Letter and/or further information available at http://jdh.aetopia.net/p/jdh?q=jhc335.
Please cite as “JHC335,” in Ɛpsilon: The Joseph Dalton Hooker Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/hooker/letters/JHC335
JDH thanks his cousin William Gifford Palgrave, 'Giffy', for writing to him. He has written to Giffy's brother Francis Turner Palgrave, 'Frank', congratulating him on his scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, & hopes Giffy will have the same success. JDH speculates that they might visit Scotland together one day. JDH has been unable to get Giffy the walrus or elephant tusks he wanted. The only things of interest in the Antarctic Ocean are the penguins & some marine animals. The Ross Antarctic expedition will not be going south again. Though they did not reach the South Pole itself they have navigated further south than any other expedition. The Americans are particularly upset to have been outdone by a British expedition. JDH dismisses Commodore [Charles] Wilkes' account, published in the ATHENAEUM, which attempts to 'rewrite' the route of the Ross expedition as only reaching Balleny's Island not past Wilkes' land [United States Exploring Expedition 1838-1842]. JDH laments the fate of [Jules Dumont] d'Urville & his family [who died in a train crash in Versailles]. JDH thinks d'Urville was unprepared for the trials of travelling through ice. It is sealers who have elucidated the most Antarctic geography. The Americans have never found undiscovered land there, the French-found lands of Terre Adelie & Côte Clairi may only be ice attached to the land & the coast of Terre Louis Philippe was only named by the French having previously been chartered on maps by [James] Weddell & [Edward] Bransfield. The Russian Expedition [Captain Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, 1820] sailed round most of the Antarctic circle & detected the farthest known southern land in the form of the Islands Alexander & St Paul's. Sends regards to Giffy's brothers Reginald & Inglis, the latter of whom is intending to work for 'the Bank'.
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