Journal of a Voyage of Discovery, to the Arctic Regions, Performed between the 4th of April and the 18th of November, 1818, in His Majesty’s Ship Alexander, Wm. Edw. Parry, Esq. Lieut. And Commander.

London, Richard Philips (1819). quarter morocco over boards, 8vo. VIII, 104 pp. with a folding engraved chart of the Alexander’s route and 3 engraved plates. A little bit of foxing, good copy. Alexander Fisher was surgeon on boards HMS Alexander, commanded by Edward Parry, which accompanied the Isabella, commanded by John Ross, in the first modern British search for the Northwest Passage in 1818. Fisher was an astute naturalist; he kept a baby bearded seal on board ship to observe its behaviour and made a study of the behaviour of seals basking on ice floes. Fisher’s observation of Ross’s barrier in Lancaster Sound, dryly suggests how promising the sound appeared, with its deep water and strong current, as a possible entrance to the Northwest Passage, and how the men of the Alexander were stunned when Ross suddenly turned around and retreated, turned back by mountains that no one on the Alexander could see or find. He nowhere explicitly contradicts Captain Ross, but it is interesting that on his map, Lancaster Sound is open to the west, not hemmed in by the supposed Croker Mountains, described by Ross. The Fisher map shows how little was known of the region above Hudson Bay and west of Baffin Bay.