London, 1903, 1st edition. Stated 'Publisher to H.M. India Office', hence a colonial edition. 367 pp, 41 plates, maps. This early circuit of Kangchenjunga, accompanied by Vittorio Sella who did the photographs and Garwood who sketched the map, is a classic of Himalayan exploration. Very scarce Himalayan book. Original red cloth is bright, spine slightly faed, minor ripples on cover, same design as London edition but a slightly different cloth for the Colonial edition. Very Good plus.
Douglas William Freshfield (1845-1934), English explorer and mountaineer, the only son of Henry R. Freshfield. In 1869 he married Augusta Charlotte, daughter of the Honble. W. Ritchie, Advocate-General of Calcutta. He had a son who to his everlasting grief died in boyhood.
Douglas Freshfield was a prominent member of the Royal Geographical Society. He was a pioneer climber in the Caucasus, the Himalayas, and the mountainous regions of many other countries. Although the dominating interest of his life was mountain exploration, and though he continuously devoted his leisure to the affairs of Royal Geographical Society and of his beloved Alpine Club, he found time for many other activities. He served for several years as Treasurer of the Hellenic and Roman Societies, as Chairman of the Committe of the Society of Authors.
In 1899 he visited India, Burma, and Ceylon, accomplishing his second greatest journey of exploration by the first circuit of Kangchenjunga. He was accompanied by Professor Garwood, who produced a map which was considered the best for the whole district. His last great journey was made at sixty years of age. Returning from the meeting of the British Association in South Africa in 1905 when he made an attempt on Ruwenzori, then still known as the mysterious Mountains of the Moon. Mr. Freshfield edited the Alpine Journal and wrote The Exploration of the Caucasus, Round Kangchenjunga, Italian Alps, a biography of H. B. de Saussure, and Below the Snow Line.
Vittorio Sella [1859 - 1943]
He was the Italian alpinist and photographer who accompanied the 1906 Abruzzi Rwenzori expedition and who was perhaps the greatest of all alpine photographers. It was Sella who first recorded the landscape, plants and people of the Rwenzori in extensive and intimate detail, and to whom we refer for clarity of the historical record and pure artistic beauty. It is particularly interesting to note how far the glaciers of the Rwenzori have receded since these photographs were taken, nearly 90 years ago. Vittorio Sella was born in Biella, Italy, to father who was a successful textile industrialist and scientist ad who, in 1856, had been the first Italian to write a treatise on photography. Vittorio owed his interest in the mountains to his uncle, Quintino, founder of the Alpine Club of Italy. As a young man, Vittorio had worked as a chemist in his father's textile factory, but it was his passion for taking beautiful panoramic photographs of the mountains which made him famous. From 1880 to 1893 he compiled a detailed portfolio of the Alps, combining his photography with impressive alpinism, such as the first winter traverse of the Matterhorn in 1882. He made three expeditions to the Caucasus, in 1889, 1890 and 1896, for which his photography received awards from Britain's Royal Geographical Society. In 1899 he accompanied his friend the alpinist D. W. Freshfield on a difficult exploration of Kanchenjunga in Sikkim. The Duke of Abruzzi greatly admired Sella's work and invited him to be the official photographer for the expeditions in 1897 to Mount St Elias in Alaska, in 1909 to the Karakoram. The highest summit on Mount Luigi di Savoia in the Ruwenzori was named Sella Peak in his honour.
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