[“THE EDGE OF THE FUTURE” SERIES.]
THE RACE TO THE NORTH POLE.
THE EXPEDITIONS OF NANSEN AND JACKSON.
By Hugh Robert Mill, D.Sc.,
Author of “The Realm of Nature.”
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.”