with a combination of intellectual 

 sagacity and the utmost physical bravery. The sagas of Eric the 

 Red and Leif the Lucky speak of the childhood of the world, but this 

 new Fridtjof's Saga is a tale of its manhood — mind and body striving 

 in full accord towards one definite goal. And so its method as well 

 as its object have interest for men of science most of all : the object, 

 no sensational dash for the pole, but " to mvestigate the great 

 unknown region that surrounds it " ; the method, based from beginning 

 to end, in every item, on observation and experiment, "It is," writes 

 Nansen, when preparing for his sledge expedition, " on the felicitous 

 combination of trifles that ultimate success depends," and the striking 

 success of the whole was due to the most rigorous adherence to this 

 maxim. 



The book consists of the following parts. A recapitulation of the 

 scientific basis of the plan, largely reprinted from Nansen's address 

 to the Geographical Society of Christiania ; a short account of the 

 preparations, including a description of the " Fram " ; the voyage 

 along the north coast of the old world, in which is intercalated the 

 interesting narrative of Alexander Trontheim's journey with the dogs 

 through the Urals and the tundras to meet the ship at Khabarova ; 

 the entry into the ice and the freezing in and drifting of the " Fram " 

 to longitude 110° E, in November, 1894 (^nd of vol. i.) ; the prepara- 

 tions for the sledge-expedition ; the expedition by Nansen and 

 Johansen ; their winter (1895-96) in Franz Josef Land, and journey 

 S.W., till the meeting with Jackson ; return in the " Windward " ; 

 Captain Sverdrup's account of the voyage of the " Fram " after the 

 departure of Nansen and Johansen, occupying 112 pages; conclusion, 

 giving a few main results of the expedition, by Nansen ; a good 

 Index. A large part of the book consists of excerpts from Nansen's 

 diaries, so that we follow his varying feelings from day to day, and 

 despite monotonous surroundings neither variety nor vivacity are 

 wanting to the narrative. We are plunged from rhapsodies on the 

 Northern Lights into the excitement of a bear-hunt, or recalled from 



