THE NORTH POLE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10860, 2 January 1907, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE NORTH POLE.

Commander Peary's achievement, in getting nearer the North Pole than any other human being has ever before succeeded in doing, is deserving of all praise, of course.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that it adds practically nothing either to our general geographical knowledge, or to our special topographical acquaintance with these desolate regions. It is as sure as anything can be that the "North Pole" is merely a frozen floe in a frozen sea. Land it can hardly be ; unless, perchance, some isolated rock juts up, by some cui.ous coincidence, at juet that spot, from the bed of the shallow polar ocean-basin.

For we now know, for an absolute certainty, that Greenland is an island, and that the "Arctic Ocean,*' consequently, is merely a circular, eternally-frozen, Mediterranean sea. We al*s know that no corresponding sea, but an eternally-frozen Antarctic continent, exists at the opposite pole. Thus, in this twentieth century, the speculations of the geographers of the twelfth are proved to be correct ; sea at one pole, land at the othqr.

And in this connection, it may tone down our boustfulncss a, bit to rptleet how little we moderns liuve actually accomplished. Pearv, it is true, has got within 200 odd miles of the Pole.' But he had steam to help him. Cabot, Willoughby, Stephen Burroughs, sailed into these selfsame seas in crazy caravels and petty pinnaces, and got nearly as far.