THE NORTH POLE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1319, 10 March 1877, Page 4

THE NORTH POLE.

.CONSOLATIONS, j For the mere failure to reach the, North Pole we can easily console. ourselves. We, are not sure that the result is not satisfactory from a purely imaginative point of view, so long as nobVdy else* can succeed' where We have failed. We do not wish to see the inaccessible parts ' of the earth's surface too rapidly annexed. - A few centuries ago the kno>vn world was but an island of light amid a mysterious region of darkness, which fancy might people at its will with all manner of mysterious monsters. .. The regions beyond the ocean were as much outside the sphere of human knowledge as the planets are at the present day. VVe can make a much better guess as to the peculiarities of a lunar landscape than our ancestors could form as to the centre ef Africa or, the antipodes. The strange beiDgs of old childlike imagination have been impioved off the face of the earth. Prester John has vanished from our prosaic world. There is no spot for the phoenix to take refuge ; and those quaint j beings iwith eyes in their breasts, or the heads of dogs on their shoulders, in whom Herodotus delighted, have vanished for ever from the earth. Their place is 11J supplied, by scientific suggestions as to the possibility of the existence of a "missing link" to be 1 dug up in some undiscovered geological stratum. The old romance is gone, and there certainly is no chance oi our discovering beings in the Far North worthy to take a place in some new edition of Sir Thomas Browne. The unvisitad region is interesting merely by virtue of its desolation. The " thick-ribbed " ice which foiled the gallantry or our Arctic explorers could serve only to give a more lively image of some of the Miltonic scenery of the infernal regions. There is a certain pleasure, however, to the modern imagination in any remnant of the inaccessible. The Alpine Club has done its best to remove that charm from the icy regions most familiar to us ; but it will be long before there is an Arctic club, and before anyone attempts to scale those mysterious mountains bordering the desolate friths of the North, and sending their stupendous glaciers into the frozen sea. The feeling may be a little perverse ; but the sense that th^re is this unexplored corner in our dwelling-place is a kind of relief to the imagination of the Londoner oppressed by the nightmare of an evergrowing population. The time may come when Lieutenant Cameron's route will be a popular Long Vacation excursion, and steamboats ply regularly on the lakes of Central Africa. The gloomy Arctic regions will in all probability preserve their sullen inaccessibility until the time, not so many million years distant according to some men of science, wheii all life will periah from off the planet on the advance of an eternal winter. — Saturday Review. POSSIBILITIES. Thiß particular form of enterprise will not, we venture to predict, be abandoned. On the contrary, Captain Nares and his comrades have contributed so much to the clear-ing-up of the subject that we beiieve that

within five years the determination not to be beaten.will- be revived-among Arctic experts, and that a new expedition, with new precautions, will be sent out, either by the State or by private enterprise. What is proved is that it is possible, even by this route, to get a ship within '4so miles of the Pole, and that from thence a journey as long as from London to Edinburgh must be made in extreme cold — say, 50 below zero— rover immovable ice, packed into hummocks so. high that the sledges cannot move, and that a way must be cut with the pickaxe at the rate of a mile and a quarter a day. The work, too, must be done within four months 'of 'starting, or for want of light and heat it can never be done at all. Those are terrible conditions for men to face, conditions such as'inake an order to attempt .the feat absurd* and immoral ; but, granted volunteers, the Conditions are not, 'as they' might have been, absolutely impossible. Therejs no wall of fog miles thick, such as seems to protect part of the Antarctic region from/, human, observation. There is no sea within a circle of ice just broad enough to prohibit /the transport of the necessary boats.' There is only a march of excessive difficulty under extreme cold, and ' in a country which produces absolutely nothing to eat, as little as if it were floored with marble, or were covered with the Sahara sand. > The passage of those 400 miles cannot; bean impossibility, for 70 of them were, by terrible" exertions, but with no loss of life, successfully passed. Now that the difficulty is understood, and is limited in men's minds, ■. that , there is no further hope of an open Polar Sea, and no expectation of any supplies, however small, from the spot itself, science will furnish future expeditions with r undreamt-of resources — portable light and heat, for instance,' from the newly discovered mines at Disco ; secure preventives against scurvy j methods -of clearing a way more expeditious than the pickaxe j and traction agents fort traversing the way when cleared indefinitely , more powerful than Arctic dogs. With, electric lights, and sufficient supplies of dynamite, and a traction-engjne for the smoothed road, the traversing of the dreary ice-plain, J broad, as it is, and humtnocky as it may be, must be within the limits of human* energy 'and resource. Whether the object is worth' ! all that trouble is a question which different minds will answer in different ways, but which the aggregate -English mind, will •answer sooner or later, when it has recovered from the fit of despondency which follows the return of every : Arcti c; Expedition, by absolutely refusing to be beak,'; I* is waste of money very likely, but if t the taxpayers agree that .they had rather waste. their irioney than 'that'- England sKoidd "'recede from a maritime enterprise to 'which' her credit is. pledged, or in which her obstinacy is engaged, -the waste" of moneyneed not to be discussed. It is hot the : 2oth of a • penny irithe income-tax after all. > There ..wilT. % be sacrifice of- human- life ? Some,' no doubt ; 'but an expedition. can go oat and return, aa .Captain Nares has shown, with less lpßSjthan there will be, in s London next, .week- from reckless, driving, ,or; in playgrounds,,' this winter from ,thg. use of cpdeior the, game, of football; TEe argument waste of lite would only be finarif conscripts were 'ordered on 1 Arctic' 'Expedition^/ I '' But there 1 is' W object? "Well," then/"i t f 'is l no object that England should not, after -her magnificent effofta-'and in> tLeface of the whole ' world/ publicly acknowledge /herself defeated by the dangers and difficulties; 6f a march) one,-fifth of which has -already been accomplished.— -Spectator.'; .i ;, : ~ '; ,j ,