Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1886-12-31
HUNTING THE POLE.
A Locating Business which Has Been Kept
Red Hot by Some of the Brightest
Minds of All Ages.

Minds of All Ages.
The excitement consequent upon the
anticipated departure of Mr.. Glider for
the North Pole has recently awakened
in the bosom of American people new
interest in what l may term the great
terra incognita, if may be pardoned
for using phrase from my own mother
tongue.
Let us for mon ent 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 ct the
pole itself, and what will he do with it
after he has so filed upon it9
Iceland, | 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
ties of Iceland and wear long, rick
city name with links in it like a rose
wood sausage to-day, at low price.
Maddox, Norwegian viking, discov-
cred Iceland A. d. $50. but he did not
We to meet Lieutenant Greedy or any
of our most celebrated northern tour
lists. Why Maddox yearned to go
north and discover colder country
than his own, why he should seek to wet
his feet and get ic.cles down his back
in order TO bring to light more snow
banks and chilblains. can not at this
tine understand. Why should robust
and prosperous viking roam about in
the cold trying to nose out more frost
bitten Esquima,.x, when he could TO-
main at home and vikep
But leave this to the thinking mind.
Let the thinking mind grapple with it.
1t has no charms for me. Moreover
haven't that kind of mind
Octher, another Norwegian gentle
man, sailed around North cal and
crossed the Arctic c rcle in 800 A. D.,
but he crossed it in the night, and d din t
notice it at the time.
Two or three years later, Erik. the
Red, took large snow-shovel and dis
covered the east coast of Greenland.
Erik. the Red, was a Northman. and he
tlour,shed 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
derclothcs all the time, winter and sum-
tine. Erik also established a settlement
on the southeast coast of Greenland ir
about latitude 60 degrees north. Th5se
people remained here for some time,
subsisting on shrimp salad, sea-mo-s
farna and neat s-foot OK. But finally
they became so bored with the quiet
1,fa Nd tbn
that they removed from there to land
that is farer 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
resentatiycs from almost every quarter
of the globe have been to the far North,
eaten their little hunch OF jerked Polar
bear. and then the Polar bear has eaten
his little bunch of jerkcd explorer, and
so the good work went on. The Polar
bear. with his wonderful rctentive
faculties, has succeeded in retain no his
great secret regard ng the POLE together
with the man who came out there to
ind out about it. So up to 1880 large
number of nameless explorers went to
this celebrated watering place, shot a
few pemmican, ate jcrked whale,
shuddered a few times, and died. 1t
has been the h story of Arctic explora-
ton from the earliest ages. Men have
taken their lives and few doughnuts
in their hands, wandered away into the
uncerta light of the frozen North
made few observatons-to each
other regarding the backward spring
and then cached their skeletons forever.
In 1880 two Italians named Lem took
Dad of sun-kissed bananas and made
voyage to the extreme north, but the
Ii storian 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
oc,.;s onI, the history of their voyage is
MT used very much.
Years rolled on. BOYS continued to
go to school and see in their biographies
cent eng pictures of men IN expensive
fur clothing. running sharp iron spears
nnd long. dangerous tab-knves into
feroc Gus W lite bears and snorting
around on large cakes OF colo Ice and
having good time. These inspired
tnc growing youth to rise up and do
lik,w 81. So every nation meath the
san 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 made break
fast seem almost useless.
In l477 Columbus went up that way,
hut did not succeed in starving to death.
lie got a bird s-eye view of large de-
post of dark-blue ice, got hungry and
came home.
Dur ny the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the northern nations of Europe,
and especially the Dutch, kept the dis
covery business red-hot, but they did
LOT oct any fra UmentS of the true MOLE