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An account of a voyage to Spitzbergen; containing a full description of that country, of the zoology of the north, and of the Shetland Isles; with an account of the whale fishery ... [Edinburgh, A. Balfour for], London, J. Mawman and David Brown, Edinburgh, 1815.

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First edition of Laing’s account of his voyage as a ship’s surgeon on a whaling vessel under Captain Scoresby to the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, in 1806 and 1807.

In his account, Laing describes the ice conditions, whaling methods, the walrus, seal, polar bear, reindeer, and arctic fox, as well as some of the island’s bird life. ‘In the year 1806, being at the University of Edinburgh, an advertisement was put on the college gate ... intimating that a surgeon was wanted for the ship Resolution of Whitby, Yorkshire, engaged in the North Sea whale-fishery. Impelled by curiosity, and by a still more powerful motive to visit the snow-clad coast of Spitzbergen, I applied; and was, after due examination, admitted surgeon for the voyage’ (p. 1). The work reached a fourth edition by 1822.

Provenance:
From the library of William Edward Surtees (1811–1889), barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, given to the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society after his death and housed at Taunton Castle.

Arctic Bibliography 9582; Sabin 38653.

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