The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1886-09-03
HuNT,No rne POLE.
A Locating Business Which Has BEN Kept
Red Hot BY Some OF the BrightAt
Minds Of All Ages.

HOWJJN0 b0e tO66s
A Locating Business which Has Hem Kep
Red Hot BY Some OF the BrlghteAt
Minds Of All Ages.
The excitement consequent upon the
anticipated departure Of Mr.. Glider fol
the North Pole has recently awakened
in the bosom of American people a new
interest in what 1 may term the great
terra incognita, if l may be pardoncd
for using a phrase from my own mother
tongue.
Let us for moment look back across
the bleak waste of years and see what
wonderful progress has been made in
the discovery of the pole. We may
then ask ourselves, who will be first to
tack his location notice on the gnawed
and seasoned-cracked surface of the
pole itself, and what will he do with il
after he has SD filed upon it?
Iceland, l presume, was discov-
cred about $50 A. D., or 1,026 years
ago, but the stampede to Iceland
has always been under control. and you
can get corner lots in the most desirable
cities of Iceland and wear a long. rick.
city name with links in it like a rose
wood sausage to-day, at low price.
Naddodr, Norwegian viking, discov-
cred Iceland A. d. $50, but he did not
live to meet Lieutenant G-ee1y or any
of our most celebrated northern tour
lists. Why NaddOdr yearned to go
north and discover colder country
than his own. why he should seek to wet
his feet and get icicles down his back
in order to bring to light more snow
banks and chilblains. can not at this
time understand. Why should a robust
and prosperous viking roam about in
the cold trying to nose out more frost
bitten Esquimaax, when he could re-
main at home and vike?
But leave this to the thinking mind.
Let the thinking mind grapple with it.
1t has no charms for me. Moreover, l
haven't that kind of a mind.
Octher, another Norwegian gentle
man. sailed around North cape and
crossed the Arctic circle in 800 A. D.,
but he crossed it in the night, and didn' t
notice it at the time.
Two or three years later, Erik, the
Red, took large saow-shovel and dis
covered the east coast of Greenland.
Erik. the Red, was Northman. and he
fiOurished along about the ninth cen
fury. and before the war. He sailed
around that country for several years.
drinking bay rum and bears oil and
having good time. He wore fur UNI
derclothes all the time, winter and sum-
mer, and evaded the poll tax for long
time. Erik also established settlement
on the southeast coast of Greenland in
about latitude 60 degrees north. These
people remained here for some time,
subsisting on shrimp salad, sea-mOss
farina and at's-foot oil. But finally
they became SO bored with the quiet
country life and the backward springs
that they removed from there to a land
that is fairer than day, to use the words
of another. They removed during the
holidays, leaving their axle grease and
all they held dear, including their re-
mains.
From that on down to 1880 we hear
or read varying and disconnected ac-
counts of people who have been up that
way, acquired large red chilblain.
made an observation, and died. Rep
resentatives from almost every quarter
of the globe have been to the far North,
eaten their little bunch of jerked Polar
bear, and then the Polar bear has eaten
his little bunch of jerked explorer, and
so the good work went on. The Polar
bear. with his wonderful retentive
faculties, has succeeded in retaining his
great secret regarding the pole. together
with the man who came out there to
find out about it. So up to 1880 large
number of nameless explorers went to
this celebrated watering place, shot q
few pemmican, ate jerked whale,
shuddcred few times, and died. 1t
has been the history of Arctic explora-
ton from the earliest ages. Men have
taken their lives and a few doughnuts
in their hands, wandered away into the
uncertain light of the frozen North.
made a few observatiOns-to each
other regarding the backward spring
and then cached their skeletons forever.
In 1880 two Italians named Lem took
a. Dad of sun-kisscd bananas and made
a voyage to the extreme north, but the
historian says that the accounts are so
conflicting. and as the stories told by
the brothers did not agree and neither
ever told it the same on two separate
occasions, the history Of their voyage is
not used very much.
Years rolled on. Boys continued to
go to school and see in their biographies
enticing pictures of men in expensive
fur clothing. running sharp iron spears
and long. dangerous tab-knives into
ferociOus white bears and snorting
around on large cakes of cold ice and
having a good time. These inspired
the growing youth to rise up and do
likewise. So every nation meath the
sun has contributed its assortments of
choice. white skeletons and secondhand
clothes to the remorseless nav of the
hungry and ravenous north.
And still the great pole continued to
squeak on through days that were six
months long and nights that maze break
fast seem almost useless.
In 1477 Columbus went up that way,
but did not succeed in starving to,leath.
He got bird's-eyc view of a large de-
post of dark-blue ice, got hungry and
came home.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the northern nations of Europe,
and especially the Dutch, kept the dis
covery business red-hOt, but they did
not get any fragments of the true pole.
The maratime nations of Europe, to
gethcr with other foreign powers, dy-
nasties and human beings, for some
time had spells of visiting polar seas
and neglecting to come back. 1t was
tho o,,Stoua than as II l. no,u 70 rro