Lot 9: WILLIAM PARKER SNOW (1817-1895)

Autograph letter signed to Mr T.J. Jeffery, St John's Hill, New Wandsworth [London], 1 November [18]59, 11/2 pages, 8vo, integral blank attached to brown paper mount; and a small watercolour, 75 x 115 mm., on card, depicting a ship in a bay surrounded by mountains and a building on the shore, inscribed on verso 'Missionary House on Keppel Island Falklands 1855 sketch by Capt. P.Snow'. 'I am but a humble, though an earnest worker in a cause towards which I have ever felt a deep interest... If all goes well I hope to leave here next Spring for those icy regions I have once before visited'. A letter to an autograph hunter, saying that he has no letter from Captain Penny, nor the autograph of Sir John Franklin, and disclosing his hopes of taking part in further expeditions. A volunteer on the 1850 expedition to search for Franklin, in which he was chief officer on the Prince Albert, Snow's concern with Franklin's fate preoccupied his later years. His 1854 employment in Patagonia where he conveyed missionaries and their supplies between the Falklands, Tierra del Fuego, and the mainland ended in a dispute in the courts and, finally disappointed of his hopes of returning to the Arctic, he occupied himself in compiling records of Arctic voyagers. (2).