AMEDEO, Luigi.

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On the "Polar Star" in the Arctic Sea. First edition in English, originally published in Italian in the same year. Abruzzi was one of the last of the aristocrat-explorers whose access to vast personal fortunes allowed them to mount expeditions "untrammelled by the need for government approval or public subscription" (Howgego).The duke's first expedition of 1897 had scaled the previously unconquered peak of Mount St. Elias on the border between Canada and Alaska. The present work is an account of his Arctic assault of 1898-1900: "An important attempt at the North Pole with descriptions of conditions, wildlife, nature, food, weather, equipment with the second section written by U. Cagni on the sledge march. Amedeo reached the closest to the North Pole at that time. Some of his men froze to death while pulling their sleds over the ice" (Arctic Bibliography). Abruzzi later led expeditions to the Ruwenzori and the Himalayas, commanded the Italian Adriatic fleet during the First World War, and founded an experimental agricultural community in Somaliland during the 1920s.

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