INTRODUCTION.
Arctic enthusiasm is an intermittent fever, returning in almost epidemic form after intervals of normal indifference. Twelve years ago there was a wide-spread outbreak, but for the last ten years the symptoms have never been so severe as to result in a great expedition. If all goes well this summer there will be a renewed paroxysm; no less than three new ventures northward being sent out by different routes to converge on the pole.
It is refreshing, in this prosaic time, to recognize the power of pure sentiment in the quest for glory. Polar research is a survival, or rather an evolution, of knight-errantry, and our Childe Rolands challenge the “Dark Tower of the North” as dauntlessly as ever their forbears wound slug-horn at gate of enchanted castle. The “woe of years” invests the quest with elements which redeem failure from disgrace; but whoever succeeds in overcoming the difficulties that have baffled all the “lost adventurers” will make the world ring with his fame as it never rang before. We commonplace human beings are as quick to see and prompt to appreciate heroic daring, perseverance, and valor as ever were the dames of mythic Camelot; and the race for the pole will be watched by the world with generous sympathy.
Incidentally the fresh Arctic journeys must secure much scientific information, but that aspect of them appeals to the few. It is as a display of the grandest powers of man in conflict with the tyranny of his surroundings that Arctic travel appeals directly to the heart. Since McClure, in 1850, forced the north-west passage from Bering Strait to Baffin Bay, and Nordenskjold, in 1878, squeezed the “Vega” through, between ice and land, from the North Cape to the Pacific, the futility of the golden dreams of the greedy old merchants who tried to reach the wealth of the Orient by short cuts through the ice has been demonstrated. Although no money is likely to be made out of the Arctic, we want information thence which it is almost impossible to get; and the almost impossible is dear to every valiant heart.
We know a good deal about the state of matters near the poles, but yet not enough to let us understand all the phenomena of our own lands. In this respect, however, the South Pole is the most promising field, for its surroundings probably conceal the mainspring of the great system of winds which do the work of the air on every land and sea. Dr. Nansen has promised to go there after returning from the North, and solving its simpler problems. The chilly distinction of being the coldest part of the earth is probably due to the northern parts of Eastern Siberia, and not to the North Pole. The “magnetic pole,” where the needle hangs vertically, has been found in the Arctic archipelago north of America, and in many ways scientific observations there are worth more than at the North Pole itself.
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 148 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 circumference. If the geographical point were reached, the pole-star would be seen shining almost vertically overhead, describing a tiny circle around 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 twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes. In summer the sun would appear similarly, never far above the horizon, but circling for more than half the year in a spiral, winding upward until about 25° above the horizon, and winding downward again until lost to view. The periods of daylight and darkness at the poles do not last exactly six months each, 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 sun appears before his theoretical rising, and remains in sight after his theoretical setting. At the pole, in fact, the single “half-yearly day” is a week longer than the one “half-yearly night.”
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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 one 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. Unpunctuality is hence impossible—but the question grows complex, and its practical solution concerns few.
No one needs to go to the pole to discover all that makes that point different from any other point of the surface. But the whole polar regions are full of unknown things, which every Arctic explorer of the right stamp looks forward to finding. And the reward he looks forward to most is the approval of the few who understand and love knowledge for its own sake, rather than the noisy applause of the crowd who would cheer him, after all, much as they cheer a winning prize-fighter, or race-horse, or political candidate.
The difficulties that make the quest of the pole so arduous have been discovered by slow degrees. It is marvellous how soon nearly the full limits of northward attainment were reached. In 1596 Barents discovered Spitzbergen in about 78° north; in 1770 Hudson reached 80°; in 1827 Parry, by sledging on the ice when his ship became fast, succeeded in touching 82° 45´. Since then all the enormous resources of modern science—steam, electricity, preserved foods and the experience of centuries—have only enabled forty miles of additional poleward advance to be made.
The accompanying map gives a fair idea of the form of the Arctic regions, and remembering that the circle marked 80° is distant seven hundred miles from the pole, the reader can realize the distances involved. The Arctic Basin, occupied by the Arctic Sea, is ringed in by land; the northern coasts of America, Europe, and Asia, forming a roughly circular boundary broken by three well-marked channels communicating with the ocean. Bering Strait between America and Asia is the narrowest, Baffin Bay between America and Greenland is wider, branching into a number of ice-blocked sounds to the westward, and tapering off into Smith Sound in the north-east. The widest channel of the three lies between Greenland and Europe, and this is bisected just south of 80° North by the island group of Spitzbergen.
The whole region is one of severe cold, and the sea is frozen for the greater part of the year, land and water becoming almost indistinguishable, but for the incessant movement and drift of the sea-ice. In summer the sea-ice breaks up into floes which may drift away southward and melt, or be driven by the wind against the shores of continents or islands, leaving lanes of open water which a shift of wind may change and close in an hour. Icebergs launched from the glaciers of the land also drift with tide, current, and wind through the more or less open water. Possibly at some times the pack may open and a clear waterway run through to the pole, and old whalers tell of many a year when they believed that a few days’ steaming would carry them to the end of the world, if they could have seized the opportunity. At other times, routes traversed in safety time after time may be effectively closed for years, and all advance barred. Food in the form of seals or walrus in the open water, reindeer, musk ox, polar bears or birds on the land, may often be procured, but these sources cannot be relied upon. Advance northward may be made by water in a ship, or by dog-sledge, or on foot, over the frozen snow or ice. Each method has grave drawbacks. Advance by sea is stopped when the young ice forms in autumn, and land advance is hampered by the long Arctic night which enforces months of inaction, more trying to health and spirits than the severest exertion.
Smith Sound has been the channel by which most recent Arctic explorers have pushed north. Thus Markham reached latitude 83° 20´ North, in 1876, and in 1882 Lockwood got four miles farther north, coming nearer the pole than any other man. From his farthest point an express train could cover the intervening distance in ten hours, but the best ice traveller would require months, even if the way were smooth. This route has been by common consent 150 abandoned, at least for advance by water. No high latitude has been reached from Bering Strait nor along the east coast of Greenland. For ships the most open way to the north lies to the west of Spitzbergen, as Parry found two generations ago. Neither of the two projected expeditions from Europe is, however, intended to take this route. Mr. Jackson means to advance over the ice in sledges, trusting that Franz-Josef Land stretches northward to the immediate neighborhood of the pole. Doctor Nansen also founds his plan on a theory, but his is so novel, and involves a plan of action so different from all previously attempted, that it must be considered in detail.