6/26/2023 0 Comments The arctic grail pierre berton![]() ![]() ![]() When Eskimos finally revealed the truth-that Franklin and his men had perished in a tragedy involving starvation, even cannibalism-Charles Dickens huffily damned the Eskimos as ""treacherous and cruel."" Berton tells these stories with tremendous flare, and shows rare sense among Polar writers by describing in detail the women left behind by these driven men. The subsequent hunt for Franklin became the prod to all further polar expeditions. Their amazing adventures serve as prelude to the story of Sir John Franklin, a dour, courageous man whose expedition disappeared in 1845. The Englishmen were William Parry, first white man to winter in the Arctic, and John Ross, plagued by a terrible ego and by accusations of cowardice and plagiarism. ![]() He begins with a scene of mind-boggling surrealism: two British sailors in cocked hats and tailcoats confronting a group of fur-clad Eskimos on the Greenland coast, the first encounter between these two alien cultures. ![]() Berton (Starting Out, The Invasion of Canada, etc.) spins one extraordinary tale after another, concentrating on the bizarre personalities of the great Arctic explorers as well as on their stunning exploits. This magnificent history is the first comprehensive account of Arctic conquest from the earliest British expeditions to Robert Peary's disputed achievement of 90 degrees north latitude. ![]()
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