New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1884-10-08
Three Hundred Years Of Arctic Ex.
plOratiOn.

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centuries since the first Arctic expedi-
ton reached the region of polar ice and
spent dreary winter, locked in by the
icebergs and shut up in their huts by
wolves, snow storms and white bears.
Two lives were sacrificed in this expedi-
ton, which reached the latitude of
eighty degrees and eleven minutes.
Three hundred years have passed and
the latest, the Greedy expedition, touched
eighty-three degrees twenty-four min
ntes. the highest latitude reached since
the Dutch navigators spent ten months
in the ice off the island of Nova Zembla.
In all those three centuries only three
degrees OF the journey to the pole have
been OvercOme-a distance something
less than the distance between New York
and Boston, little more than between
New York and Albany.
This fact alone is a significant COM
ment upon the value of these expedi-
tions which have cost princes revenue
and as many lives as have been lost in
some noted battles.
The Dutch were the great navigAtors
of the 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 inclosed polar continent of
perpetual summer and unbroken day
light, whose inhabitants had attained
perfection in virtue and intelligence.
Others thought it peopled with monsters
having horses hoofs, dogs heads and
ears so long that they coiled them
around their bodies in lieu of clothing.
Other tribes were hcadless with eyes in
their breasts, living in incessant fogs and
tempests during the summer, but dying
every winter and, like plants, revived to
life by the advent Of brief spring. It
was believed that the voyagers would
have to encounter mountains of ice and
volcanoes of fire. together with monsters
on land aud sea more ferocious than the
eye of man ever saw.
But in spite of these terrors, on the
5th of June, 1894, the first expedition
destined to navigate these frozen seas
set out from Amsterdam. Their ships
and appliances were of the rudest de-
scription. In place of the stanch mod
ern steamboats, built for the purpose
they sailed in small. unwieldy vessels
built like tower at stern and stem,
scooped in the middle and scarcely able
to ploW their way through the water, to
say nothing of the ice. Instead of the
delicate and ingenious scientific instru-
ments constituting an exploring outfit
Of the present day they had a clumsy
astronomical ring, three feet in circum-
ference, on which they depended for
ascertaining the latitude They had no
food, no rifles, no compact ammunition,
no heavy clothing of fur, no rubber gar
ments, no logarithms, log or nautical
almanacs, no tea, coffee, or the hum
dreds of Injuries, 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 prob
lem of northeast passage to China was
considered solved, and the next wear o
second ship was sent with cargo of
broadcloth, linens and tapestries for the
Chinese market which the explorers
were expected to reach. Again the ice
and the bears frightened them back.
But an offer of twenty-five thousand
forms to the discoverer of northeast
passage to the East led to ut bird expe-
dition, the first that outlived polar
winter amidst perils and sufferings,
whose story reads as much like the mar
ratives of Kane and De Long, of Hayes
and Greedy, as the stories Of shipwreck
and rescue in the days of Robinson
Cruso read like those of the days Of
EnOch Arden.
Notwithstanding all the discoveries
and appliances Of the year 1884, tho
Greedy and De Long parties suffered
quite as 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 Omitted Netherlands.
Detroit Free Press