The Fur Country

**The Fur Country** (French: *Le Pays des fourrures*), also titled **Seventy Degrees North Latitude**, is an adventure novel by Jules Verne, belonging to his *Extraordinary Voyages* series. It first appeared in print in 1873, having been serialized in *Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation* between September 1872 and December 1873. The original two-volume French edition, as well as the first illustrated large-format edition, were released that same year by publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel. The initial English translation, credited to N. D’Anvers (the pen name of Mrs. Arthur Bell), also came out in 1873.

The story begins in 1859, when Lieutenant Jasper Hobson and a group from the Hudson’s Bay Company journey through Canada’s Northwest Territories to Cape Bathurst on the Arctic Ocean. Their mission is to build a fort at 70 degrees north latitude, above the Arctic Circle. The region proves rich in wildlife and natural resources. Hobson’s party—including Sergeant Long, Corporal Joliffe, ten soldiers, and three wives—constructs a fort they name Esperance. They are joined by two women travelers and an astronomer who intends to observe a total lunar eclipse. One soldier’s wife later gives birth to a boy. The group befriends local Eskimos, among them a young girl named Kalumah, and endures a brutal winter with temperatures dropping below -50°C.

During the winter, an earthquake strikes. Afterward, natural laws seem to shift: the astronomer’s expected total eclipse is only partial, tides vanish, traps dug in the ground flood, and animals that should have migrated remain. The party eventually realizes that their peninsula is not solid land but an iceberg covered with a thick layer of soil. The earthquake broke it free from the mainland, and it is now drifting across the open sea. During a storm, the iceberg drifts near its original location. Kalumah attempts to reach them but is shipwrecked on the island, saved only by the sole polar bear left on the ice. She reunites with the group. The following winter, the refugees abandon Fort Esperance and try to cross the frozen sea to the continent, but rough ice and warm weather force them back.

When summer arrives, the ice island breaks away again, this time drifting south toward the Bering Strait. The party builds a ship to reach shore, but warm waters erode the ice base.