Explorers and Travellers

A remarkable collection of biographical sketches of the men who mapped, braved, and defined the American frontier. Adolphus W. Greely, himself a veteran of some of the most harrowing expeditions in North American history, turns his practiced eye toward the explorers who came before him. These are not polished monuments but living portraits: Meriwether Lewis struggling toward the Pacific, John C. Frémont carving paths through unmapped territory, and dozens more whose names_dot the continent. Greely writes with the particular authority of someone who has frostbitten fingers and knows the weight of provisions running low. The prose is Victorian in its density but urgent in its admiration. For readers who wonder what drove men to walk into the unknown, to face starvation and silence and the edge of the map, this collection offers answers drawn from the historical record itself.