The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1880-01-10


The polar ice, snow and darkness were
naturally supposed to be pretty near
the point where extremes meet. Turn
ing away from this awful country, the
Argonauts, with fayoring winds, sailed
into the ocean of the west, passing
Ierne (Hibernia) on their way to the
Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Glib
raltar). The strange darkness of the
far North was believed to be caused
somehow by the peculiar shadows of
great mountains. The darkness of the
Arctic night, lowering over the North,
led the voyagers of ancient times to be-
lieve that all the farthest parts of the
ocean we're shrouded in gloom; hence
the old notion that the Atlantic at the
west of the pillars of Hercules was far
away a sea of darkness. Even into the
latter part of the Middle Ages this idea
of the western Sea of Darkness pre-
vailed among geographers and naviga-
tiers. Herodotus, called the "Father
of History" hearing at least four hun
bred and forty-fve years before the
Christian era of the long nights at the
Pole, could not believe that the people
there could sleep for six months.
Pytheas, distinguished Greek navi-
gator, who lived at Marseilles, in
France, when it was the seat of flour
ishing Greek colony, about 800 B. c.,
was perhaps the earliest known navi-
gator of the North Seas whose voyage
is now generally accepted as mainly
genuine. Pytheas sailed to Al-fionn
(Albion, the White Land, from its chalk
cliffs,) and six days sail beyond the
farthest part thereof he reached Thule,
in the Northern Sea. There he found
fogs and wild coasts, and saw that
the light of day did not altogether
disappear for twenty-four hours. This
Thule was Iceland, at the most north
erly part of which the summer nights
are very light. The most northerly
point of the island is usually laid down
within the Arctic Circle. Some dis
lance beyond Thule Pytheas found him
self unable to proceed on account of
peculiar condition of the sea. 1t pre-
sented barrier that was unknown to
him; it was neither air, sea nor earth,
but seemed mixture of all three. The
substance had viscid appearance, and
his ship could not penetrate it. These
statements of Pytheas about the sea
threw discredit upon his voyage for
ages. "How palpably absurd" said
the critics, lis the story of a mixture
of earth, sea and air that stops ships in
the midst of the ocean," Pytheas was
puzzled, no doubt, for he had never
seen ice before, and had no name for it
or knowledge of its nature. But it APP
pears incredible that distinguished men
who have written learned treatises up
on geography and voyages have been
so blinded by prejudice as not to recol-
lect that ice existed in the Arctic Seas
in the days of Pytheas as in the nine
teenth century. AS specimens of the
theories of learned men regarding the
marvellous distractions met by Pytheas
in the sea beyond Iceland the following
are quoted from works published in
England and America in 1888:
1.-The calmness and sluggish heavi-
ness of the Northern seas, which the
ships PROV could hardly cleave, were
remarked by Pytheas. Per-
haps the strength and completely of
our tides, which oppose serious difficult
ties to navigation along an indented
coast, may have lent some countenance
to prejudices founded in fable"
The supposition that the tides were
the obstruction met by Pytheas in his
navigation beyond Thule seems singu-
larly absurd when it is remembered that
Pytheas was the first man known who
understood the tides so well as to
ascribe their cause to the influence of
the moon. His theory of tides is essen
TALLY that generally accepted at the
present day. ...
Another learned author supposed fog
was the translucent, solid substance
stopping the ship of Pytheas. He
wrote: ....
"The thick and gloomy mists with
which the Northern Sea is often loaded
might make peculiar impression on
one who had ventured into this unknown
ocean so far beyond the limit of former
navigation. They might make him
prone to believe that he had arrived at
the farthest boundaries of nature"
Could greater nonsense be uttered?
How men, who had so frequently read
about the ice in the Northern Ocean,
should forget, as they did, that in an
cient times it sometimes rendered navi-
cation difficult and dangerous as it now
does, is simply astonishing. Geogra-
pliers have disagreed as to the location
of Thule. Disregarding the positive
statement by Pytheas that he sailed six
days Onto the depth of the ocean, as
some express it) some commentators
have maintained that Thule was Jut-
land, where region is called Thy-land.
Others have believed that part of Nor
way, called Thele-M Mark or Tile-M Mark,
was the Thule of Pytheas. Men have
seemed ready to believe anything rather
than the simple fact that the great nav
igator saw Iceland. His description so
clearly and unequivocally points to
Iceland that argument seems unneces-
sary. No one appears to question the
fact that Gardner, Flokko, Nadodd and
others successfully visited Iceland in
later ages, before its settlement by the
Norsemen. But Pytheas could not
reach Iceland because he was not a
Northman.
Aristotle (born 1884 B. CO. possessed
a large fund of geographical knowl-
edge. He knew of the existence of the
Riphean Mountains at the North, and
had information of Ierne and Albion