Through the First Antarctic Night | 1898-1899; A Narrative of the Voyage of the "Belgica" among newly discovered lands and over an unknown sea about the South Pole

London: William Heinemann, 1900. First Edition. Near Fine. 8vo [9.5x6.75in]; xxiv, 478 pp., 84 plates of 122 illustrations and images including color frontispiece and three color illustrations with tissue guards, 3 maps, and 21 illustrations in text, six appendices of scientific summaries and index; Blue-gray cloth covers with gilt lettering on spine, white lettering and illustration of Belgica on front, all edges untrimmed; Minimal shelf wear to covers, edges and corners, small creases at upper spine and front joint, small mark on spine, small sticker on rear end paper. [Rosove 76.A3b, Howgego III C24(C), Spence 311, Conrad p. 85]. Frederick Albert Cook (1865-1940) was a physician and polar explorer during the Heroic Age of Polar exploration. He also organized one of the first polar tourist excursions to Greenland. He began his polar experience in 1891 as a surgeon on Robert Peary's second Greenland expedition. This book is about his participation as the surgeon in the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897 in the Belgica under the command of Adrien De Gerlache de Gomery. The ship became icebound in the Bellingshausen Sea and was unexpectedly forced to over winter. This book was the first significant English-language account of over wintering in Antarctica until Gerlache's book was translated in 1998. From Rosove, this book was "superior to the other two from both literary and informational viewpoints. Cook based his book .... on his diary, notes and recollections; he included some of the scientific results in the appendices ..." Cook's attentiveness to the health of the men during the long winter was evident with few deaths. Roald Amundsen was also on the expedition and gained his only Antarctic experience before his own expedition in 1911 to reach the South Pole.