Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1886-03-20

Other adventures in the North Polar
regions have suffered as greatly, have
encountered as great dangers, and have
left as romantic legends as those named
in this table, who have simply pierced
farthest into the frozen depths within
the Arctic periphery. The story of Sir
John Franklin will thrill the heart and
excite emotions Of admiration, OF terror,
and of pity, until the fountain Of hG-
man tears shall cease to flow. Other
explorers have left almost as pathetic
and tragic records behind them. The
mountains and valleys Of ice that sur
round the pole have hidden within their
shadowy recesses dramatic scenes such
as were never initiated on the stage
nor the imagination ever saw in the
most vivid light of dreams and illusions.
But the names cited are those Of the
men who have made the greatest pro-
gIess toward the accomplishment Of
polar discovery.
The distance from the farthest point
OF polar discovery to the pole itself is
6 degrees and 4G/, or, in round num-
hers, 400 miles. 1t is thirty miles less
than from Chicago to Omaha by the
lines of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St.
Paul railway, over which the traveller
rides in twenty hours. But this polar
radius, though only AGO miles in extent,
is covered by ice-gorges and precipices
Of incredible difficulty; and frost is so
severe that no instrument of human in
vention can measure its intensity, and
it blisters the skin like extreme heat.
Driving clouds Of snow-pellets that
prick like needles fill the air pitiless
cyclones, against which progress can
be made only by almost superhuman
exertion, blow in all directions across
the glacial waste and sweep the impen-
etrable horizon.
frozen continent
Lies dark and Wild, beat with perpetual
q whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm
land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin
seems
OF ancient pile.
This is something different from
riding the same distance in apalace car,
with its sy baritic comforts, over track
Of steel rails, at the rate of thirty miles
an hour. The greatest progress that
has ever been made across these wilder
nesses of storm, Of fury, and desolation,
was at the rate Of five or six miles in a
day, the explorers often necessarily rest
ing as many days as they had before
travelled miles in a single day, debarred
by the obstacles that they encountered.
After the members Of an Arctic expe-
dition shall have proceeded as far as
ships in the best and mildest summers
will carry them through open or half
open seas, this desert Of up-piled ice
lies outstretched before them to inter-
dict with supreme mandate their fur
Their progress.
1t will be seen by the above table that
Lieutenant Lockwood in 1884 reached
a point but three degrees, or 10 miles,
nearer the pole than Captain Henry
Hudson reached in 1907, 279 years
ago. lie penetrated but ~ miles
farther north than Captain Parry
reached in 1927, less than 90 years
ago. These two facts seem to show
that progress in Arctic explo-
ration as a rule covers an average
distance of but about mile
a year. OF course, difficulties
Of a further advance toward the
pole increase with each mile of
distance that has been traversed.
science adds yearly new appliances to
the equipments of polar travel and re-
search, but these facilities do not in
crease faster than the growth Of the
enormous obstacles that are to be over
come. With AGO miles still to be
crossed it is easy to see that unless new
plans Of discovery shall be invented,
centuries will yet elapse before the final
object ofpolar explorations can possibly
he accnmnlicbed