Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-12-13
HUNTING THE POLE.
The Efforts Up to Date Remarkable
for Their Asininity.
ONLY ONE PLAN IS FEASIBLE.
Some Paradoxes That Will Confront the
Nan Who Gets There.
CONFUSION OF TINE AND DIRECTION
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH,

4 WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPArcH.I
Inside the eightieth parallels of the globe
is an almost absolute blank, as far as human
| e1ploratio.. is concerned. Here are hidden
problems, with which the highest order OF
intellect may weary itself in vain attempts
to solve. Here men have struggled, have
dared and endured, have borne direst trial
and denial, have locked up for successors to
find, few stray fragments of information;
then went down into the valley of the
shadow of the loneIiest death. Others have
followed and have beaten against the Same
bars and yet others still and still others,
but the shrouded mystery remains mys-
terry still
And this Is so, for the simple reason, that
these points are most remote from the direct
rays OF the sun. So men here, within those
unseen areas, are the exact pivotal centres
of a revolving sphere, whose maximum Of
| equatorial motion is nearly II miles per
minute, but whose motion, one inch from
this strange center, is only one-fourth Of
one inch per hour.
But what is there at this center Of mo
If One Were 1t the Pole.
Near thispoint one might sit and leisureiy
hitch ones chair, with the slow revolution
of the globe, and keep perpetual pace with
any given hour. Or, one might stand at
| some distance and glancing around the
circle, survey all the unborn hours that are
TO issue from the coming day. Still more
| than this: In walking around this pivotal
point, one might, in few minutes, 60 over
the earth's entire revolution and thus walk
over all the hours and many days and weeks
for that matter, and then sit down and wait
for the slow procession to come upi
Two persons, from opposite sides
of the pole. may approach facing
each other, each going North and yet in op-
posite directions; they may pass at the polar
point, and while they have not moved from
the course of straight line, each now goes
South. Start to whatever point one may,
from the North Pole, the direction can be
only South.
But what Of the meteorology of this un-
known realm? Do gales blow? Do clouds
pass over? What does general all
round north wind do when it
meets itself at. the common center?
How do the clouds compromise matters?
If the region admitted of being settled,
what confusion would followl How would
the Signal Service express its weather fore
casts? Prevailing southerly winds could
only be such, if they blew in all directions
away from the common center, and where,
then, could the supply Of wind come from?
II they swept on, over and past the pole,
then without stopping or changing their
line of direction, they would blow north
and south.
Train Chasing the Hours.
If . railway encircled the pole, 104 miles
from it, a train going westward, starting at
any given time and going at the rate of 25
miles per hour, would make the circuit with
the revolution of the earth and would con-
tinually hold the hour of starting. How
would such road schedule its train time?
If Q city were built on and around the
pole what enigmas in street directions
would be encountered? To go straight
streets must form the segments of circle,
ifthey are straight, they must be crooked.
the pole and on exactly opposite sides, so
that their houses are just two miles
apart in a straight line. But from the
home of either to the home of the other is
one mile north and one south, so that each
lives both north and south from the other;
but the north and the south can both be
avoided, by going straight in circle either
east or west to each other. But the other
streets of this proposed city, that may run
parallel to what may be termed Polar
street, but at a certain distance from it
what is their direction? And if four
streets, inteIsecting each other at right
angles, forming a square mile a-ound the
pole, what is their direction, and which di-
rection is not the other direction?
Difficulty In Finding the PoIs. d
But long before the vicinity of the pole is
reached. the magnetic needle shows signs of
suspending business and finally persists in
pointing downward A neutral magnetic
tice is thus serveo that a well-known and
generally recognized natural law, for some
unexplained reason, has here become mop
erative.
In circle, having a diameter of more
than 1, 900 miles, where compass refuses to |
perform its functions, " hat is the likelihood |
of finding the pole at all? There might be |
100 polar claims staked off, each repre-
sented by strong backing and warranted |
to be the genuine article, but how would a |
man with an amition to own the pole, know
where to invest his money!
In this neutral, contradictory, perplexing, |
puzzling and capricious region, where direc-
tion, distance time, motion, meteorology
and matter all seem to be on q perpetual
Gag" where the natural order seems to be
the chaos of no order and where it seems,
are the odds and ends, the sweepings and
better of all symmetry, symphony and har-
this natures dumpsng ground of
all this, which she is bound to guard from
The intrusion and captious and carping criti-
,ism Of the creation, who once having gained
admission, would forever poster her with
endless suggestions of how this or where
lhoxv ,.rrbt horv haa hot i1- |
his is the region of paradoxes, but later on,
It's secrets and its solicisms, its geography
md topography, its silence and its darkness
must come to the open day. But the time
s not yet, not yet.
Failures to Reach the Pole.
Dismissing these reflections, it may be
interesting to consider the general causes
hat have led to the universal failure that
nan has made in his effort to penetrate this
,arrier which nature mas thrown around her
,o1es A long list of daring souls has es-
aged to do this, to unravel the great polar
MYSTERIES, only to be utterly foiled in the
ndeavor. 1t would seem that not one of
he projectors of or participants in these en-
erprises has grasped even remotely the
cal physics of the undertaking. In puny
nd most diminutive way few men with
heir all in few vessels have gone forth
Fith about as clear a conception of how to
meet their environment, as was that OF the
"babes of the wood A child
enetrating into forest of giant trees,
nth toy hatchet and tack hammer to fell
nd clear away the mighty oaks, would be
bout in line with the Arctic explorers No
ne can impugn their high order of courage
nd exalted daring, but it is in the lack of
grasp, in the utter failure to
the requisite deeds and meth
DIS to overcome the tremendous obstacles