The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-06-18
THE NORTH POLE.

| other essay in those frozen waters
where lie buried go many good ships,
and The bones of so many dauntles5
mariners, it may be neither Improbable
nor uniastraotiVe to go back to the
| earliest days Of the old worlds hunt
| for the mysterious ocean, and trace step
by step every effort made by skill and
science to solve the problem when skill
and science were scarcely more than a
blind belief in fate, desperate hardi-
| hood, and q superstitious 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 tenderest
of earth And in using these terms
reverently one should also use the
| verse:
"Ah! soldier to your honored rest,
| Your truth and valor bearing;
The bravest are the tenderest,
| The loving are the daring"
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
| banishment. Electricity has much
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-
! tirelv 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
fuehce the Unsuitable yearning to find
the north pole and the open sea about
it, have exercised upon every civilized
| nation of modern times.
It is easy to understand the person
rel of the undertakings. The sea
makes adventurers. Wherever there is
nature there are also heroes. Immen-
sity and reverence are Synonymous ter
rors, and to be reverent is to be daunt-
less. "He prayeth best who Ioveth
best, is a sea term. "God and the
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 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 aud 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 beroes 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 1t has been
three centuries since a celebrated old
English navigator declared that the 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 vet 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 vo ysge 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 |
was burnt and its crew sold into the |
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 a northeast |
passage. He gave a commission to |
Simon OthO to take command of "the |
good ship Adelgitha," and to sail into
unknown seas, to discover unknown |
lands, and to take possession of them
''for the gloyre of God, the honor of |
his kinge, and the publique goode of |
his countrie."
Simon Otho sailed, fell in with
Danish pirate, and got from him the |
information that in about latitude fifty |
five degrees north, he would find a sea i
that washed the northern shores of |
England and Asia. But this sea was |
the Baltic. He ran his ship on a rock |
in the midst of it, now known as Fal- |
s-erborn reef, and got off only after |
great exertlon. Nothing, however, |
came of the voyage, as nothing could |
come of it.
After Otho 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, a citizen of
Marseilles, France, fitted up a 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,
but something composed of all three,
through which we could not penetrate.
1t was the first time In all his life that
he had ever seen ice, and he did not
know how to describe it.
Then followed the celebrated voyage
of the Zeno brothers They had heard
tell of a 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 leal to them Caught in q
storm one day and cast away on an
unknown shore, it was their fortune to
fall upon Greenland. One died there,
aud the other, Nicolo, got back to his
native country after many years, a
broken, bent, decrepid old man.