Nine Against the Unknown: A Record of Geographical Exploration

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

Nine Against the Unknown is the story of nine great explorers who in their deliberate adventuring into the unknown to search for the Fortunate Land, the Isles of Youth, the Golden City -all legendary lands rising originally, in the dawn of history, from a Mediterranean myth -achieved the greater measure of man´s conquest of the earth. They tell of Leif Ericsson and his coming to America four hundred and eighty years before Columbus; of Marco Polo´s great land journeys to Cathay and beyond; of Columbus, led by a dozen rumours, sailing across the Atlantic; of Cabeza de Vaca, that enigmatic Spaniard who searched North America for the Golden City of Ciboa; of Magellan, the first to reach the East Indies from the west; of Vitus Bering, the discoverer of Bering Strait, and his search for Gama Land in the North Pacific; of Richard Burton´s innumerable quests in three continents for the golden unknown land; and of Nansen´s great drift in the Fram towards the last refuge of the Fortunate Land, the North Pole. This is a record of geographical exploration from a time when many believed that the future of humankind lay in the recovery of freedom -of spirit, of belief, of society.

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2001

About the author

Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pen name of the Scottish author James Leslie Mitchell.

Born in Auchterless and raised in Arbuthnott, then in Kincardineshire, Mitchell started working as a journalist for the Aberdeen Journal and the Scottish Farmer at age 16. In 1919 he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and served in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1920. In the RAF he worked as a clerk and spent some time in the Middle East. He married Rebecca Middleton in 1925, with whom he settled in Welwyn Garden City. He began writing full-time in 1929. Mitchell wrote numerous books and shorter works under both his real name and nom de plume before his early death in 1935 of peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer.