The Butler weekly times., 1884-09-17

II is but eight years less than three
centuries since the first Arctic expe-
dition reached the region of polar ice
and spent a dreary winter locked in
bv the icebergs and shut up in their
huts by the wolves. snow storms and
white bears. Two lives were sacrificed
in this expedition. which reached lat
itude of so degrees and IL minutes.
Three hundred years have passed
and the latest the Greely expedition.
touched 8S degrees and "a minutes, the
highest latitude reached since the
Dutch navigators spent ten months in
the ice off the island of Nova Zembla.
In ali those three centuries only three
degrees of the journey to the pole have
been overcome-a distance something
less than the distance from New York
to Boston, little more than between
New York and Albany.
This fact alone is q significant COM
ment upon the value of these expedi-
tions which have cost a princes rev.
enue and rs many lives as have been
lost in some noted battles.
The Dutch were the great navigators
of tho sixteenth century. and soon after
achieving their nations independence.
began TO speculate upon . passage to
China and India BY way of the North
Pole. Their ideas Of that region were
fanciful indeed. Some believed that
those seas iHclosed . polar continent of
perpetual summer and unbroken day
light, whose inhabitants had attained
perfection In virtue and intelligence.
Others thought it peopled with men
sters having horses hoofs, dogs heads
and ears 50 long that they coiled them
81, T. - -
ing. Other tribes were headless with
eyes in their breasts, living in inces-
SAINT fogs and tempests during the sum-
mer. but dying every winter. and. like
plants, revived to life by the advent of
q brief spring. 1t was believed that
the voyagers would have to encounter
mountains of ice and volcanoes of fire,
together with monsters on land and
sea moro ferocious than the eye of man
ever saw.
But in spite OF these terrorS, on the
5th of June, 1549. the first expedition
destined to navigate these frozen seas
set out from Amsterdam. Their ships
and appliances were of the rudest des-
cription. In place of the stanch mod
ern steamboats, built for the purpose,
they sailed in small, unwieldy vessels,
scooped in the middle and scarcely
able to plow their way through the
water, to say nothing of the ice. In
stead of the delicate and ingenious
scientific Instruments constituting an
exploring outfit of the present day,
they had a clumsy astronomical ring
three feet i'll circumference on which
they depended for ascertaining the lat
itude. They mad no food, no rifles, no
compact ammunition, no heavy clothing
of fur, no rubber garments, no loga-
rithms. log or nautical almanacs. no
tea, coffee. or the hundreds of luxuries,
stimulants, medicines, and other stores
which now abound in such profusion.
The first expedition was turned back
by the ice and polar bears, but the
problem of northeast passage to China
was considered solved. and the next
year a second ship was sent with a car
go of broadcloth, linens and tapestries
for the Chinese market which the ex-
plorers were expected to reach. Again
ice and bears frightened them back.
But an offer of 25. 900 forms to the
discoverer of o northeast passage to
the east led to n third expedition, the
first that outliYed polar winter
amidst perils and sufferings. whose
story reads as much like the narratives
of Kane. and DeLong, of Hayes and
Greedy, as the stories of shipwreck and
rescue in the days of Robinson Crusoe
read like those of the days of Enoch
Arden.
Notwithstanding all the discoveries
and appliances of the year 1884. the
Greedy and DeLong parties suffered
quite rs much as the Dutch explorers
of 1896; which any one may see who
cares to read the account in the third
volume of Motley's United Neither
lands"