Note: |
Published as 'Polar Sketches', a small portfolio of sixteen prints, in 1876 by Marcus Ward London. 'It is believed by both Artist and Publishers that a much fuller and more vivid idea of Arctic scenery can be produced by careful chromo-lithographic fac-similes of the original drawings made by Dr Edward L. Moss during the Expedition, than by any rendering in black and white. The sketches are not designed to illustrate the progress of the Expedition, or any stirring events in its history, so much as the appearance of the strange and desolate country by the shores of which the ships slowly steamed, the wonderful phenomena of the sky, and the effects of light and shade produced by a midnight sun, or a mid-day moon, on the ice-bound rocks which form the scenery of the region. They are here reproduced ... in order to make them more generally accessible ... It must be added that the sketches are all the work of one hand - Dr Edward L. Moss, who served on board the Alert in the Arctic Expedition which left England on the 29th of May, 1875, and entered the Arctic regions on the 4th of July in the same year. Although the Expedition failed in reaching the Pole - which was among the sailing orders on which it started - it yet achieved results of the highest scientific and geographic value. Of what kind was the life they led - what strange experiences they gained of natural phenomena, and the freaks of light on ice and rock - the accompanying drawings illustrate with a vividness and fullness never before arrived at in sketches of Arctic life'. 'On the sixth day's march of the united northern and western parties from the ship, this sketch was outlines in pencil while the sledges passed across a floe, little if at all under one hundred and fifty feet in thickness. Like most heavy floes, its edges were piled with rubble ice, cemented and smoothed off with snow-drift, showing a perpendicular wall outside, but sloping inside to the general undulating surface. The easiest road lay right across it, and with the aid of picks a natural gap in its walls was soon converted into a practicable path. The united crews of the Bulldog and Marco Polo are hauling the latter sledge down through the gap, while the Challenger's and Poppie's have just reached the spot with the first of their sledges' - Extract from 'Shores of the Polar Sea'. |