GÉORGIE SEPTENTRIONALE
Manuel Guillermo Gómez Paz
Hello all. In Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras Verne mentions the Pole de froid, places it at 78° 15´ latitude and 95° 35´ longitude (Première Partie, Ch. XXIV et XVII), and appears indicated on the Carte des régions circumpolares, nd, pour le Ed. Hetzel (http://verne.garmtdevries.nl/en/maps/originals.html) of the Voyage. In Le pays des fourrures, Verne places the Cold Pole at the same coordinates and adds: “sur les côtes de la Géorgie septentrionale” (Première Partie, Ch. XVIII), and this region appears as Géorgie septent. ou Îles Parry in the Map Ed. Hetzel, 1875 (http://verne.garmtdevries.nl/en/maps/originals.html).
This archipelago, reached the first time by William Parry en his first artic expedition, was named by him North Georgian Islands “in honour of our gracious Sobereign, George the Third, whose whole reign had been so eminently distinguished by the extension and improvement of geographical and nautical knowledge, and for the prosecution of new and important discoveries in both”, as he wrote in his Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific: Performed in the Years 1819-20, in His Majesty's Ships Hecla and Griper, published in London by John Murray in 1821, p. 172 (https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_sdM0AAAAQAAJ/mode/2up).
The Parry´s Journal includes a folding General Chart shewing (sic) the track of H. M. Ships Hecla & Griper, from the Orkneys to Melville Island, NORTH GEORGIA. (http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/parry-first.htm), denomination used by Verne as Géorgie septentrionale and in the map of the Hetzel 1875 edition of Le pays des fourrures.
Parry's Journal is classified as a Rare book, and my point is that the Verne's text is one of the very few available to the non-specialized reader (in this case non-historian or geographer), in which North Georgia and its geographical location appear. I use to localize the places that Verne mentions when they are not familiar to me, and it took me time to find the Géorgie septentrionale. It looks like the name was not adopted in many of the XIXth century maps: I found only one where the archipelago appears as North Georgian Islands (https://www.alamy.es/foto-mapa-de-america-del-norte-el-grabado-del-siglo-xix-77457386.html). In the others maps that I found from the same period, the archipelago appears as Parry Islands (E.g.: https://www.istockphoto.com/es/vector/brit%C3%A1nico-mapa-de-am%C3%A9rica-del-norte-siglo-xix-gm513486878-87636029; https://www.istockphoto.com/es/vector/mapa-antiguo-del-dominio-de-canad%C3%A1-siglo-xix-gm1172793807-325503207; and https://www.istockphoto.com/es/vector/mapa-antiguo-norteam%C3%A9rica-canad%C3%A1-y-eeuu-siglo-xix-gm1130892787-299245026).
Guillermo.
P.S. The name Parry Islands ceased in the maps in the second part of the XXth century. Since then, they are called Queen Elizabeth Islands, named after Elizabeth II on the occasion of her coronation as Queen of Canada in 1953.