Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1902-12-24

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darkness and barely escaped Ginnuusa-
gap, the abyss of the worlds end-a
most excellent adventure, indeed, and
fine stuff for grandfather tales and
minstrelsy for many ard many day.
Then came the medieval dream of a
northwest passage by the open Polar
Sea to the wealth of India and Cathay.
The idea took firm hold upon the rich
fifteenth century imagination: and
even Us late as 1907 Henry Hudson
tried to find in tie north an open wa
terway to the Pacific. Dreams: Yes,
But, says Nansen, England has to
thank these chimeras in no small lie.
gree for the fact that she has become
the mightiest seafaring nation OF the
world" Splendid dreams, indeed. Ul-
TINA Thule! The words fairly tingle
with the reiterated romance OF the
centuries-bold voyages into uncharted
deeps where the blue bergs held their
sway.
AS for modern motive, Nansen gives
the clew to it when he writes often and
again OF wrestling the secret from
these unknown regions Of ice" and
when he said of his proposed attempt
to drift across the pole from the New
Siberian Islands to The Greenland
coast. ut is not to seek for the ex-
act mathematical point that forms the
northern extremity af the earths axis,
that we set out, for to reach this point
IS intrinsically of small moment. Our
object is to investigate the great un-
known region that surrounds the pole"
Nansen reached 1914.
All of which does not yet make clear
the bootless toiling, the useless sacri-
flee, the magnificent courage that arc
tic sacrifice, the magnificent courage
that arctic explorations exact. To find
the true incentive, we shall have to go
deeper yet and touch those hidden
springs that tumble men headlong
into such mad, forlorn and futile do
ings as mystify the gods.
Only the other day little dried up
man, with his face scorched to a crust,
like lava, returned to Algiers with a
simple, brief story Of having travelled
1000 miles among the Moroccan Ber-
bers, a somewhat peculiar people, who
would have made a fine but deplorably
ugly example of him, if they had pene-
trated his disguise. He had no partic-
ular business in thus taking death by
the arm, except a desire to know
things. So with that woman, Mrs.
Workman, who recently climbed
Loongma glacier in the Himalayas, af-
ter indescribable hardships and per-
lis, just because she wanted to do
something big and exceptional. She
doesn't like pink teas.
1t is a mighty good thing, we cannot
doubt, that all success in the world
is not spelled with the same set of
characters. Most men like to excel.
Some choose seven figures on the cred
st side OF the ledger. Some take to mu-
sic. to painting, even, in their eXtrem-
ity. to the romantic school Of fiction.
There are men who devote many toll
some hours TO mastering the carom;
at least two or three have sacrificed
their fine intellect to chess; while the
lives that have been Thrown away, "
with splendid fury and abandon, just
to carry q slippery pigskin ball across
muddy field to wtitcwashed line
called goal, are really enough to keep
prudent folks awake at night to the
prejudice of their health and the peril
of their precious happiness.
So, after all, the reason why men
try to reach the pole, going blithely
! through silences that are at one with
the silence of the stars, over white
nesses that are akin to the whiteness