THE ASCENT OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS [ALASKA] BY H.R.H. PRINCE LUIGI AMEDEO DI SAVOIA, DUKE OF THE ABRUZZI
London, Constable, 1900, 1st UK edition. 241 pp, 34 plates, ills, fold-out maps and panoramas. TEG. Photos by Vittorio Sella. This is a tall hardcover book, 11 inches tall. It is bound in the original green cloth hardcover with a dark green plate on cover, another on the spine with gold lettering. There is some edge wear on the corners and the top and bottom of spine. Interior clean, tight and solid with new endpapers and a re-sewn binding. Overall Very Good or Near Fine condition.
All copies of this book eventually need binding repair as the original Gutta Percha glue that bound them has dried out in the last 120 years. This copy has been properly sewn with a conventional binding, and has new endpapers, and from the outside no repair is visible.
A magnificent book, the finest on any North American climb. The Duke of Abruzzi traveled in style, with Italian mountain guides, folding metal beds, and I am sure plenty of Italian wine. This expedition succeeded in making the first ascent of St. Elias. [Neate F24.]
Why did they climb St Elias and not Denali? The world was still being discovered in 1741 when St Elias was first seen by Vitus Bering, and by 1897 when the Duke climbed it, they were still unsure of the altitudes of of the high mountains they could see from the deck of their sailing ships. For years St Elias was thought to be the highest mountain in the world. They could not see Denali from their ship.
A similar sequence happened on Chimborazo in Ecuador. It was a candidate for being the highest mountain the world, or certainly the new world. Until the beginning of the 19th century, it was thought that Chimborazo was the highest mountain on Earth (measured from sea level), and such reputation led to many attempts on its summit during the 17th and 18th centuries. That is why Edward Whymper went half way around the world to climb it in 1880, only 15 years after he climbed the Matterhorn. He knew the Matterhorn was not the highest mountain in the Alps, but the new world's mountain were still wide open. And you cannot see and measure Aconcagua from a sailing ship!
Vittorio Sella [1859 - 1943] was the Italian alpinist and photographer who accompanied the 1906 Abruzzi Ruwenzori expedition and who was perhaps the greatest of all alpine photographers. It was Sella who first recorded the landscape, plants and people of the Ruwenzori 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 Ruwenzori 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.
