The Land of Desolation

Despite the fact that his previous trip to the Arctic had left him gravely ill and with a permanently injured foot, the explorer and physician Isaac Israel Hayes (1832–81) immediately proclaimed his desire to return north. In 1869, aboard the steamer Panther, he was granted his wish. The trip was financed by the artist William Bradford (1823–92), who planned to use it as an opportunity to paint and photograph Greenland. First published in 1871, this account gives the reader the opportunity to survey the landscape, touching also on the history of polar exploration. It is illustrated with a number of engravings. Also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection are An Arctic Boat-Journey in the Autumn of 1854 (1860), Hayes's account of a gruelling episode during the ill-fated second Grinnell expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, and The Open Polar Sea (1867).