Showing results by narrator "Walter Norris" in All Categories

"Woodcraft" is a quite poetic guide to the wild by Nessmuk. Canoeing had been popularized by Scottish lawyer John MacGregor in the 1860s, but the typical canoe trip of the day employed expert guides and heavy canoes. Nessmuk, who was 1.60 m tall and 47 kg, had a 2.7 m long, 4.8 kg solo canoe. He named it the Sairy Gamp (the name of a Dickens character) and in it he completed a 428 km journey through the central Adirondacks. He was 62 years old and in frail health (tuberculosis and asthma) at the time.

"The Ascent of Denali" (1918) by Hudson Stuck recounts the 1913 expedition that first conquered Mt. McKinley. Stuck recruited Harry Karstens, a respected guide, to join his expedition. Other members were Walter Harper and Robert G. Tatum, both 21, and two student volunteers from the mission school, John Fredson, and Esaias George. Fredson, then 14, acted as their base camp manager, hunting caribou and Dall sheep to keep them supplied with food.

This book is the strongest example among the Icelandic sagas of court culture and the culture of gift giving in the late Viking age. Composed at the end of the 13th century, it is preserved complete in a slightly younger manuscript. Content: Of Thorstein Egilson and his Kin Of Thorsteins Dream Of the Birth and Fostering of Helga the Fair Of Gunnlaug Worm-tongue and his Kin Of Raven and his Kin How Helga was vowed to Gunnlaug, and of Gunnlaug’s faring abroad Of Gunnlaug in the East and the West. Of Gunnlaug in Ireland Of the Quarrel between Gunnlaug and Raven before the Swedish King.

"Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex" (1821) is a memoir by Owen Chase. As 21-year-old first mate of the Essex, he left Nantucket on August 12, 1819 on a two-and-a-half-year whaling voyage. On the morning of November 20, 1820, a sperm whale (c. 26 m), twice rammed Essex, sinking her 3,700 km west of South America. The closest known islands, the Marquesas, were more than 1,900 km to the west and the captain intended to make for them but the crew feared the islands might be inhabited by cannibals and voted to make for South America.

The Ascent of Mount St. Elias, Alaska (1900) by Filippo De Filippi recounts how Mt. St. Elias was first climbed on July 31, 1897 by an expedition led by famed explorer Prince Luigi Amadeo di Savoia. Mount Saint Elias (5,489 m), also designated Boundary Peak 186, is the second highest mountain in both Canada and the United States, being situated on the Yukon and Alaska border. It lies about 40 kilometers southwest of Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada.