THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7958, 8 February 1906, Page 5

THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.

A message received in New York from Alaska last month stated that the long-sought "North-west Passage" had baen penetrated. The successful explorer in Captain Ronald Amundsen, a Norwegian, who left Norway in June, 1903, in the Gjoa, a small loop of 16 tons, with a crew of only eight men, In the summer of last year he established a base station on King William Land, and located there, after careful observations, what is believed to be the true magnetic pole, a very important discovery, for the location of the pole on Boothnia Felix by Ross, in 1831, rested on a single determination and was not believed' tu be reliable. It has generally been believed that the magnetic pole is subject to fluctuation, and it is hoped that Amundsen's work will throw some light uoon the rate and direction of its motion. He is also believed to have found the monument erected by Sir John Franklin's expedition. He then brought the Gjoa to King Point to winter, whence it will be easy in the spring to bring the ship through the straits to the Pacific. The Gjoa will then be the first ship to complete the voyage through the passage, in searoh of which many lives have been sacrificed and ships lost. The advance towards the North west Passage began at the end of the 16th century, when John Davis reached Greenland, he being followed a few years later by another English sailor, Baffin, whose latitude of 77 degrees 45 minutes north remained unequalled in this sea for 236 yuara. John Kose, in 1818, penetrated Lancaster Sound, some 50 miles, but meeting heavy ice mistook it for a closed bay. In 1819 William E. Perry effectively opened a series of waterways in the same vicinity. The expeditions of John Ross, from 1829 to 1834; of Lyon, in 1824; of Back, in 1836, proved more or loss ineffective. Sir John Franklin, in 1845, solved the prob lem of the North-west Passage, and in 1851-53 Captain McClure lost his ship in the straits bearing bis name,J after penetrating from the webt, and was subsequently picked up by a relief expedition from the opposite diiection, thus sailing through the passage in two ships. This is the nearest approach to the feat which Captain < Amundsen should have no difficulty in accomplishing.