4. But how is this to be attained? At first it would appear as if the methods of ice-navigation had been followed by such success, that their continued application guaranteed still greater results. The gradual advance by means of ships, from the Polar Circle to 73°, 75°, 79°, or even to 82° N.L., has been the result and is the reward of the labours of three centuries. But to reach higher degrees, from 82° to 90°, depends on other conditions than mere time. That increased experience and boldness have removed many of the inconveniences and dangers attendant on Arctic navigation is undoubtedly true, but it is also as true, that, upon the whole, the safely and convenience of ice-navigation have more steadily increased than its successes. Hudson, Baffin, and especially Scoresby, and even some whalers of the seventeenth century, reached latitudes which have scarcely been exceeded since, and in many cases this progress was due, not to greater boldness and experience, but rather to chance and the caprices of the ice, which “to the whaler often permitted glances into its interior, which were denied to the scientific explorer.”
5. The greater perfection of our means enables us to conduct Polar expeditions with greater facility. Instead of dissipating our strength by sending out several ships, even small fleets, amounting sometimes to fifteen ships (often not larger than the boats of a modern Polar ship), since the days of Sir John Ross, we equip one or two ships only, strongly built for their “special purpose, provided with steam-power, and with all that is desirable or requisite; and instead of despatching them for short summer cruises, we provision them, send them out for several years, and, by appropriate nourishment and the aid of medical science, protect the crews from the scourge of scurvy. In those days, when even the wealthy lived during the winter on salt beef, and English squires were obliged at the beginning of winter, on account of the scarcity of food for the cattle, to kill and salt a portion of their herd, preserved and antiscorbutic victuals were an impossibility to a Hudson, a James, a Fox, in their winters amid the ice. Those introduced by Ross—then called “Donkin’s meat”—have been greatly improved since, and through them the scurvy, which used to carry off whole crews of ships, has lost its former terrors.
6. In this power to extend our expeditions without danger, and especially in sledge journeys during the autumn and spring, which are possible only to expeditions prepared to winter in the ice, are the grounds why we have not halted at the barriers “of the bulwarks built for eternity;” in the Rennselaer harbour, in the Lancaster-Barrow route, or at the Pendulum islands. It is only sledge expeditions, as Middendorf says, which have been able to effect results of any magnitude on the inaccessible coasts of the extreme north; and the great extent to which the Russians had used sledge expeditions evidently served as an example both to the English and to Kane.
7. In Polar expeditions, therefore, we have probably reached, so far as the exploration of the highest latitudes by means of ships is concerned, the limits of possibility. The extraordinary success which fell to the lot of Hall’s expedition teaches us only the possibility of encroaching but a little beyond that limit, even under the most favourable circumstances.
8. In all cases where the attempt shall be made to reach the highest latitudes with a ship, I would again recommend the route through Smith’s Sound, because, in the first place, I believe that any considerable advance is only to be expected in coast-water; and in the second place, because the Grant Coast offers facilities for sledge expeditions on a large scale. East Greenland in the higher latitudes, 73°-75°, may be regarded as inaccessible; and the attempt to penetrate northwards in its coast-water was a delusion of the second German North-Pole expedition. In the north of Spitzbergen, and in Behring’s Straits, fifty expeditions and countless whalers have heard from the ice an imperious ne plus ultra; and the same prohibition has been uttered to as many expeditions on the North-East passage. In both these routes the cause of failure was the disproportion between what could be reached in one or two summers, and the vast extent of sea blocked by impenetrable ice. In like manner, the probability of reaching the Pole itself with our present resources is so small, and the attempt to do it is so utterly disproportionate to the sacrifices exacted and the results achieved, that it would be advisable to exclude it from Arctic exploration, until, instead of the impotent vessels of the sea, we can send thither those of the air.
9. Be this as it may, the present English North-Pole Expedition will essentially contribute to solve the question, whether the Pole can be reached by the route through Upper Smith’s Sound. This, according to the views of almost all Polar navigators, holds out the greatest chances for further advance by sea. Should this expedition, equipped in so effective a manner, and sent out by a nation of such great experience, not come nearer to the goal, or, if nearer, only through sledging—which may very probably be the case—the conviction will then be strengthened, that all efforts to reach the Pole by navigation in the Frozen Ocean are hopeless, and witness only to the glorious persistency of human endeavour.
10. But until aërial navigation to the Pole shall be attempted, it would be advisable to follow the example of the Swedes, and, in the service of Natural History and Geography, content ourselves with the exploration of those Arctic lands of which, up to the present moment, we know only the coast-line, or which, situated on the outermost verge of our Polar charts, are still untrodden by man; we mean specially Gillis’, Grinnell’s, Wrangel’s Land, and above all, the interior of Greenland. The Polar question, hitherto regarded chiefly as a geographical problem, would thus, for a considerable time, be taken up in the interest of Natural Science. Lieutenant Weyprecht, after dwelling on the predominance of exploration in Polar expeditions, expresses a wish, that the great civilized nations would unite in contemporaneous Arctic expeditions for magnetical, electrical, and meteorological investigations: “In order to attain decisive scientific results, a number of expeditions should be sent to different places in the Arctic regions to make observations, at the same time, with similar instruments, and in accordance with similar instructions.” They who think such results too insignificant for the energies and sacrifices which are expended to achieve them, and who would rather that such efforts should be transferred to those still unknown regions of the earth, which may become the dwelling-places of man, will, of course, give their veto against the further agitation of the Arctic question.