The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-08-06
WHALING IN THE ARCTIC.
Romance and Reality OF Jour neys in
the Frozen North.
Il. Conan Doyle, IN the 'ldler."

| the Frozen North.
Il. Conan Doyle, in the 'ldler."
When a fish, as the wbiaers will forever
call It, is taken, the ship gets alongside and
the creature is fixed head and tail In a curl
GUS and ancient fashion. so that, by slack
ing or tightening the ropes, each part of the
vast body can be brought uppermost.
whole boat may be seen inside the giant
mouth, the men hacking with axes to slice
away the ten-foot screens OF bones, while
others with sharp spades, upon the back,
are cutting of the deep, great coat Of fat
in which kindly nature has wrapped up
this most overgrown of her children. In
few hours all is slowed away In the
tanks, and red islet with white projecting
bones, lies alongside, and sinks like stone
when the ropes are loosed. Some years ago
q man, still lingering upon the back, had
the misfortune to have his foot caught be-
tween the creatures ribs at the instant
when the tackles were undone. Some aeons
hence those two skeletons, the one hanging
by the foot from the other, may grace the
museum OF q subtropical Greenland, or
astonish the students Of the Spitzbergen
Institute OF Anatomy.
Apart from sport, there Is a glamor about
those oircumpolar regions which must affect
every one who has penetrated to them. NV
heart goes out to that old Gray-headed
whaling captain who. having been left for
an instant when at deaths door, staggered
off In his night gear, and was found by his
nurses far from his house and still, as he
mumbled. pushing to the norrard." So
an Arctic fox which friend OF mine ems
deavored TO tame escaped, and was caught
many months after ward in q gams-
keepers trap in Caithuess. 1t also was
pushing norrard, though who can say by
what strange compass it took its bearings?
It is a region of purity, OF white ice and of
blue water, with no human dwelling within
a Thousand miles to sully the freshness of
the breeze which blows across the ice fields.
And then it is q region of romance also.
You stand on the very brink of the I'M
known, and every duck that you shoot bears
pebbles in its glzzard which come from
land which the maps know not.
These whaling captains profess to see no
great difficulty In reaching the pole. Some
little margin must be allowed, no doubt, for
expansive talk over pipe and glass, but
still there il a striking unanimiey Ia their
ideas. Briefly, they are these: What bars
the passage OF the explorer as ne ascends be-
tween Greenland and Spitzbergsn is that
huge floating ice reef which scientific ex-
plorers have called "the photographic sea, ="
and the whalers with moro expressive An
glo-Saxon, the barrier The ship which
has picked It's way among the great ice
foes finds itself, somewhere about the
61st degree, confronted by single mighty
wall extending right across from side to
side, with no ohink or creek up which she
can push her bows. 1t is old ice, gnarled
and rugged and of an excesding thickness.
impossible to pass aud nearly impossible to
travel over, 30 out and Jagged Is It's sur
face. Over this 1t was that the gallant
Parry struggled with his sieges in 1897,
reaching q latitude about S0e 80 if my re-
msmbrance is oorrect which for a long
time was the record. As far as he could
see this old ice extended right away to the
Pole.
Such is the obstacle. Now for the wha-
ler's view of how it can be surmounued.
This ice, they say, solid as 1t looks, is really
floating body, and at the mercy OF the
water upon which 1t rests. There is, in
those seas, q perpetual southerly drift,
which weakens the cohesion OF the huge
mass, and when, in addition to this, the
prevailing winds happen TO be from the
north, the barrier is all shredded out and
great bays and gulfs appear In its surface.
A brisk northerly wind, long continued,
might at any time clear road, and has,
| according to their testimony, frequently
cleared road by which a ship might alp
| through 20 the pole Whalers fishing as
far north as she 82d degree have, in an open
season, seen no ice, and, more important
still, no reflection OF ice in the sky TO the
north Of them. But they are In the service
Of a company, they are there to catch
whales, and there is ne adequate induce
mont to make them risk themselves, their
vessels and their cargoes, in a dash for the
north