The Other John Muir: The Ice Kingdom and the Corwin Voyage

• Author: Oliver Houck
• Pages: 254-258

254 Best of the Books: Ref‌lections on Recent Literature

The Other John Muir:

The Ice Kingdom and

the Corwin Voyage

By Oliver Houck

In the Kingdom of Ice : The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of

the USS Jeannet te, by Hampton Sides. Random House. 489 pages.

The Cruise of the Cor win: Journa l of

the Arctic E xpedition of 1881 in Search

of De Long and the Jeannet te, by John

Muir. Westwinds Press. 268 pages.

From the September/ October 2015 issue of The

Environmental For um.

By the end of t he 19th century, an age

marked by titans of industry, inven-

tion, and exploration, the map of the

world had been largely reduced to the known

with one large exception, the North and South

Poles. For the former, we had a prett y good

idea what wa s up there beyond Canada and

the recently acquired Alaska (a purchase many

still considered a vast waste of money). It was

the great Polar Sea, indicated on world maps

since the 1500s and embellished since w ith

proofs and speculations, all of which had the

Arctic ringed by a thin band of ice beyond

which lay waters warmed the year round by

a Pacic current c alled the Kuro Siwo, which

barreled up the Bering Strait and opened a

navigable channel to the pole. Within the ring

lay a magical continent, Wrangel Land, with

intriguing possibilities, a new race of humans