most fatal of all things to a party of explorers in the Polar Sea. But there need be no such want of discipline. If Ministers shudder at the idea of expense, surely they might let men and officers volunteer from the navy. If private subscription raised the money, the Government might at least supply the men. And even if that also is refused, a really well selected crew, physically, as well as by training, fit for the service, solemnly sworn to obedience, and placed under experienced commanders, would, it can hardly be doubted, be almost as efficient as if it was selected from the Royal Navy. It must be remembered that of late years the risks of the enterprise have been greatly diminished. Steam has enabled ships to reach the scene of effort sooner, to bore the pack ice with more power, to escape a "nip" with more ease, to try more openings in the ice, and to make twice as much use of the short summer season as of old. Such inventions as extracts of meat, and condensed milk, and improvements in scientific instruments give the modern seaman an immense superiority over his predecessors. The feats of past years are every-day commonplaces now. Numbers of whalers annually make their way into the North Water, as the sea beyond Cape York on the East, and Pond's Bay on the West, is called. Of the three passages into the North Water, one may almost invariably be made, and fortunately this is the one which can be made earliest. From 1817 to 1849 some whalers effected the passage each year without exception, and during five of those years this was done by all the whalers, and before the middle of June. This passage is known as the North-about Passage, and the course taken is along the Eastern side of Baffin's Bay, hugging the shore of the indentation called Melville Bay. That Bay was once "the strait and dreadful pass of death" in the Northern Seas. Along shore there is what Dr. Kane called the "ice-foot," that is a ledge of solid ice clinging to the land. The current flowing southwards brings down floes of ice, which, if met by a south-west wind, impinge on the ice-foot and upheave or crush to pieces any vessel which may be between. In 1830 nineteen whalers were in this way splintered into matchwood. But a ship for discovery, fortified as such ships now are, is far less at the mercy of these "nips" than used to be the case. And a steamer is perfectly safe where a sailing vessel would be lost. Experience, too, has shown that by promptly cutting a dock in the icefoot, all danger may practically be set at defiance. Even in 1830 some of the ships were saved in this way, and when solitary sailing ships have been so lost there has been no difficulty in escaping south by boats. Thus it may be said that what used to be the most formidable part of the voyage has been robbed of all its terrors and most of its difficulty. With ordinary skill and good fortune a perfectly safe advance northwards may be made in almost every year to the 78th degree of latitude. How much farther north a ship may go must depend entirely on the season. In a favourable season, as Captain Hall proved, a ship may reach latitude 81, and could probably go much farther. And there can be but little doubt that a thoroughly well organised expedition, consisting of two ships with ample crews, thoroughly victualled and furnished with those modern appliances, with none or few of which men like Parry and even Kane effected so much, could succeed in reaching the Pole by sledges or boats. Cold though the climate is, it is eminently healthy. With proper hygienic arrangements men will thrive in it, where without these they would languish and die. Scurvy and diseases of that nature have been so fatal in past years, simply because men would not or knew not how to adapt themselves to the climate. There needed only two things, scientific knowledge of the proper regimen to be adopted and discipline to enforce its adoption, to ensure the more than average health of a ship's crew. Little in short is left to us now but to enter into the labours of our predecessors. But that little we seem disinclined to do, yet if ever anything is to be done, it should be done at once. Before the end of May this year our ships should be in Baffin's Bay, on the watch for a passage into the North Water. To delay longer is often to ruin the chances of an expedition. Government might well shrink from the cost and hazard of a fresh attempt, if there was the old schism as to which is the best route to the Pole. But at present there is only one route open to us. In the so-called Polynia of the Russians there is another possible route. For open water has been repeatedly seen in high latitudes, and a mysterious land which, though hardly sighted, has been named Wrangel Land, may offer facilities for an advance northwards. But to us this route is closed. It is farther off. Access to it through the Sea of Kara, or round the north-east of Nova Zembla, is more precarious. And we have little knowledge of the currents or the variations of the seasons in that quarter to guide us. The second route-west of Spitzbergen-may also be said to be practically closed. Many advocated it some years ago. But over and over again attempts have been made in that direction, and over and over again it has been found impossible to make any way through the pack ice with a ship, while Parry's failure is a sufficient warning against expecting any result to be obtained by sledging. It would, indeed, be wilfully encountering a magnified task of Sisyphus to struggle painfully northwards with sledges yard by yard over hummocky icefields, while the whole pack beneath us was steadily drifting southwards from eight to ten miles a day. There remains, then, only one route, that by Smith's Sound. Fortunately, it is at once the easiest, the best known to us, and the one by which, even if we fail to reach the Pole, we are certain to obtain the most valuable discoveries. Here, and here only, is there land stretching straight towards the Pole in the highest latitudes known to us. That itself is an inestimable advantage. Every mile tracked there is a mile won to science, and there are only about 400 such miles to track before the Pole is reached. Even if we make no other discoveries-and we certainly should do so in geology, meteorology, zoology, botany, and probably ethnology—we can earn the honour of tracing the north shore of Greenland on the east, and the north shore of Grinnell Land on the west; or, of showing, it may be, that Grinnell Land is only a part of Greenland, and all the water from Davis Straits to Robeson Straits merely a long bight of the sea. It is quite possible, indeed it is a good deal more than possible, that we may find land north of Grinnell Land, with a race of men who have had no intercourse with the rest of mankind for centuries. Esquimaux traditions tell of one island at all events-called Musk Isle-far beyond any present explorations, round which there is an open sea. And it must be remembered that the climate, so far from becoming colder and colder as we advance north, was found by Captain Hall to be much warmer at the highest point he reached than several degrees more south. Animal life also abounds in a similar proportion. Whether, as some have supposed, the Gulf-stream rises to the surface in those latitudes, or whether the increased heat of the sun sensibly alters the temperature, or from whatever other cause, it is certain that the climate was found to be more genial. It is equally certain that traces of Esquimaux have been found as high as the 81st parallel. And when we consider that till Sir John Ross's first voyage the existence of Esquimaux north of Melville Bay was not known, it is not unlikely that just as one tribe of natives was prevented by the Melville Bay glaciers from communicating with the natives of Upernavik, so another tribe has been cut off by the Humboldt glacier from the tribe below, and, driven by the pressure of increasing cold, has retreated to a warmer climate and a more plentiful food-supply further north. A great and striking achievement of this sort would show the world that some sparks of the spirit of our forefathers still glow in our island. Practicable and even easy though the advance to the North Pole may be, it will lose none of its prestige for that. Nothing can dim the glory for which so many nations have competed for so many ages. The number of those who have perished in the great quest has been in reality small. Surely it is a stupidly narrow view to take that the lives of even that small number have been thrown away, and that we should be chary of risking other lives for a barren honour. Such honours are not barren, and such lives are not thrown away. It was for the honour, and in the interest of the Queen of the seas, that Franklin, as truly as ever Nelson, died, and only Nelson's name outshines his as a fruitful example of heroism in our naval annals. In old times another nation, which like ourselves had thrown open every land and every sea by its daring, was mistress of the ocean. May we not apply to ourselves the words placed by the greatest of Greek historians in the mouth of the greatest of Greek orators, when addressing the citizens of Athens, words which appraise human life at its true value and breathe the very spirit of a nation's greatness? Пepl τοιαύτης οὖν πόλεως οἵδε τε γενναίως ἐτελεύτησαν, καὶ τῶν λειπομένων πάντα τινὰ εἰκὸς ἐθέλειν ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς κάμνειν. A. H. B. |