The Fur Country

Plot summary

In 1859 Lt. Jasper Hobson and other members of the Hudson's Bay Company travel through the Northwest Territories of Canada to Cape Bathurst on the Arctic Ocean on the mission to create a fort at 70 degrees, north of the Arctic Circle. The area they come to is very rich with wildlife and natural resources. Jasper Hobson and his party establish a fort here. At some point, an earthquake occurs, and from then on, laws of physics seem altered (a total eclipse happens to be only partial; tides are not perceived anymore). They eventually realise that they are on an iceberg separated from the sea ice that is drifting south. Hobson does a daily measurement to know the iceberg's location. The iceberg passes the Bering Strait and the iceberg (which is now much smaller, since the warmer waters have melted some parts) finally reaches a small island. A Danish whaling ship finds them. Every member in Hobson's party is rescued and they all survive.

Publication history

• 1873, UK, London: Sampson Low, Pub date November 1873; first UK edition, translated by N. D'Anvers (Mrs. Arthur (Nancy) Bell), as The Fur Country or Seventy Degrees North Latitude
• 1874, US, Boston: James Osgood, Pub date 1874; first United States edition
• 1879, UK, Routledge, Pub date 1879; translation by Henry Frith
• 1966, UK, London: Arco, Pub date 1966; abridged and edited by I.O. Evans in 2 volumes as The Sun in Eclipse and Through the Behring Strait
• 1987, Canada, Toronto: NC Press , Pub date October 1987; new translation by Edward Baxter
• 2008, UK, Classic Comic Store Ltd, Classics Illustrated (JES) #41 facsimile edition (JES13027), retitled "The Floating Island"

References

References

1. Cf. Piero Gondolo della Riva: ''Bibliographie analytique de toutes les œuvres de Jules Verne''. Tome I. Société Jules Verne. Pages 36-37. 1977.
2. Von Lintel, Amy. (2015). "Nancy Bell's Elementary History of Art and the British Origins of Popular Art History". Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art.