WHITNEY, HARRY | Hunting with the Eskimos: the unique record of a sportsman's year among the northernmost tribe—the big game hunt, the native life, and the battle for existence through the long Arctic night. New York: De Vinne Press for the Century Co., 1910

WHITNEY, HARRY

Hunting with the Eskimos: the unique record of a sportsman's year among the northernmost tribe—the big game hunt, the native life, and the battle for existence through the long Arctic night. New York: De Vinne Press for the Century Co., 1910

Large 8vo. 68 photographic plates, signed by the author on the title-page. Later half green crushed morocco and contemporary orange cloth covered boards, spine with raised bands in six compartments; endpapers renewed.

Number 5 of 150 numbered copies of the deluxe edition on special paper, signed by Whitney 

Harry Whitney was a wealthy American sportsman, a descendant of the Eli Whitney family of New Haven, Connecticut (not to be confused with his contemporary, sportsman and donor of Yale's gymnasium Harry Payne Whitney). Whitney first travelled to the far northern Arctic for sport in 1908-09, on the ship carrying Robert Peary's expedition to the North Pole in the spring of 1908. While Peary and his rival Frederick Cook assaulted the Pole, Whitney hunted musk ox, polar bears, walrus, and other arctic game, and wintered over with the Inuit. In the spring of 1909 he encountered Frederick Cook, who claimed to have reached the Pole, and left some luggage in Whitney's care as he raced south to report his triumph. When Peary arrived later in the summer, he offered Whitney a ride home, but refused to bring Cook's luggage. Whitney thus became embroiled in the controversy over who achieved the Pole first, since Cook claimed his proofs were in the baggage.

An important account of life in northern Greenland from an eyewitness to Peary's race to the pole