St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-07-19
THE GREELY EXPEDITION.

The original Greedy expeditionary force
consisted of twenty-five men. OF this num-
Der eighteen persisted and seven have been
rescued. The account of the rescue is the
more painfully thrilling from the fact that
the survivors were at the point Of death when
discovered, and Ia twenty-four hours more
would have joined the majority-the great
majority of the dead, and the small majority
of their own party. The outcome of the effort
elements of a romance; one of those ro-
mances in which the imperiled hero seems
firmly involved in the entanglements of fate,
and is relieved at the instant when all hope
has been abandoned.
One can fancy something of the
prodigious horror of the scene of which
the gallant seven were party a few hours
prior to the arrival of the Schley expedition
About them lay the dead, and two of their
party were dying. They were environed by
the awful solitude of the frozen ocean. Pro-
visions were long since exhausted. and the
agony of living was feebly prolonged by an
ollapodrida of strips of seal skin and the
and there remained no one with strength to
gather fresh supply. All about them was
the limitless fields of ice, whose foes en-
countered each other like great battering
rams and rent the air with the tremendous
clamors of their impact A gale
was raging which stimulated the COM
bat of the ice squadrons, and which
roared about the tent of the starving survivors,
and to their dulled ears and enfeebled souls,
must have seemed like the final crash of a
shattered world. Two men were fast sink
ing in death, and the commander with a
prayer book in his weak, trembling fingers,
essayed to read the prayers for the dying. At
that moment the furious storm dashed
their tent to the ground, burying the living
and the dead in an inextrieable mass. 1t
was TO those who yet remained some fain
comprehension of the final stroke which was
to end their existence.
1t was at just this awful moment when
each of the living felt as if outstretched hand
could reach the thither shore of eternity that
over the gale came the faint roar of a steam
whistle. 1t was to them what the sound of
the pipes was to the diving garrison Of Luck
now. One instant the little party could
touch the confines of the other existence and
the next, they were recalled to this life.
What a change! What revulsion! One
moment darkness, rayless despair; in the
flash of second life came back, and with it
hope, sunshine, the supreme satisfaction of
living, the remembrance of home, the hope
of again meeting with wife, parent, children.
The transition was that of the man around
whose neck is the moose, over whose despair
ing eyes the black cap has been drawn, who
feels in his soul all the horror and despair
of death. and who suddenly finds the cap
withdrawn, the hateful moose removed and
in his ear the announcement OF pardon.
Possibly the JOY Of the reaction compen-
sated for the horror which preceded it. One
cannot appreciate the supreme satisfaction
of living till one has received the boon OF
life at the very instant of being enshrouded
in the chill gloom Of death.
And now, while the world rejoices over the
saving of this heroic remnant, what can be
said of the eighteen who gave mp their lives
in this frigid north, this chill cemetery of the
uationsl But little will be thought of them
at this moment when everybody reioices oTer
the rescue Of the few living; and, perhaps,
but thought will be extended to the families
of those whose lives were lost in the hi deous
gloom of the Northern ocesn. 1t is
really to them that the nation should turn al
this time, for in their fate is to be found q
lesson for the future. They teach that this
Artic exploration, as has so long been con-
Quoted, is a wicked, wanton waste OF life fol
which there is no equivalent For nearly a
thousand years have explorations been in
progress in the frozen polar ocean, and il
cannot be truthfuIly said that, measured in
coin, the world has ever received benefit tc
the value of one dollar from the efforts Al
that has thus far been discovered has added
scarcely one item to the scientific knowledge
| of the world.
Something has beer added to the topo-
graphical information Of civilization, and
much TO photography, but tx
what goodl New commercial lines
have been established: nothing
which has been discovered has added to tht
comfort of mankind; and even the scicnc'
OF meteorology, in whose interest many o
the sc discoveries have been pushed, has no
been advanced BY anything which has issued
from this sinister north It has been I
bootless search and the sooner the attempts