3-074-986 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lord Lonsdale's Travels in North America: Lord Lonsdale in Arctic travelling attire, 1890. 'The enterprising and courageous performance of the Earl of Lonsdale in travelling northward, from the Saskatchewan River of the Great Western Territory of Canada to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and thence crossing Alaska westward to the North Pacific...has excited much attention...Few people, except some officers of the Hudson Bay Company and of the Alaska Fur Company, have made acquaintance with those desolate regions...his Lordship left England for Canada, determined to travel as far as he could overland in the Far West of the American continent, as well as to shoot a musk ox and a white [ie polar] bear in the most distant haunts of those animals...'. After an affair with the actress Violet Cameron caused a scandal, Lonsdale set out to explore the Arctic regions of Canada, nearly dying before reaching Kodiak, Alaska in 1889 and returning to England. Lonsdale was a founding member and first president of the National Sporting Club, and donated the original Lonsdale Belts for the boxing championship trophy. His name was later given to the Lonsdale clothing brand of boxing garments. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.