HOLE IN EARTH

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12538, 27 April 1935, Page 9

HOLE IN EARTH

AT THE TOP OF THE NORTH POLE. ONCE THOUGHT DOOR TO UTOPIA ! ECHO OE EARLIER WORLD SLUMP. > WASHINGTON, March IE i I' An expedition to the insino 01 the I- enrtlf by way of a. hole at tlio top of the North Poole—a proposal once seriously made to the United States , Government—to-day emphasised that , “itos,” ‘isms” and panaceas are nothing new to Washington. ( All this arises from relies of a prodigious episode in American liis- , tory unearthed and announced hv the Smithsonian Institution. For it j shows that groups and schemes and , devices to end all the nation’s Irou- , hies dot American history. Methods of spreading the propaganda may be new. Tint memorials ) to Congress, nation-wide plans and I world-shaking projects can hardly outdo that proposed by Capfc. John Arthur Cloves Symmes, a retired navy oflieer just 113 years ago. VOYAGE TO TNS IDE WOULD. Captain Syrnmos was going to solve all problems by discovery and exploration of the “inside world.” Yellowed documents of this episode have just turned up at the Smithsonian, presumably relies of the old Columbian Institute. The inside world, declared Captain Symmes, certainly must exist. Obviously the way to explore it was to sail into the interior in a ship through a hole at the North Pole. The thing to do. Captain Symmes told the. Congress, was to send out an expedition to “discover - ’ the inside world, claim it for the American people, under the patronage of “himself. bis wife and her 10 children." The inside world would lie a warm, fertile and probably inhabited place, almost as great in extent as the outer surface of the globe. And since America in 1822 was obviously approaching tin! limit of development' in North America— had not the ’‘great American desert beyond the -Mississippi marked the limit of expansion?—then it behooved Americans to extend the frontier or else look sharp. WORLD WAS LN DEPRESSION. A business depression was just sweeping over the world. Might not the “inside world” hold the answer to all problems? Wouldn’t it furnish jobs and riches—yes, even pensions— for everybody. Such arguments swept the country. The Symmosites formed into groups all over the land. Many petitions were presented to Congress asking that an expedition to the inside world be organised. More than one congressman, viewing the spread of Symmosites in his constituency, considered going over to the attractive theory himself. And there were two tangible results : The Wilkes exploring expedition was organised, which resulted in the first discovery of land below the .Antarctic circle. ALL GRIST TO THEIR MILL. But of far greater importance was the influence of Captain Symmes, not on Congress, not on State Legislatures, not on the gullible public, but upon two obscure individuals. One was a. pale and imaginative .young man in Baltimore, by name Edgar Allan Poe, and the other was a. Frenchman of the same stripe, Jules Verne. The American wrote “The Adventures of Arthur Gonion Pym,” describing a descent into L inside world, and Jules Verne pictured in full and graphic detail “Voyage au Centre do La Terre.” And so the “Symmes plan” lives on—thanks to Poe and Verne, blit its political angle has only reappeared through the diligence of the Smithsonian.