Beschreibung:

BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1910-1913
BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1910-1913 George Murray LEVICK (1876-1956). Autograph journal, 29 November 1910 - 8 January 1912, in pen and occasionally pencil, small sketches of a sledge and of the 'Carusophone' alarm clock within text, two other sketches and two photographs loose, list of bets with Campbell and Priestley on back end papers, 168 pages, 4to , original calf, titled 'I' in ink on spine, gilt morocco lettering board on upper cover 'G.M. Levick Antarctic Expedition 1910,' by Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd, Christchurch, [N.Z.] (extremities rubbed, light staining). Provenance : George Murray Levick and thence by descent; Anon. sale Christie's, 18 April 2000, lot 188 (part). AN EXTENSIVE AND APPARENTLY UNPUBLISHED JOURNAL OF THE NORTHERN PARTY OF SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION. The journal describes the first season of the expedition, from the Terra Nova 's departure from New Zealand, the landing of the main party at Cape Evans, the re-embarkation of the Northern Party, the meeting with Amundsen at the Bay of Whales -- an encounter to which Levick reacts more positively than other members of the expedition ('This has been a wondertul day ... it is going to be one of the finest races next summer that the world has ever seen') -- the landing at Cape Adare, the construction of the hut and the devices and activities of the winter there (including the invention of the 'Carusophone' to wake members of the party for their two-hourly meteorological observations, contrived from a candle, a gramophone, and a record of Caruso singing the Flower Song from Carmen , 'which I guarantee to wake the dead'), to the spring and early summer spent at the hut and on sledging expeditions in the Robertson Bay area. The volume breaks off with the Northern Party's re-embarkation on the Terra Nova on its way to Evans Coves. A collection of Murray Levick's Antarctic journals is held by the Scott Polar Research Institute, comprising chiefly four volumes of rough journals and fair copies covering 9 January to 14 November 1912: three volumes are identical in size to the present one, and numbered II to IV. The present volume is almost certainly the only journal for the period in the hut on Cape Adare, though sections describing the spring sledging are copied from a sledging journal. Levick also refers to a zoological log, in which he recorded his observations of the Adélie penguins and other fauna of Cape Adare. However, the present volume completes the main sequence of Levick's diaries of Scott's Last Expedition, and covers the most substantial period of achievement of the Northern Party. It makes significant additions to the published accounts of the Northern Party by Campbell and Priestley. It is apparently unpublished and unstudied.