This man who had fought grizzly bears came rather as a surprise among the politicians in silk hats who run the United States. He had all the gentry at his back because he is the first man of unquestioned birth and breeding who has entered the political bear-pit since the country squires who followed George Washington. He had all the army at his back because he had charged the heights at Santiago de Cuba with conspicuous valor at the head of his own regiment of cowboys. He had the navy at his back because as secretary for the navy he had successfully governed the fleet. But he was no politician when he came forward to claim the presidency of the United States. Seeing that he could not be ignored the wire-puller set a trap for this innocent and gave him the place of vice-president. The vice-president has little to do, can only succeed to the throne in the event of the president’s death, and is, after a brief term, barred for life from any further progress. “Teddy” walked into the trap and sat down.

But when President McKinley was murdered the politicians found that they had made a most surprising and gigantic blunder. By their own act the cowboy bear fighter must succeed to the vacant seat as chief magistrate of the republic. President Roosevelt happened to be away at the time, hunting bears in the Adirondack wilderness, and there began a frantic search of mountain peaks and forest solitudes for the missing ruler of seventy million people. When he was found, and had paid the last honors to his dead friend, William McKinley, he was obliged to proceed to Washington, and there take the oaths. His women folk had a terrible time before they could persuade him to wear the silk hat and frock coat which there serve in lieu of coronation robes, but he consented even to that for the sake of the gorgeous time he was to have with the politicians afterward.

XXIX
A. D. 1905 THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE

Once upon a time the Foul Fiend wanted a death-trap that would pick out all the bravest men and destroy them, so he invented the Northwest Passage.

So when Europe needed a short route to China round the north end of the Americas our seamen set out to find a channel, and even when they knew that any route must lie through the high Arctic, still they were not going to be beaten. Our white men rule the world because we refuse to be beaten.

The seamen died of scurvy, and it was two hundred years before they found out how to stay alive on salted food, by drinking lime juice. Safe from scurvy, they reached the gate of the passage at Lancaster Sound, but there the winter caught them, so that their ships were squashed in driving ice, and the men died of cold and hunger. Then the explorers got ships too strong to be crushed; they copied the dress of the Eskimo to keep them warm; and they carried food enough to last for years. Deeper and deeper they forced their way into the Arctic, but now they neared the magnetic pole where the compass is useless, in belts of drifting fog darker than midnight. Still they dared to go on, but the inner channels of the Arctic were found to be frozen until the autumn gales broke up the ice-fields, leaving barely six weeks for navigation before the winter frosts. At that rate the three-thousand-mile passage would take three years. Besides, the ship must carry a deck load of sledge dogs with their food, so that the men might escape overland in case they were cast away. Only a big ship could carry the supplies, but once again the seamen dared to try. And now came the last test to break men’s hearts—the sea lane proved to be so foul with shoals and rocks that no large vessel could possibly squeeze through. At last, after three hundred years, the British seamen had to own defeat. Our explorers had mapped the entire route, but no ship could make the passage because it was impossible to raise money for the venture.

Why should we want to get through this useless channel? Because it was the test for perfect manhood free from all care for money, utterly unselfish, of the highest intellect, patience, endurance and the last possible extremity of valor.

And where the English failed a Norseman, Nordenskjöld made the Northeast passage round the coast of Asia. Still nobody dared to broach the Northwest passage round America, until a young Norse seaman solved the riddle. Where no ship could cross the shoals it might be possible with a fishing boat drawing only six feet of water. But she could not carry five years’ supplies for men and dogs. Science came to the rescue with foods that would pack into a tenth part of their proper bulk, and as to the dog food, one might risk a deck load big as a haystack, to be thrown off if the weather got too heavy. Still, how could a fishing boat carry twenty men for the different expert jobs? Seven men might be discovered each an expert in three or four different trades; the captain serving as the astronomer and doctor, the cook as a naturalist and seaman. So Roald Amundsen got Doctor Nansen’s help, and that great explorer was backed by the king. Help came from all parts of Scandinavia, and a little from Great Britain.

The Gjöa was a forty-seven ton herring boat with a thirteen horse-power motor for ship’s pet, loaded with five years’ stores for a crew of seven men, who off duty were comrades as in a yachting cruise. In 1903 she sailed from Christiania and spent July climbing the north current in full view of the Greenland coast, the Arctic wonderland. At Godhaven she picked up stores, bidding farewell to civilization, passed Upernivik the last village, and Tassinssak, the last house on earth, then entered Melville Bay with its three-hundred-mile frontage of glacier, the most dangerous place in the Arctic. Beyond, near Cape York, she found a deck load of stores left for her by one of the Dundee whalers. There the people met the last white men, three Danish explorers whose leader, Mylius Erichsen, was making his way to death on the north coast of Greenland. So, like a barge with a hayrick, the overload Joy crossed from the Greenland coast to Lancaster Sound, the gate of the Northwest passage, whose gatepost is Beechey Island, sacred to the memory of Sir John Franklin, and the dead of the Franklin search. The Joy found some sole leather better than her own, a heap of useful coal and an anvil, among the litter of old expeditions; made the graves tidy; left a message at Franklin’s monument, and went on. For three hundred years the channels ahead were known to have been blocked; only by a miracle of good fortune could they be free from ice; and this miracle happened, for the way was clear.

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