The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1878-08-31
The New Polar Project.

Some talk is again heard of sending Stanley to
hunt up the North Pole and unquestionably if he
is DESTROYS of the trip, and if Mr.. Bennett, of the
Herald, and others are willing TO defray expenses,
tie public will not murmur. 1t must strike the
average student of Polar expeditions, nevertheless,
as a useless waste of valuable talent and means.
The Polar Seas have, in a strictly exploring sense,
been done brown already. Expedition after expe-
dition has gone to that region, and some of the
adventurous spirits have never returned. Scarcely
any result of pratical benefit to the race has o-
Cured from these enterprises. Industry has not
been notably enriched at least by the later voy-
ages. OF the existence of the North Pole, there is,
of course, no more doubt than there is of the
r~otundity Of the earth, and from the attempts
hitherto made a guess approaching to q certainty
can be offered of the conditions by which it is
surrounded. AS the point is supposed by the
most competent judges, from data at hand, to be
inaccessible, it is not clear that any approach to
knowledge of these conditions can even be made,
saving, as at present, by inference and speculation.
1t has scarcely entered the mind of the most imagi-
native that even if the North Pole were by any
possibility TO be reached. the feat could prove of
pratical use to society. For a long while past the
attempts to get there have been regarded by the
multitude in the light of an endeavor to crafty
curiosity or to accomplish a difficult end for the
sake of the triumph rather than as an intrinsically
important undertaking
This view will be admitted even by the explorers
themselves. DIR. Hayes, who is one of the most
GLuiuChNS ohA IA ONNh dnIOhS II suCCSSSIul
of the lot, and who is thoroughly competent to
judge, while losing none of his spirit of adventure
and being eager still 10 undertake another expedi-
ton, is foremost in expressing a conviction that no
material benefit will accrue from further voyages.
In so far as the surmounting of the apparently
insurmountable %gratifes, the Polar project may be
countenanced, but when it is suggested to send
upon so perIlous an excursion a man like Stanley,
whose wonderful qualities, already DEMONSTRATED,
may be of the greatest benefit to his age if judi
ciously employed, one cannot help thinking that he,
might be far better engaged. SANKEY'S own incli-
nations are said to lead him back to Africa. The
public will believe that Africa is his proper field.
That vast continent, often attempted, but until
his time so imperfectly known, may, and doubtless
does. contain resources which, under the guidance
and operative force of civilization, would be of vast
benefit to this and succeeding ages, If curiosity
merely is to be gratitied, that attending Polar ex-
petitions is barren compared with what Livingstone,
and more especially Stanley, has evoked respecting
the wonders of Africa. His work on that continent,
so brilliantly conducted hitherto, has however, only
been begun. He has but traced out paths which
he himself must familiarize to those of this time,
if they are to lead to any considerable increase of
or extension of civilization-its methods
and its profits. 1t would require another Stanley
to take up SANKEY'S work in Africa, where be has
left off, and pursue it to pratical advantages. With
the appreciation and assistance which have been so
freely rendered him by Europe and America, he
light to the b~enighted land from which he lately
In feeling thus, and wishing for a continuance
of an interesting work so spiritedly begun and
pursued, the public cannot, of course,
still fail to recognize the liberality of Bennett and
his associates in using their means for the enlight-
eminent of their ~times.-PtHsburg Dispatch.