The Last Gentleman Adventurer:
Coming of Age in the Arctic
by Edward Beauclerk Maurice
Overview
From the publisher:
At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company -- the company of Gentleman Adventurers -- and ended up at an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where there was no communication with the outside world and only one ship arrived each year. But he was not alone. The Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polar bears, build igloos, and survive ferocious winter storms. He learned their language and became completely immersed in their culture, earning the name Issumatak, meaning "he who thinks."
In The Last Gentleman Adventurer, Edward Beauclerk Maurice relates his story of coming of age in the Arctic and transports the reader to a time and a way of life now lost forever.
My Thoughts
For some reason, this book was published under two titles: The Last Gentleman Adventurer, and The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers. Now that we have that out of the way, I can highly recommend this book!
Let's see, what did I know about the Arctic before reading this book? It's cold. Eskimos live there. Polar bears and seals live there. Snow and ice are a way of life. Other than that, I didn't know that much.
This is the story of a young boy who signs up to work in a trading post in the Arctic. Sounds fun, right? What does a teenager growing up in a city know about hunting his own food for survival? What does he know about making due with what you have, knowing there are no supplies down the street at Wal-mart? What does he know about healing or diagnosing illness or the Innuit way of life?
The story is fascinating as it unwinds and he's exposed to an entirely different way of life. The author writes in a way that is so respectful to the people he meets along the way, even when their way of life doesn't make sense when compared to the rules we know.
It was a remarkable story written by a remarkable storyteller. Very enjoyable.
Favorite Passage
We trudged silently up the hillside, then each time we neared the top of a ridge, Ookoo waved us to a stop while she and Rebecca peered cautiously down the other side. Just as we were beginning to think that we had picked a bad afternoon for okkalilks, our leaders stopped us very firmly a short distance below the hill. They beckoned Innuk and me to take up position, then stood up and began singing a strange chant while moving away from each other on either side of a dip in the slope just ahead of us. In the middle of the dip sat two hares quite transfixed by the singing, presenting Innuk and me with a simple stationary target.
I had a most instructive afternoon. Innuk old me that the Eskimos had been hunting hares in this way for generations. Sometimes, with a particularly persuasive singer, it is possible to go right up to the animal while it remains motionless.
