The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1875-06-19
THE NORTH POLE.

|
| THE NORTH POLE.
How the Mystery of the Open Sea has
| Fascinated King and Sailors.
Apropos of the splendid expedition
England has almost got ready for an
other essay in those frozen waters
where lie buried so many good ships,
and the bones of SO many dauntless
mariners, it maybe neither improbable
nor uninstructfe to go back to the
earliest days of the old worlds hunt
for the mysterious ocean, and trace step
by step every effart made by skill and
science to solve tie problem when skill
| and science were tcarcely more than
blind belief in fats, a desperate harai-
hood, and superAtitious longing for
the invisible that no peril would de-
stroy, and no danger or privation make
rational or discreet.
What is the mystery of the north
pole? Wherein lies the secret of that
terrible fascination it has had for the
bravest, the gentlest, and the tendeiest
of earth And in using these terms
reverently one should also use he
Verse
| 'Ahl soldier to your honored rest /
| Your truth and valor bearing;
The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring" II
In the sands of the open sea, it is not
claimed that there is any gold. Long
| ago the eastern world found surer and
safer passage-way to the western.
Navigation has no interest there. As
| tronomy there to be made satisfactory
would first have to get acclimated, and
to get acclimated is eventually to get
1 ho hoe
business there, but electricity in places
where all science and encouragement
are, is SO little known about the
heart that even the most quixotic of
| advocates would also have to be insane
to seek its secrets in the extremities.
Geography has no obscure point that
the north pole can make plain. Dis
covery is arbitrary and belongs en-
t1rely to the unknown, and it is amid
those occult forces and PHILOSOPHERS of
the unknown that the world must seek
for the true solution of whatever of in
fiuence the Unsuitable yearning to find
the north pole and the open sea about
it, have exercised upon every civilized
nation of modern. times.
1t is easy to understand the person
mel of the undertakings. The sea
makes adventures. Wherever there is
nature there are also heroes. 1mmen-
sity and reverence are synonymous ter
rors, and to be reverent is to be daunt-
less. "He prayeth best who loveth
sea-" is another. "God made the sea
and the devil made the land" is an
other. "Never abuse the sea for God
loves the sea, is another I; but what do
admiralty boards and navy departments
know about all this ? These be the
things who furnish the money for the
cruisers made year after year into the
northern ocean, and these be the cold,
hard, dry, logical and mathematical
things who are supposed to have about
them neither poetry nor beautiful
prose, and who want to know all the
why's and wherefores of a voyage be-
fore a yard is manned or an ensign run
up at the fore.
Would readers also like to know
something about what heroes and navi-
gators have tried to do in the days past,
to reach the unknown and make plain
its mysteries, and how, generation after
generation, true men have sailed, and
died, and been forgotten? It has been
three centuries since a celebrated old
English navigator declared that "tbe only
great thing left to be done in this world
of ours was the discovery of the north
! western passage to India"
1t has not yet been discovered in this
year of our Lord, 1875. Although Eng
land was the first nation to make the
attempt to discover the northwest pas
sage, she is also the last up to this
time that is still hanging on to the
perilous and uncertain trail.
The first voyage made in the direc-
ton of the North Pole of which there is
any record, was made in the reign of
the English king, Alfred. The Vene-
tians were then the first maritime
people in Europe. They traded with
India, but it was by land. They had
absolute possession of the Mediterranean
ser. 1t was sea of fire to any English
or French vessel If it ventured in it
most abject slavery. King Alfred
wanted to get to the east and to avoid
the pirates at one and the same time,
and SO he began to hunt for northeast
passage. He gave a commission to
Simon Ohio to take command of "the
good ship Adelgitha," and to sail into
unknown seas, to discover unknown
lands, and to take possession of them
'sfor the gloyre of God, the honor of
his kinge, and the publique goode of
his countrie."
Simon Ohio sailed, fell in with a
Danish pirate, and got from him the
information that in about latitude fifty
five degrees north, he would find a sea
that washed the northern shores of
England and Ia. But this sea was
the Baltic. He ran his ship on rock
in the midst of it, now known as Fall
great exertion. Nothing, however,
| of
come of it.
After Ohio came the sea-rovers of the
north. They first discovered Iceland
and named it Snowland, and in the
ninth century it was colonized by them.
From Iceland a colony poured into
Greenland, occupied it. had a civiliza-
ton there that is now extinct, and
finally passed away. Before it did,
however, it discovered through its bold
sea-rovers, both Newfoundland and
Nova Scotia.
In the Twelfth century, citizen of
Marseilles, France, fitted up vessel
on his own account and started out to
find the northwest passage. What he
found was never known. In his own
words he says that he returned when
he came to "a barrier of a peculiar
nature, being neither earth. air or sky,
| DuI something COinposeu Vi III LlIoe,
through which we could not penetrate. "
II was the first time in all his life that
he had ever seen ice, and he did not
know how to describe it.
Then folio we'd the celebrated voyage
of the Zeno brothers. They had heard
tell of delightful open sea about the
pole, and they went to find it. They
were Venetians. Lords naturally OF
the ocean, why should not the ocean be
loyal and Ieal to them? Caught in a
storm one day and cast away on an
unknown shore, it was their fortune to
fall upon Greenland. One died there,
and the other, Nicolo, got back to his
native country after many years, G
broker, bent, decrepid old man.