CURIOSITIES OF THE NORTH POLE.

Otago Witness, 14 December 1893, Page 41

CURIOSITIES OF THE NORTH POLE.

We know that, if attained, the North Pole would probably be like any other part of the Arctic regions, presenting a landscape of ice and snow, perhaps with black rock showing here and there, containing fossils of a former age of heat, perhaps broken by pools or lanes of open water. The pole has no physical mark any more than the top of a spinning coin has, and the pole is not even a fixed point; like the end of the axis of the spinning coin, it moves a little to and fro on the circumferecce. If the geographical point were reached, the pole star would be seen shining almost vertically overhead, describing a tiny circle round the actual zenith ; and all the other stars of the northern half of the sky would appear slowly wheeling in horizontal circles, never rising, never setting, and each completing its circuit in the space of 33hr 56min. In summer the sun would appear similarly, never far above the horizon, but circling for more than half the year in a spiral, winding upwards till about 25deg above the horizon, and winding downwards again until lost to view. The periods of daylight and darkness at the poles do not last exactly six months eacb, as little geography books are prone to assert. Such little books ignore the atmosphere for the sake of simplicity, but the air shell that shuts in our globe bends the rays of light, so that the eun appears before his theoretical rising, and remains in sight after his theoretical setting. At the pole the single " half-yearly day " is a week longer than the one " half-yearly night." At the North Pole there is only one direction — south. One could go south in as many ways as there are points on the compass card, but every ODe of these ways is south ; east and west have vanished. The hour of the day at the pole is a paradoxical conception, for that point is the meeting place of every meridian, and the time of all holds good, so that it is always any hour one cares to mention. Unpunatuality is hence impossible — but the question grows complex, and its practical solution concerns few. — Maclure's Magazine.