He continued,—
“And now, is it a continent at the Pole? Is it not a sea such as Sir George Nares called the Palæocrystic Sea, the sea of ancient ice? To that I say, We do not think so.”
“That is not good enough,” said Baldenak. “It is not a question of not thinking so but of being certain.”
“Well! I reply to our exuberant interrupter that we are certain. It is solid ground, not a liquid basin, that the North Polar Practical Association has purchased. It is a plateau like the desert of Gobi in Central Asia, two or three miles above sea-level, as can be easily and logically proved from the observations made in the regions of which the polar domain is really a prolongation. Nordenskiold and other observers have all stated that Greenland increases in height as it goes northward. A hundred miles from Disko its altitude is nearly 7000 feet. And if we consider the different products, animal or vegetable, found in the secular ice, such as the carcases of mastodons, the trunks of conifers, you can see that the continent was once a fertile one, inhabited certainly by animals, and probably by men. There lie buried the thick forests of pre-historic times, which have formed the coal-fields we propose to develop. Yes! It is a continent round the Pole, a virgin continent untrodden by human foot.”
Great applause.
When the echoes of the applause had rolled away, the strident voice of the Canadian was heard,—
“Seven minutes out of the ten have gone, and we have not yet reached the Pole!”
“We will be there in three minutes,” placidly remarked Barbicane.
He continued,—
“But if it is a continent, and the continent is elevated as we have reason to believe, it is obstructed by eternal ice, covered with icebergs and ice-fields, and under such circumstances its development would be difficult—”