TRAVELLERS' TALES.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVI, Issue 51, 7 December 1909, Page 1

TRAVELLERS' TALES.

STORIES OF DISC'UVEiiY. From the very earliest times travellers have been prone to imuame that .ney aavo sri-ii tilings that Uiey liavo iot seen, and been to places where they .ave not been (says an Englisu paper;, ' travellers' tales'' in fact have become ..■roverbial. Especially has this been the case in .oniiection with explorations carried nt by Americans in the Arctic and uilaretic regions. Eor example, Elisha vane, a Philadelphia doctor, who in >*3B claimed to have got nearer to the \iirth Pole than anybody had lip till lien succeeded in doing, came back ..itli a wonderful story of an "open ,'oiar sea" stretching northward as far is tin; eye could reach. lie read a paper on his "startling liscovcry" before the American Geographical Society, and so convinced .vas the scientific world of the truth of lis assertion that an "Open Sea of .vane" was forthwith inserted in all die maps, where it remained up till .:omparatively recently. It is known .low, ol cour.se, that l)r Kane was, to put it in!idly, mistaken. The North i'olar Ocean, far from being "open sea," is perpetually ft'ozoii, and must n the nature; of things have been so roni time immemorial. A "travellers' tale" which caused tho greatest excitement in France towards lie end of the eighteenth century was .nat coined by the Sieur de Kerguelen, .vlio claimed to have discovered "a .cry large continent to the south of .no islands of St. l'aul and Amsterdam in the Indian Ocean." He pic.tired these new lands as abounding 11; 'wood, minerals, diamonds, rubies and tlier precious stones," and as "pro nising ail the crops of tho mother .■ountrv." It is difficult to recogniso in this flowing description the big barren isand now known as Kerguelen Land, jthervvise the Isle of Desolation. A more uninviting spot it would be impossible to imagino, l'or it is bitteryl :old enveloped in almost continuous iog, and is both uninhabited and unnhabitable. The explanation lies in -lie tact that the Sieur Kerguelen did iot set foot upon the land until long ilterwards, hut contented himself with Inscribing it as his imagination paint■d it. It is not in the realms of tho ico King alone, however, that imagination las been allowed to run riot in this cushion. Practically all new countries, .vhen in course of being opened up, .lave been the scene of fictitious "dis•overies" of a more or less remarkable ;iature. It was in Florida, lor instance, that i once de Leon placed the. Fountain of perpetual Youth; and the mythical El Dorado tho "Goldon City"—lias been ocated Jiv various explorers in Mexiin Venezuela, in Guiana, and in several other more or less out-of-tho-vay corners of the globe. lor fi'iitiirics, prior lo the summor >t 1881, strange tales had filtered through to Europe concerning tho exslence, in the far interior of Central vsia, of a mighty city, such as was not equalled anywhere else on earth, ■ither as regards size, or ]M>piilation. or ■lingnilicence, or wealth. -Men called it "Jlerv the Mysteri>u,s, ' lor few that reached there ever ame back. According to one authority t |K),ssessed a population of five million's tnd was encircled by a wall measuring ISo miles in circumference. Yet when )'Donovan, who was the first European to visit it, arrived there in the .'ear above mentioned, he found it to ■onsist of a wretched collection of tumble-down hovels, inhabited by a 'ew thousand ragged nomads. In flit l same way arose the legend of he Grand Falls of Labrador, which vore said to be mightier than Niagara ind more majestic, their height being riven as 2000 ft. As a matter of fact he Hamilton lliver, upon which they >re situated, docs drop over 1600 ft jrom the central plateau to the sea, Hit it is bv a succession of cataracts extending over many miles, and not in one leap, as the early explorers would have had us believe.