“Then I would turn toward the constellation of the Bear, toward the polar star. The north is in that direction.”
“Very good: you would find the north in that way if the night were clear; but if the night were dark and you could not see the stars, what would you do?”
“I should use a compass, the needle of which always points nearly northward.”
“But if you did not have that precious instrument, the traveler’s guide in the midst of the waste solitudes of land and sea—if you had no compass, how would you find your way, my friend?”
“In that case, Uncle, I should be very much perplexed. Perplexed is not the word; on the contrary, I should see very clearly that there was no possibility of my finding my way. I should not budge from the spot, for I might as well try to guide myself blindfolded.”
“Here, my dear child, the bird reputed to be so stupid, so foolish, towers above us all by a thousand cubits. Without consulting the rising or setting sun, paying no heed to the constellations, for which it has no use, availing itself of no compass but its [[120]]instinct, which says, ‘This is the way’—in darkness as well as in light, the goose plunges into space and flies northward.
“But that is only the beginning of the problem. A simple northern direction leads, according to the point of departure, to very different regions, sometimes to Siberia, sometimes to Spitzbergen and Lapland, sometimes to the northern islands of Iceland, Greenland, and what others shall I say? But no such vague destination will do for the goose. The bird must return to its native country, of which it retains an ineffaceable remembrance, just as a man, through all the shifts and changes of his stirring life, preserves the cherished memory of his own village. The goose, then, must again find the sea whose murmur it listened to in youth. In that sea is a certain islet, on that islet a certain moor, and on that moor a certain hidden retreat covered with rushes and sheltered from the wind by a rock. That is its birthplace; it must find its way.
“Propose such an undertaking to a navigator provided with first-rate charts and versed in all the special lore of his calling, and he would finally succeed, it is true, but would encounter difficulties due to the inhospitable seas of those parts. Propose it to one of us, who have none of the requisite nautical knowledge, and it would put our geography to the test without any chance of ultimate success. But this task which man, with all his reasoning powers, would in the great majority of instances be incapable of performing, the goose accomplishes without the [[121]]slightest hesitation. As though the desired spot were right before its eyes, it goes straight forward. The featureless expanse of ocean and the confusing details of the landscape, the halts on the margins of lakes, the damp and obscurity of clouds that have to be traversed, the emotions of terror excited when the ambushed hunter discharges his leaden hail—none of these things diverts it from its course. If detours must be made in order to avoid danger or find food, it makes them, however long they may be, and then resumes the right direction without a moment’s hesitation. It calculates its speed and regulates its halts so as to arrive neither too early nor too late; for it knows perfectly the order of the seasons, when the snow melts and when the grass turns green. At last, on a fine day when the first little flowers are just peeping through their snowy shrouds, it reaches its ocean inlet, its little island, its native heath, its cherished nesting-place.
“I have finished. Now, my friends, which one of you would like to engage in a geography match—not with a veteran goose experienced in such voyages; you would be too hopelessly outclassed—but with the youngest gosling, the merest novice of them all?”
“On that subject,” Jules made answer, “I admit that the youngest gosling knows more than I.”