Explorer

“ Will some one go, and cross that strip of stormy sea, and learn the extent of the need, and show us how to meet it, in the quickest and best way? If so, that explorer will look back, all his life, on that winter trip with more satisfaction than on any autumn touring, from the peaks of the Alps to the depths of Mammoth caves. ”

“ For, like many other men, he had something of the explorer's spirit about him—something that responded eagerly to the charm of the strange, the vague, the new,—something that makes the would-be explorer of the terra incognita ignore all thought of danger, and dream only of the beauty of virgin forests, strange flowers, and fabled fountains of youth and love eternal! ”

“ On the other hand, a practical person, such as an Arctic explorer, will hunt out every known document mentioning the Arctic, while his colleague, the African explorer, follows suit with his desires for all works concerning his favorite quarter of the globe. ”

“ Bear in mind that what an explorer wants is the means of approximately laying down his course and distance travelled, and his latitude precisely; the sextant and artificial horizon will do the last within a mile. ”

“ But the time is coming when, imbued with a taste for science and a spirit of research, they will become ardent explorers of the regions in which they sojourn. Freighted with the knowledge which observation only can impart, and enriched with collections of objects precious to the student of nature, their return after the perils of a distant voyage will then be doubly joyful. ”

“ There is here, evidently, a vast territory of unknown and debatable ground, but the headlands and mountain peaks stand out more and more clearly for the explorer who approaches the problems of education and life in a scientific spirit and with adequate command of scientific facts. ”

“ All this great group of noble mountains, until now so remote as to be impossible of attack except by elaborately prepared expeditions, will be easily accessible to even the modestly equipped explorer. ”

“ The discoverer or explorer of regions before unknown has always commanded just admiration, but the pioneer following in his footsteps and by patient toil securing to civilization the new found lands is too often forgotten by those who reap the fruits of his labor. ”

“ Great Activity of Explorers in the Nineteenth Century
At the end of the century a very different tale could be told. The hundred years had been marked by an extraordinary activity in travel, adventure, and discovery; daring men had penetrated the most obscure recesses of continents and islands, climbed the most difficult mountains, ventured among the most savage tribes, studied the geographical features and natural productions of a thousand regions before unknown, and learned more about the conditions of the earth than had been learned in a thousand years before. ”

“ The first explorer, the original discoverer on a world scale, was primitive man. He had covered the earth before the Europeans of to-day set for themselves the highly interesting task of rediscovering it and him. ”

“ The explorer will ever find the gum-tree in the neighbour hood of water, and if he should ever traverse such a country as that into which I went, and should discover creeks as I did losing themselves on plains, he should never despair of recovering their channels again. ”

“ I have said they are all of one type, regarded as explorers. There is only one word which fitly describes that type—magnificent. We may well ask have we any explorers like them in these days? We know well enough that we have the raw material in plenty for fashioning them, but alas! opportunity is wanting. Exploration in these days is becoming so professional and so scientific that modern methods hardly admit of the dare-devil, face-to-face intermixing with ix savage breeds and races that was such a distinctive feature in the work of these heroes of an older age. ”

“ Suppose further, that the first exploring party has set forth on a voyage of discovery, and has reached a point high in our sky from which objects on the earth’s surface begin to be distinguishable. Of course the huge landmarks, cities, lakes, and rivers, have been in view for a long while, and now the explorers are on the lookout for signs of living things. They are watching, just as we would be, for moving objects. ”

“ The eighteenth century, ushering in our own, rectified received errors, and surveyed minutely alike continents and archipelagoes; in a word brought to perfection the work of its predecessors. The same task has occupied modern explorers, who pride themselves on not passing over in their surveys the smallest corner of the earth, or the tiniest islet. With a similar enthusiasm are imbued the intrepid navigators who penetrate the ice-bound solitudes of the two poles, and tear away the last fragments of the veil which has so long hidden from us the extremities of the globe. ”

“ From the geographical point of view—and it is to this point alone that these remarks apply—we must rank an explorer according to his success in widening our knowledge and enlarging our views regarding the aspects of nature. ”

“ Many of the explorers, or those who planned the expeditions, were often more anxious to find sensational results than to further science. Polar exploration is now mostly considered merely the ambitious struggle of expeditions to get a few miles farther north than all the former explorers. ”

“ Those early explorers and adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising, and, after their fashion, pious men. In their clumsy sailing vessels they dared to go where no chart or lighthouse showed the way, where the set of the currents, the location of sunken outlying rocks and shoals, were all unknown, facing fate and weather, undaunted however dark the signs, heaving the lead and thrashing the men to their duty and trusting to Providence. ”

“ The investigators into the early history of mankind are like explorers in search of the source of one of those mighty rivers which traverse whole continents: we have departed from the homes of modern civilization in ascending the stream, and arrived at a spot where traces of human existence are but few, and animal life has assumed strange and unknown forms ”

“ We shall have our geological explorers and discoverers in the lands and seas of past times, as we have had in the present,—our Columbuses, our Captain Cooks, our Livingstones in geology, as we have had in geography. There are undiscovered continents and rivers and inland seas in the past world to exercise the ingenuity, courage, and perseverance of men, after they shall have solved all the problems, sounded all the depths, and scaled all the heights of the present surface of the earth. ”

“ Much of the work of the early scientific explorers in the West reads like a veritable romance; and this governmental work has added enormously to our knowledge in all branches of science, from the natural history of mammals and birds, to the geological formation of mountains, and the contour of the coasts. ”

“ Why can't we go under the sea for anything we choose? There it lies. These explorers of yours who have found the poles have merely mapped out the earth. They appear to suppose that all the work is done. ”

“ Explorers, fired by curiosity and the lure of the mysterious unknown, and hunters, fur traders, and squatters, following their own sweet wills, blazed the trail, opening paths and sending back stories of the new regions they traversed. ”

“ Rae,—we whose names are undersigned, whether men of science and others who have taken a deep interest in Arctic discovery, or explorers who have been employed in the search for our lost countrymen, beg earnestly to impress upon your Lordship the desirableness of sending out an Expedition to satisfy the honor of our country, and clear up a mystery which has excited the sympathy of the civilized world. ”

“ When the first explorers came into the uncharted spaces of these warm seas, they found a culture totally beyond the understanding of most of them, and abhorrent to state and church, but which a few fine souls glimpsed as an astonishing revelation of the natural development of the human, and, by foil, of the decadence of civilization. ”

“ These were brought out as volumes of sailing directions (4to, 1766–8) , which have maintained, even to the present day, a singular reputation for exact accuracy, and give fair grounds for the belief that he might, under other circumstances, have proved himself as eminent as a surveyor as he actually did as an explorer. ”

“ He brings before us on his animated and picturesque pages a succession of mariners whose prowess and self-reliance made them dauntless over unknown seas, through fog-banks, shoals, icebergs, and rocky barriers of granite harbors; explorers who learned to thread their way through forests, rivers, lakes, and cataracts, for thousands of miles, stripped of all their wonted resources as civilized men, and cast upon their quick skill to become adepts in those of the woods ”

“ Even if an expedition through the wilderness were risked, the very presence of the explorers from obvious motives of curiosity, barter, or defence, would, as we have said, attract all the bands over many miles. ”

“ It is not the professional explorers, nor yet the missionaries (great as are their services to geography) , who have opened up to us a knowledge of the world's highways and byways sufficient to lead to general map illustration of its ancient continents, so much as the everlasting pushing out of trade investigations in order to obtain the mastery of the road to wealth. ”

“ In the first two centuries of the Christian era, the study of geography received a great stimulus from the advance of other branches of science, but travellers, or rather explorers of new countries were very few in number. ”

“ Or is there really in the instinct some subtle feeling of the temporary sojourner in a strange land, prepared for eventualities, ready, because unencumbered, to move on at a moment’s notice? Travellers, explorers, are often the tidiest of men, clearing up behind them, as they advance, having its place for every article of their kit, and scrupulous to maintain it. ”

“ As regards most countries which have been visited by travellers, and figure more or less correctly upon our maps, a great amount of further research is required before our knowledge of their geography can be called complete. Years will pass ere the erroneous and contradictory statements of our explorers concerning them have been set right. A prodigious amount of labour must be performed before their climate, their hydrography, their plants and animals, can be thoroughly known to us. ”

“ Polar explorers are my heroes, and in a lesser degree I honour those other explorers who have made known to us the world, and particularly those gallant men of long ago, who in their little frail ships faced every danger and hardship with such indomitable spirit. ”

“ Imagine for a moment all that is involved in thorough knowledge of the whole world, and you will marvel at the results achieved by the efforts of so many explorers and martyrs, you will grasp the importance of their discoveries and the intimate relations between geography and all the other sciences. ”

“ In countries like those we shall visit, the impressions of the first explorers are often more interesting and instructive than those of the latest tourist or naturalist, for such impressions have about them a freshness and an originality—often a quaintness and a simplicity—that are entirely absent from modern works of travel. ”

“ I may not have proved a great explorer, but we have done the greatest march ever made and come very near to great success. ”

“ They understood all about the wild man, and what the consensus among the seven explorers seemed to be concerning the strangers who occupied the island, and were conducting such an amazing series of experiments, even making use of an aeroplane to accomplish their ends. ”

“ The real secret is that explorers are far more interested in the enterprise and adventure than in the promised land which should be the reward of their labours. They delight in the wilderness, and often undervalue Canaan. ”

“ The unscientific explorers of a hundred years ago may have left discoveries to future workers as important as those which remained for so many years after the early explorations in the neighbouring great cave. ”

“ As that down-growing process advances we assure ourselves, more and more confidently, that all the really important, the vital part of such explorations belongs to us, at{3} least as much as to the explorers themselves. ”

“ This is almost all that remains of an expedition which started out with such fair prospects, but which came to grief at the foot of Mount Hopeless. [Pg 377]
VI THE NORTH POLAR REGIONS Sir John Franklin and the North-West Passage
We have now surveyed the earth's mainland, islands, and seas. We have seen how man by his endurance and thirst for knowledge has penetrated everywhere, how he has wandered over the hottest deserts and the coldest mountains. The nearer we come to our own times, the more eager have explorers become, and we no longer suffer blank patches to exist on our maps. ”

“ The theory then is that the explorers—who were {18} sun-worshippers, who offered human sacrifices, made stone-works, understood irrigation and were distinguished by other practices and beliefs—travelled widely in search for these "life-givers." ”

“ No life can subsist within its borders; the foot of the savage is not upon its wastes, and the whole region is still and silent as the grave. Such is the dark picture as drawn by the explorer himself. Happily a better acquaintance has led to a more favourable opinion; though the land of spinifex, it produces other vegetation of nutritive and even fattening properties. The Stony Desert proper consists of many patches, but probably none will be found to be very extensive. The stout hearts of the explorers quailed but for a moment. ”

“ The great continental journey to and fro, from ocean to ocean, across barren deserts, through dangerous waterways, over snow-clad mountains, among savage and unknown tribes, had been accomplished with a success unparalleled in the world of modern adventure and exploration. ”