Search Results: Exploration and Discovery from The Owl at the Bridge

Boston: Little, Brown, 1942. Hard Cover. Two volumes: xlv, 448; vii, 445 pages, maps (2 folding), illus., index; 25 cm. Morison's motivation is expressed in the preface: "...this book arose out of a desire to know exactly where Columbus sailed on his Four Voyages, and what sort of a seaman he was. No previous work on the Discoverer of America answers these questions in a manner to satisfy even an amateur seafarer." Published at the same time as the 680-page single volume, from which "all the notes have been omitted, and a good many pages of navigational data; a chapter on ships and sailing and one on the origin of syphilis have been summarized. Otherwise the two editions are identical." This set has been a prize in my library since the early 1960s. I had the opportunity to talk to Albert Harkness, Jr., who sailed on Morison's expeditions as a secretary, and later to assist Morison when he ventured to Providence, and at dinner in Florence. The cardboard box has protected the books well and they are… Read More

"The purpose of this book is to tell in outline the story of European geographical exploration, trade and settlement outside the bounds of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; to define the factors which stimulated expansion and made it possible; and to describe briefly the consequences which followed from it." xv, 365 pages, 80 illustrations, 5 maps, index; 25 cm.; dust jacket desperately tattered, mostly present; book Very Good. Stock#ofc0584.

Three bookseller catalogs from William Reese Co.: no. 60, American Travel, 390 items. "This catalogue is devoted to narratives of travel, mostly in North America in the nineteenth century, and even more specifically, mostly in what is now the United States between 1800 and 1875. Within that frame the narratives run from East to West. There are a good number of middle western and southern narratives in particular. ...entries begin as early as Josselyn in 1672 and Hennepin in 1697 and run to the early 20th century. Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean are also represented, with a few bold travellers in South America and the Pacific." No. 107, Travels East of the Mississippi, 471 items; "...includes a wide variety of travel accounts from Canada to the Caribbean." No. 148, European Travellers in America, 346 items; list of frequently cited references at end. "This catalogue is made up entirely of books by European travellers who visited America. While there is considerable geographical and… Read More

New York, Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, Inc, 1951. Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, Inc. was the corporate name for Mobil. "December 2, 1950 marked the beginning of deliveries from the Mediterranean terminal of the Trans-Arabian pipeline (Tapline) which, together with Aramco's pipeline system, transports Aramco crude over 1,000 miles from the Saudi Arabian fields on the Persian Gulf to Sidon. Socony-Vacuum has a 10 percent interest in this 300,000-barrel-per-day line." Soft Cover. 24 pages, illus., 28 cm. Vg/ softcover. Stock#42449/h.

Junior Literary Guild / Doubleday, Doran, NY, 1937 [Country Life Press]. Hard Cover. xxv, 319 p., 58 photos; 23.5 cm.; silver boards stamped in blue; ex Pontiac Free Library; some soiling; withal good. 29509 {Fifi}

New York, Farrar & Rinehart [1935].. Hard Cover. xi, 467 p., photos throughout incl. portrait front., maps incl. endpapers; 24 cm. Freuchen traveled the Arctic, married an Inuit woman, lost a leg to frostbite. Not your National Geographic fluff. Stock# 39,140. Good+, blue cloth covers stamped in blue; spine faded/ no dj. Participated in mapping the as yet unexplored northeast part of Greenland and crossed the Greenland ice cap, among many other adventures. (2582) Arctic exploration & history; autobiography; Eskimos; sociology, anthropology.

NY, Miller, Orton, 1857. First Edition. Hard Cover. xiii, [25]-517 p., illus., 20 cm. "Being detailed accounts of the several expeditions to the North Seas, both English and American, conducted by Ross, Parry, Back, Franklin, M'Clure, and others, including the first Grinnell expedition, under Lieutenant De Haven, and the final effort in search of Sir John Franklin." First edition. This was a popular publication. There are numerous full-page woodcuts. The binding is tight and sound but the cloth is worn, frayed and torn at edges & spine. Some foxing. Fair condition. Stock#101611 (dr).

London, Longmans, Green, 1938. First Edition. Hard Cover. ix, 308 p., 16 halftone photographs, endpaper maps; 22 cm. 'First Edition.' Published in England as South Latitude. 'The 'Discovery' Expedition, equipped and sent out on the recommendation of a committee of the [British] Colonial Office in 1924 to inquire into the biology of whales in the Falkland sector of the Antarctic, had built a biological station at Grytviken, in South Georgia, from which scientists had been making careful notes on the whale carcasses at the neighbouring whaling station for the last five years.' A detailed description of the Norwegian Antarctic whaling and sealing operations by the naturalist of the Discovery II Expedition. Stock# 39,297.Good+, blue cloth covers stamped in silver; spine darkened/ no dj. Exploration, natural science, zoology; memoir; Southern Ocean.

London, British Museum, 1969. Soft Cover. 32 p., 25 plates, illus., facsims., maps, portraits (1 color); 22 cm. Biography of "the greatest explorer of his age". ISBN (10): 0714102865. Very Good / soft cover. Stock#47617.

Two bookseller catalogues. Cavendish: 151 RGS Journal & Proceedings + 38 mountaineering journals. Grigor-Taylor, 18th & 19th century Alps & Mountaineering, 14; 20th century mountaineering, 29; 18th-19th century polar exploration, 16; 20th century polar exploration, 97 items. Both stapled in pictorial paper covers; both Good+. Sold as a lot. Stock#ofc0293.

Two bookseller catalogues listing materials on mapping and cartography. 39, 373 items, a few illus.; 88, 437 items. Both in paper covers; Good+. Sold as a lot. Stock#ofc0327.

NY, Macmillan Co., 1940. Hard Cover. xi, 524 p., front (port.), fold. maps; 24 cm. Map on lining-papers. De Madariaga's biography, based on "dusty papers", a phrase he uses repeatedly, incorporates many of the knotty issues of Columbus's life into the text, where Morison, just about Madariaga's contemporary, put such matters in his second volume to keep the narrative flow unhindered. Stock#47032. Good+, half-inch nick in top of spine / no dj.

London: Orbis, ©1985. First Edition. Hard Cover. Signed. 573 p., 64 p. of plates, illus.; 25 cm. Translation of: Cristoforo Colombo. Inscribed to "Prof." Albert Harkness [Jr] who, as a Harvard student, sailed with Samuel Eliot Morison on Morison's Columbus recreation. Mr. Harkness once told me that Morison would adjust the day's log to better conform with his projections. Contains two sheets and pencil notes in the book of Harkness observations. Stock#47400. Vg / dj vg.

London, Phoenix Press, 2000. Soft Cover. xiv, 141 p., illus., 23.5 cm. First published in 1974, this book is much revised, as the author altered his views considerably. Stock#31111. Vg/ wrappers.

Founded to encourage exploration and 'to collect such facts and observations as may tend to the improvement and security of navigation', the Marine Society at Salem in New England (uniquely among East Coast marine societies) included formation of 'a Museum of natural and artificial curiosities' which today flourishes as the Peabody Museum. OFFPRINT. Reprinted from The American Neptune XXV. 3, 1965, pages 176-188, 4 plates; stapled without covers; Good+. Stock#ofc0170.

Roma: Instituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1991. Soft Cover. 94 p.; 20 cm. Head of title page: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, Comitato nazionale per le celebrazioni del V centenario della scoperta dell' America. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-94). Vg / soft cover. Stock#47074x.

564 pp. Sticker residue on rear of dj. Otherwise as new. Black and white illustrations and portraits. Includes writings of John Muir, Mark Twain, Charles Darwin, Meriwether Lewis and others. Stock#ofc0027.

London, Argonaut Press, 1928. Hard Cover. Folio: cvi, 182 p., [2] folding leaves of plates, facsimiles, maps (one folding), portrait; 27 cm. Standard title: Discovery of the large and beautiful empire of Guiana. "Edited from the original text [London, 1596], with introduction, notes, and appendixes of hitherto unpublished documents by V. T. Harlow." The expedition to the Orinoco-- El Dorado-- in 1595 with documents captured at sea by Captain George Popham from a Spanish ship, with that perspective on the piratical raid. Reprint of STC 20634. "This edition is limited to 975 copies." This, like many others, is unnumbered. Vg/no dj. Stock#OB088.

"Knowledge of continuous sea passages from ocean to ocean round the world... was the outcome of the century or so of European maritime questing... What were the motives which drove seamen out from fifteenth-century Europe upon a career of worldwide discovery?" xv, 302 pages, illustrations, index; oblong quarto, 26 cm. Bound by Tapley-Rutter in tan binder's cloth, color pictorial dust jacket torn, worn; Very Good. Stock#ofc0535.

André Deutsch Ltd., London [1996]. Preface by Charles E. Pierce, Jr. Foreword by Patrick O'Brian. Introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Translations by Ruth S. Kraemer. Drake was "known to have had French Huguenots on board, and from the hand of one or more of them came the watercolours and accompanying texts of an astonishingly beautiful manuscript, known as the Histoire naturelle des Indes and now held in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. This extraordinary manuscript, here presented in full-colour facsimile with English translations, is a haunting contemporary record of early European encounters with the Americas. This was not the virgin land Drake expected to find but one already shaped and overlaid by two sophisticated cultures, one European (Spanish), the other the now virtually extinct indigenous 'Indians'. Nearly two hundred paintings document plants, animals, fish and birds, as well as daily life and work among the inhabitants...' Hard Cover. xxii, 272 pages. Dust jacket; fine. stock#21469/h.