Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-07-22
Scientific Research.

EDS. REcoRD-UNIoN In history we will
always find science belittled and ridiculed,
and any new problem solved has to fight
superstition and ignorance. The greater its
benefits to the human race the more oppo-
sition it meets. Just now as the Greedy sci
entifc party who were sent to Lady Frank
lin bay in 1881, having been cruelty de-
ceived and neglected by the Government
through acknowledgement in furnishing sup
plies at the proper time and place, have
been found in a starving condition and
nearly all dead 1t is very natural for hui
name persons to attribute their loss to the
climate of those regions. But facts do not
sustain the argument, and an analysis will
show that it was wicked want of precau-
ton that any life was lost. DR.. Hays, who
made two voyages in these seas, says the
cold weather is no obstacle to health. Hall
also uniteS his testimony with others TO the
same effect. The seas TEEN with animal
life ; on land animals-bears, wolves, rein
deer, musk oxen and foxes-are abundant.
The air contains flocks of birds; game is
plenty. But these explorers were expect
ing to find provisions at the place where
they made a halt and did not, of course, lay
in supplies as they would have done. 1t
would have been easy enough to have made
a station there with provisions. This is no
unknown country it has all been surveyed
and mapped years ago; whalers go there
every summer. If more attention had been
paid to science and less to the next election
by those the people have placed in power
whose humanity should have called their
attention to duty, all would have come
home alive and well. The history of voy-
ages in any other part of our globe
is as full of disaster, starvation and
death as are the accounts of Arctic explora-
tons. In the tropics, where was most of the
voyage of r. Magellan in the first circum-
navigation of the world in 15l9-1522, out
of feet of five ships and 234 men, only
one ship and fifteen men returned to
Europe. Pigafetta, in his account of the
voyage, said In the future no sailor
will be bold enough to brave the dangers
and fatigue of another circumnavi-
CATION of the world" 1t was at that
time considered insane and not another
voyage was made for fifty-six years, when
Sir Francis Drake made his celebrated voy-
age. Now it is common everyday occur
renee. The voyage to England costs hun
dreds of lives; to travel anywhere is
dangerous. To assert that Arctic voyages
have not paid, is to display want of
knowledge of results. Lives have been
lost, as on other expeditions, but the
knowledge obtained of currents and the
natural phenomena has been some COM
pensation for it all, and saved valuable
time and lives on other voyages.
To obtain complete knowledge of this
globe on which we live is the part of wis
dom. To call it insane" is to call in
question the results of the labors of Cabot,
Cartier, Frobisher Gomez, Rut, Hudson,
Behriag, Ross, Kane Hall, Hayes, and
many others, whose lives were spent to
remove superstition in regard to these I'M
known regions. A few valuable lives lost
in scientific Investigations is not so bad as
thousands destroyed in the foolish wars.
s. H. GERRISH.