North Pole

“ Although this striking beauty of the North, which it often is so chary of displaying, possesses a splendor of color equal to the gloriousness of tropical seas, it always impresses one with a steely hardness of quality suggestive of the steely hardness of the heart of the North. And it somehow seemed, curiously enough, as if all this wonderful glitter was a shimmering reflection from the ice-covered mountains of the Greenland interior, although the mountains themselves were still invisible. ”

“ DOCTOR JONES' PICNIC. CHAPTER I. "Figures Don't Lie."
The North Pole! That spot upon earth so environed with trackless fields of unbroken snow and mountains of ice; with an atmosphere so cold that none but the bravest and hardiest of mankind can breathe it and live. And yet these apparently insuperable obstacles have but stimulated men to do and dare all things, so that they might but reach that ultima thule. ”

“ The Pole at last! For ages the northern lights have beckoned the adventurous spirits to fathom the phenomena of the great unknown, have lured man into harbours fantastic with the frozen ice of centuries, have inspired him to cross the Greenland ice cap—or make his lonely trail through the “barrens” of North America or the desolate “tundra” of Siberia, his dauntless courage unquenched by previous records of privation, starvation, and death itself. ”

“ From Cape Columbia we were to go straight north over the ice of the Polar Sea,—four hundred and thirteen geographical miles. Many persons whose memories go back to the smooth skating ponds of their childhood, picture the Arctic Ocean as a gigantic skating pond with a level floor over which the dogs drag us merrily—we sitting comfortably upon the sledges with [194] hot bricks to keep our toes and fingers warm. Such ideas are distinctly different from the truth, as will appear.
There is no land between Cape Columbia and the North Pole and no smooth and very little level ice. ”

“ The long quest for the North Pole is over and the awful space that separated man from the Ultima Thule has been bridged. There is no more beyond; from Cape Columbia to Cape Chelyuskin, the route northward to the Pole, and southward again to the plains of Asia, is an open book and the geographical mind is at rest. ”

“ At last we step over colored fields of sparkle, climbing walls of purple and gold—finally, under skies of crystal blue, with flaming clouds of glory, we touch the mark! The soul awakens to a definite triumph; there is sunrise within us, and all the world of night-darkened trouble fades. We are at the top of the world! The flag is flung to the frigid breezes of the North Pole! ”

“ For the boundaries of the frozen north are not dependent on a line of latitude, and have never been the same from period to period, or even from year to year. In some cases they have changed considerably within the 2Christian era, and it is evident that the ice is not eternal. The fossils declare that the climate round the North Pole has varied greatly, and must in comparatively recent ages have been comfortably warm, so genial indeed that some people would have us believe that men came from there in their last distribution. ”

“ The temperature was 38.7° below zero.
The North Pole had at last been conquered. The struggle which had been carried on more than three centuries was finally over. It had cost many lives and unparalleled hardships before man’s ambition was satisfied. And what a desolate spot to have aroused the competition of nations! No land was in sight, no life had been seen within a long distance of it, and nothing but endless fields of ice and snow stretched away to the horizon. ”

“ A. D. 1911 THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES The North Pole is only a point on the earth’s surface, a point which in itself has no length, breadth or height, neither has it weight nor any substance, being invisible, impalpable, immovable and entirely useless. The continents of men swing at a thousand miles an hour round that point, which has no motion. Beneath it an eternal ice-field slowly drifts across the unfathomed depths of a sea that knows no light. ”

“ I myself dropped twenty-five pounds of flesh between my departure from the ship and my return to it.
But fortitude and endurance alone are not enough in themselves to carry a man to the North Pole. Only with years of experience in traveling in those regions, only with the aid of a large party, also experienced in that character of work, only with the knowledge of arctic detail and the equipment necessary to prepare himself and his party for any and every emergency, is it possible for a man to reach that long sought goal and return. ”

“ Nobody wants the North Pole, but we are furious to have a breach made in the wall that surrounds it. If we discover a mighty primeval forest we straightway grind our axes to cut it down; an open prairie we plant with trees. ”

“ The large blank spaces surrounding the North Pole have been a challenge to the daring since charts first were made. For nearly four generations that mysterious plain has been the ultimate quest of numberless adventurers. ”

“ You all know very well that there is much difference of opinion about the condition of the sea around the North Pole. Some think it must be cumbered with eternal ice, others that it is comparatively free from ice, and that it enjoys a somewhat milder climate than those parts of the Arctic regions with which we have hitherto been doing battle. I hold entirely with the latter view—with those who believe in an open Polar basin. ”

“ I hope to start next spring with a vessel for Jones’ Sound, and thence toward the North Pole as far as navigation will permit. The following spring, by sledge journey, I will make [253] for the goal of my ambition, the North Pole. I do hope to be able to resume snow-hut and tent encampment very near the Pole by the latter part of 1870, and much nearer, indeed at the very Pole, in the spring following, to wit, in 1871. There is no use in man’s saying, it cannot be done—that the North Pole is beyond our reach. ”

“ What chance would a man in a sleeping-bag have, should he suddenly wake to find himself in the water?
The difficulties and hardships of a journey to the North Pole are too complex to be summed up in a paragraph. But, briefly stated, the worst of them are: the ragged and mountainous ice over which the traveler must journey with his heavily loaded sledges; the often terrific wind, having the impact of a wall of water, which he must march against at times ”

“ When the little auks fly high against the sunlit sky, they appear like the leaves of a forest when the early frost has touched them and the first gale of autumn carries them away, circling, drifting, eddying through the air. The desert of northern Africa may be as beautiful as Hichens tells us; the jungles of Asia may wear as vivid coloring; but to my eyes there is nothing so beautiful as the glittering Arctic on a sunlit summer day. ”

“ Making a good recovery, he set off in May to sledge across North Greenland through snow and over it, and over snow-arched crevasses, often, in cloudy weather, travelling in grey space with nothing visible beyond a foot or two around him. After fifty-seven days' journey to the north-east and along Peary Channel, the northern boundary of the mainland, he left the inland ice for a strange country dotted with snowdrifts and mostly of red sandstone, in which murmuring streams, roaring waterfalls, and the song of snow-buntings formed an agreeable change from the silence of the desert of snow. ”

“ The North Pole is that hitherto unattainable point on our globe on which, if an observer could take his station, he would find that the phenomena of the rising and the setting of the stars, so familiar elsewhere, was non-existent. Each star viewed from the coign of vantage offered by the North Pole would move round and round in a horizontal circle ”

“ AT THE SOUTH POLE—PHOTOGRAPHED BY AMUNDSEN
For all those who aspire to the North Pole, the road lies over the frozen surface of an ocean, the ice on which breaks up completely every summer, drifting about under the influence of wind and tide, and may crack into numerous fissures and lanes of open water at any time, even in the depth of the severest10 winter, under the influence of storms. For those who aspire to the South Pole, the road lies over an eternal, immovable surface, the latter part rising ten thousand and eleven thousand feet above sea level. ”

“ For the first time the eyes of a European rested upon that portion of the universal sea surrounding the North Pole which washes the northern coast of America; for the first time the white man realized the existence of yet another ocean—an ocean which must henceforth replace the fabulous unbroken masses of land figuring on all maps between the most northerly limit reached by explorers and the North Pole. ”

“ THE PERIOD OF THE NORTH-WEST AND NORTH-EAST PASSAGES.
1. Around the lonely apex of the Pole stand cairns of stone which serve to mark the points to which the restless spirit of human enterprise and discovery has penetrated. In its zenith wheels the sea-gull in its flight, and the harpoon-persecuted seal finds on its ice-floes an unapproachable asylum; but the Pole itself remains the goal which no human effort has yet reached.
2. As all knowledge is perfected slowly and gradually, so man’s knowledge of the earth and its configuration forms no exception to this general rule. ”

“ It sounds almost incredible when we are told that a shift in the position of the North Pole to the extent of twenty yards, or even of twenty feet, is appreciable, notwithstanding that we have never been able to get nearer to it than from one end of England to the other. ”

“ I had better be honest and admit straight out that I have never known any man to be placed in such a diametrically opposite position to the goal of his desires as I was at that moment. The regions around the North Pole — well, yes, the North Pole itself — had attracted me from childhood, and here I was at the South Pole. Can anything more topsy-turvy be imagined? ”

“ Great efforts have been made, much money expended and many lives lost in futile attempts to find the North Pole, which when discovered may appear like any other ice field, mountain glacier, or snowdrift of the Arctic Circle. ”

“ The North Pole has no existence except as an imaginary point in space, at least five hundred miles from the surface of the earth. The openings at the so-called poles are more than a thousand miles in diameter, admitting the light of the sun and holding it with a denser and more highly electrified atmosphere than our own, making perpetual daylight, for, as I have told you, when the sun crosses the line, its light is derived through the opening at the opposite pole. ”

“ The most obstinate resistance to the advance of man has been presented by the Poles and their surroundings, where the margin of the eternal ice seems to call out a peremptory "Thus far shalt thou come, but no farther." But even the boundless ice-packs could not deter the bold and resolute seafarers. One vessel after another was lost, crew and all, but the icy sea was constantly ploughed by fresh keels. The North Pole naturally exercised the greater attraction, for it lies nearer to Europe, amidst the Arctic Ocean, which is enclosed between the coasts of Asia, Europe, and North America. ”

“ Yes, we are aware that at this time some daring and ambitious men are determined to reach the North Pole, and their heroic enterprise deserves a richer reward than they will obtain. No, I do not mean to say that no one in the physical body will ever reach the North Pole, for, in time, it will be accomplished. ”

“ The attaining of the North Pole meant at the time simply the accomplishing of a splendid, unprecedented feat—a feat of brain and muscle in which I should, if successful, signally surpass other men. In this I was not any more inordinately vain or seekful of glory than one who seeks pre-eminence in baseball, running tournaments, or any other form of athletics or sport. ”

“ Change for a Sovereign—an Anticipated Pantomime.
An Arctic Circle.
THE POLAR EXPEDITION. Candidly speaking, a voyage to the North Pole has many advantages. In the first place, the Polar bears are the finest in the world for bear's grease, and it makes the hair stand on end merely to look at them.
The North Pole is generally supposed to be a sort of sign-post, embedded in ice, in latitude 0° 0 ́, longitude x° x ́; and it is popularly believed that Captain Ross not only cut his name on the pole itself, but nailed the English standard to the top of it. ”

“ Remember, this is going to be no child’s play—trying to get to the North Pole. And we won’t try to reach that point at all unless, when we get into the Arctic regions, we find the conditions more or less favorable. You must remember that many brave and vigorous men have tried to reach the Pole and have failed. There are immense fields of ice and snow to cross, and ‘leads’ or rivers of icy water. And if you lose your supplies, there remains nothing to do but to starve. ”

“ The preceding summer we had driven the ship through the almost solid ice of the channels lying between Etah and Cape Sheridan; we had hunted through the long twilight of the autumn to supply ourselves with meat; we had lived through the black and melancholy months-long arctic night, sustaining our spirits with the hope of final success when the returning light should enable us to attack the problem of our passage across the ice of the polar sea. ”

“ I still believe that I reached the boreal center as far as it is possible for any human being to ascertain it. If I was mistaken in approximately placing my feet upon the pin-point about which this controversy has raged, I maintain that it is the inevitable mistake any man must make. To touch that spot would be an accident. That any other man has more accurately determined the Pole I do deny. That Mr. Peary reached the North Pole—or its environs—with as fair accuracy as was possible, I have never denied. ”