POLARIS: THE STORY OF AN ESKIMO DOG

NY: The Macmillan Company, 1923. First Edition, first printing. Signed by Baynes of the front endpaper. From the Preface: "Every incident described in this life of Polaris actually took place, and almost everyone is recounted exactly as it occurred. [Dogs] do not possess such [human] intelligence, they possess canine intelligence and this often serves them better, probably, than would our own." The forebears of Polaris were on Adm. Robert Edwin Peary Sr.'s mushing team to the North Pole. Peary was an American explorer and United States Navy officer who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for claiming to have reached the geographic North Pole with his expedition on April 6, 1909. "Introduction" by Capt. Robert A. Bartlett, who sailed the "Roosevelt" for Peary, and the "Karluk" for Vilhjjalmur Stefansson. Bartlett called Polaris "the finest Eskimo dog in the world." Ernest Harold Baynes [1868-1925] was an American naturalist. He was "the closest thing New England, and the world for that matter, will ever get to a real-life Doctor Doolittle; all sorts of New England birds and animals: foxes, wolves, chickadees, bears and bison were known to roam around and in and out of his house"- New England Historical Society. He treated animals like friends, but unlike Doolittle, never claimed to talk to them. He was instrumental in bringing to public attention the near demise of songbirds and of the bison. Small 8vo., pictorial green cloth, stamped in white; 137 pages. I have never seen a dust jacket for this book and one dealer's listing said it was issued without one, which I find hard to believe, especially from a major publishing house like Macmillan. Plus, the discoloration to the endpapers appears to be caused by the flaps of a dust jacket. Illustrations From Photographs By Louise Birt Baynes, John R. Baynes, and the Author.. Very Good (little wear covers, contents clean & tight with some browning endpapers and tiny bump to corners of text for a few beginning pages).