The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1884-09-19
Arctic Exploration.

It Is but eight years less than three
centuries since the first Arctic expo
dition reached the region of polar ice
and spent q dreary winter locked In
by 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 80 degrees and II minutes.
Three hundred years have passed
and the latest, the Greedy expedition,
touched 50 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 all 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, q little more than between
New York and Albany.
This fact alone IL significant COM
ment upon the value of these expedi-
tons which have cost princes rev.
enue 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 1t peopled with mon
sters having horses hoofs, dogs heads
and ears SO long that they coiled them
around their bodies in lieu of cloth
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
. brief spring. It 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
9th 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,
built like q 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. In
stead Of the delicate and ingenious
scientific instruments constituting an
exploring outfit of the present day,
they had clumsy astronomical ring
three feet in circumference on which
they depended for ascertaining the lat
itude. They had 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
<ey 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 car
90 of broadcloth, linens and tapestries
for the Chinese market which the ex-
plorers were exposed tS.reach. Again
ice and bears frightened them back.
But an offer of 900 forms to the
discoverer of o northeast passage to
the east led to third expedition, the
first that outlived a polar winter
amidst perils and sufferings, whose
story reads as much like the narratives
of Kane, and belong, 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 belong parties suffered
quite as much rs 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