No comments about Tourism in the Antarctic: Opportunities, Constraints, and Future Prospects.

No comments about Sir Ernest Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer (Great Explorations).

No comments about Amundsen and Scott's Race to the South Pole (Great Journeys Across Earth).

No comments about The Loneliest Mountain: The Dramatic Story of the First Expedition to Climb Mt. Minto, Antarctica.

3 comments about Where the Earth Ends.

1. A thoughtful, informed and sometimes wry travel book, a welcome addition/update to Chatwin's "In Patagonia" and Wheeler's "Travels In a Thin Country."



2. In 1996 a former town planner took his first trip to Patagonia, an experience which would change his life and which was inspired by the earlier travels of a sailor great-grandfather. His exploration of the island where the real Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked and his discovery of native tribes, exploitation of native peoples and harsh environment comes to life in a 'you are there' adventure travel guide, a recommended pick for any who would visit the region from the comfort of an armchair.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



3. _Where the Earth Ends_ by John Harrison is an informative and entertaining travelogue and history of southernmost South America, mostly about the lands of Tierra del Fuego but also other areas of Chile as well as the author's travels to Antarctica and Juan Fernandez Island.
   
   Harrison from an early age had wanted to visit this region of the world. His great-grandfather had sailed past the Horn in the great square-riggers, his grandfather sailed the Horn in steam and diesel, and the author himself had grown up reading accounts of the region, always wanting to "sail the waters of Coleridge's albatross and enter the watercolors' blue horizons and sit on Crusoe's imaginary shore."
   
   The indigenous inhabitants of the region were of great interest to the author as he provided accounts of their long lost ways of life, stories of first contact with Europeans, and sale tales of his seeking out the last full-blooded members of various tribes or information on extinct groups. The reader will learn something about the Tehuelche Indians (the name literally meaning "people of the South"), a people who once lived in toldos (guanaco skin tents) and hunted not with bows or arrows but with bolas. They later became such excellent horseman that several brought home the top lassoing and riding prizes from the 1904 St Louis World Fair, beating American cowboys and South American gauchos. Another Indian group was the Yamana, who once lived in shelters made of branches and beech leaves along the shores of the straits. They ate great quantities of mussels, throwing the shells outside the door, moving the door around as the wind changed; eventually, circular middens of trash grew up and were colonized by various plants fond of the calcium-rich waste. These circles are common in the area.
   
   Most Indian tribes seemed to have perished from disease and/or assimilation, but some were actively destroyed. The nomadic Selk'nam for instanced didn't build canoes or fish, but hunted guanaco. When the settlers came, drove off the guanaco, and brought in sheep, the Selk'nam hunted the sheep, and in turn the settlers hunted them. Bounties were placed on them, made on production of an Indian's ears.
   
   Much of the history of the region revolved around shipwrecks and mutinies. At Puerto San Julian, Ferdinand Magellan had to contend with a mutiny in April of 1520, when three of his five ships came under the control of rebel officers. Fifty-eight years later, Francis Drake in the very same spot (some of Drake's men made souvenirs out of parts of Magellan's ship that were found) had to contend with his own mutiny. In between that time, twenty-one other ships had been unable to repeat Magellan's trip, either wrecking or being forced to return home, and many other ships wrecked in the centuries since then, several vividly described by the author.
   
   Some ships were wrecked deliberately. Harrison visited the sunken hulk of a once great clipper ship. Once the _County of Peebles_ which under clouds of canvas could reach 14 knots even in light winds rounding the Horn, it was now a partially sunken ship and part of a pier. Square-rigged sailing ships remained in service long after steamships had replaced them throughout most of the world because it could take months to unload two or three thousand tons of cargo (chiefly copper ore at first but later nitrates, much of it the product of vast seabird colonies). As steamers could not afford to be idle so long, what finally put the sailing ships out of business was not it seems replacement by steam ships but rather the invention of methods to synthesize nitrates at home in Europe.
   
   Not all disasters and sad tales involved ships. One story Harrison related was that of Captain Allen F. Gardiner, one of the first missionaries to attempt to work in the region and a "walking evangelical catastrophe...of a masochistic brand of religion." His 1850 mission plagued by hostile natives, lost supplies, storms, scurvy, and starvation, everyone on it died, leaving behind diary entries.
   
   The author visited many of the cities and towns of the region. He spent a good deal of time in Ushuaia, Argentina which is billed as the southernmost city in the world, a city originally founded by missionaries. Another Feugian town he visited was that of Puerto Williams, the most southerly town in the world, founded in 1953 to help consolidate Chile's claims to Antarctic territory.
   
   Interestingly, for many years the Chilean and Argentinean governments believed that the only way to settle the south was for convicts to build the town's infrastructure and for settlers to follow; Punta Arenas in 1842 was the first, which began with 600 convicts and prison guards. In 1851, there were 248 prisoners and families, 144 soldiers, and 44 free civilians. The next year new arrivals found ashes and skeletons, not a single survivor.
   
   Harrison saw a great deal of wildlife on his trip. He visited a Chilean colony of Magellanic penguins, 130,000 strong, and interviewed a researcher who had been working with them for twelve years. On his way to Antarctica the author viewed wandering and black-browed albatrosses, various petrels (which he said were named after St. Peter because sailors saw them pattering on the water), Minke whales, and dolphins. While in Antarctica he saw Adelie and gentoo penguins, snowy sheathbills, and leopard and elephant seals among others.
   
   The author spent some time considering the albatross that was shot in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem of the _Ancient Mariner_ and the one shot by a man by the name of Simon Hatley in 1726 (described in a book on the voyages of George Shelvocke around the world and a source of inspiration for Coleridge).
   
   Another detective story the author related was the search for Elizabeth Island, a place discovered by Drake in 1578. For many years regarded as a lie or an erroneous report, later researchers determined that the island had been volcanic and had sunk beneath the waves.

No comments about South: the Endurance expedition. 1999. soft cover..

No comments about Roald Amundsen: The Conquest of the South Pole (In the Footsteps of Explorers).

No comments about Shackleton: The Polar Journeys.

2 comments about Just Tell Them I Survived!: Women in Antarctica.

1. I didn't even finish this book. It seems like it is just a list of facts about woman who have visited Antarctica. I was hoping for more stories than facts. I was very bored. Also the writer appears to be a strong feminist.



2. This is a terrible book that could had potential. Arguably women in antarctica have as much interest and stories to share as men. Unfortunatly this author, an unabashed feminist, just lists lots of boring facts and petty acheivements of women. Do we really care who the first women who swore at the south pole was? Or the first women to smoke a cigarrette at the pole? No. A terrible book, useless tripe, hateful.

2 comments about South Light: A Journey to the Last Continent.

1. This is definately written from the perspective of the Antarctic traveler turned forever into the Antarctic lover. Though well written, with flavorful descriptions, I fear that its appeal would miss many. As I have traveled to Antarctica, I found endless identification with much of the text. I feel that its strength lies in its ability to evoke strong rememberance of such adventures, but perhaps some of the terminology would be lost on those without the same memory to draw upon! Too bad, it is like reading an old love letter...



2. Written with style and love, this book paints evocative pictures of the Antartic. The way the book is put together enables one to travel as a freind and experience some of the awe and splendore of the place. A deep feeling of lose came over me when I had finished.