GIRL IN THE ARCTIC

Shannon News, 7 December 1926, Page 2

GIRL IN THE ARCTIC

HUNTER OF POLAR BEAKS. TOTAL BAG OF TWENTY-NINE. FIVE CUBS CAPTURED ALIVE. Experienced .polar hunters are complimenting- Miss Louise A. Boyd, of San Rafael, California, who recently returned to London after a six 'weeks' trip into the Arctic. To Miss Boyd belongs the distinction of having been the first woman to set foot on desolate Franz Josef land, to which she 1 made the voyage on Roald Amundsen's old supply ship, Hobby. With Miss Boyd were Miss Janet Coleman, of San Francisco, and Count and Countess Rivadavia, friends of King Alfonso XIII., of Spain. ' Miss Boyd returned from, the SOth degree northern latitude with the pelts of 29 Polar bears, six of which she shot, in one day. This, it is considered, is enough to turn envious any Arctic hunter. There was nothing to suggest tussles with Arctic beasts in the appcai-ance of the slim American girl, clad in modish kneelength dress of black georgette, as she sat in the drawing room of. a

West. End hotel telling her story of Arctic exploits which would do credit to any masculine big game hunter. Miss Bciyd chartered tho Hobby to carry her game-shooting party of four into the icefields beyond Spitsbergen. The Hobby sailed from Tromsoe on July 29. The vessel kept a north-easterly course between Spitsbergen and Nova Zembla, in the

I ice-lilted sea where shipping rarely penetrates. Fogs, ice. and storm altcrnalod until August 15, when land was first sighted. It was Bell Island, one of the Franz Josef group. With precaution tho Hobby nosed her way through leads in the ice in Nightingale Sound, by Cape. Crowther, until at 80 degrees and 2(i minutes the vessel was forced by an Arctic ice barrier to turn back. The Hobby then skirted Prince George's Land, and the party made a landing at Cape Flora, where a large stone marked the sojourn of an earlier Italian geodetic survey expedition. "The islands here," said Miss Boyd, "with their dome-shaped glacier covered mountains, were in "remarkable contrast to Spitzbergen's jagged peaks. But oven here the brief Arctic summer brings forth vegetation, in sheltered spots there was plenty of white and yellow i flowers of the anemone ranunculus family blooming, and the islands were positively alive with gulls.