First Edition. Approx 170pp; frontispiece and one other sketch by the author, foldout map, 11 b&w plates from photographs; 68 original foreign-postage stamps affixed to letters with integral address panels. Contains 43 letters from the Arctic, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, etc. Raymond's letters are rich in anecdotes, conversation dialog, and local color. [WorldCat locates only the SUNY-Buffalo holding of this title.]
Donated by R& A Petrilla, Booksellers, Roosevelt, NJ.
The first 12 letters are all datelined in the Arctic, and were saved for mailing from Belgium later. Next are eight letters from Germany, France, and Monaco. Then, 20 letters mailed from North Africa; and finally, three from Spain. Each of the 43 letters comprises three stenciled pages and the address panel. All of the letters are addressed to Andrew P. Howarth, Oxford, Mass., USA. Each had been folded for mailing, then opened by the subscriber and put into this post-and-screw binding of black leatherette over flexible boards. A picture and title on the cover are either stamped in blind or worn-away gilt; covers are dusted inside and out, text is mostly clean. 9" x 6.25" Very Good. Leatherette. Raymond created the Round-the-World Society and attracted subscribers to whom he would send his globetrotting letters. Beginning with the 12 Arctic letters, EDR records his travels by ship to Spitzbergen, with descriptions of the North Cape, Barents Sea, Greenland Sea, Bear Island, VanPost glacier, Amundsen Memorial at King's Bay, through Virgo Bay, and his finding the "remains of [Swedish aviator] Andree's Balloon Expedition," including gas tanks, ropes, personal belongings, etc., all of which he "leaves...undisturbed as I found them" on the shore of Virgo Bay. One letter, titled "A Great Experiment in the Arctic," describes attempts by Westerners to exploit the mineral wealth of Spitzbergen, even though "Eskimos in Greenland and Lapps in Finland...are inefficient laborers...[so] a new race of white men able to inhabit this polar archipelago" is needed to work the mines. He describes coal mining at Longyear City, where "nearly all the miners are single" and only 20 women are there, one of whom gives birth to "the first member of a possible new race: the White Arctics." ~~ The 20 letters from North Africa begin with EDR's arrival in Tunis after a stormy voyage; the ruins of Carthage; vignettes of local Muslim life in the Old Quarter; a 26-hour train trip to Algiers; visits to the Kasbah and feasts with a sheik; "Monkey Land" (Ruisseau de Signes); falcon-hunting on horseback with a sheik; &c. Leaving Algiers, Raymond travels the 2,000 miles to Morocco in a "large touring car" ; visits Oudjda, Fez, and the domain of Abd-el-Krim; the Riffs demand a ransom from the Christian who has defiled a saint's tomb by getting near to it; dinner at a campfire ends in a hail of bullets as a "band of Riffians" swarms uphill; &c. The letters from Belgium, Germany, France and Spain have interesting content as well.