Lost in the Arctic. Being the Story of the 'Alabama' Expedition, 1909-1912. MIKKELSEN, Ejnar.

First British edition, published the same year as the Danish, with additional material. This work is Mikkelesen's account of the expedition to recover the lost 1906-8 Denmark Expedition surveying north-east Greenland, where Mikkelsen and his engineer Iver Iversen became stranded for two winters. Ejnar Mikkelsen (1880 1971) had previously embarked on three polar missions when he set out in 1909 to recover the records and bodies of Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen and Niels Peter Høeg Hagen. The men had succeeded in their mission to chart previously unmapped portions of Greenland but had faced harsh conditions on their return to their ship and succumbed to the environment. "In the autumn of 1909, Mikkelsen took his first sledging excursion, penetrating as far as Lamberts Land. On 3.3.10, with Iversen as his sole companion, Mikkelsen set out towards the north in search of the Mylius-Erichsen documents. Crossing the Greenland ice cap, the two men eventually arrived at Danmark Fjord, where Mylius-Erichsen's documents were discovered inside a cairn. After a harrowing journey back, during which Mikkelsen and Iversen suffered every conceivable hardship, the two explorers arrived at Dove Bay on 25.11.10. There they discovered that not only had their ship been crushed by ice but also that the remaining members of the expedition, who had given up Mikkelsen and Iversen for dead, had gone home on a passing sealing-vessel. Fortunately, before departing, they had erected a cabin and left a stock of food. In the event, Mikkelsen and Iversen were forced to endure another two winters on the Greenland coast, suffering great hardships, until rescued by a Norwegian sealer. By then, nearly all hope of seeing them again had been abandoned. Mikkelsen described his adventures in Lost in the Arctic" (Howgego). This work was also bound with the vignette in blind, but there is no priority established. Arctic Bibliography 11428; Howgego, Polar, M39. Quarto. Half-tone portrait frontispiece of Mikkelsen, 69 half-tone plates, folding colour map of the expedition's route, title printed in red and black. Original green cloth, spine lettered, ruled, and panelled in silver, front cover lettered in silver with vignette of a wild sea in silver, panelled in blind, rear cover with publisher's stamp in blind, top edge green. Cloth lightly marked, spine rubbed and bumped, book block shaken, repaired stub tear to map not affecting content: a very good copy.