The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-11-28
FAMOUS ARCTIC PILOT
TELLS ABOUT 4 RIGHT WAY TO
 REACH THE POLE.

Only Chance is to Send Out a Yearly
 Expedition, Declares Captain KjeId-
 sen, Who Rescued PiaIa and Many
 Others.
 If the American liner Philadelphia, which sailed for Southampton Saturday should chance to encounter any ice bergs en route the passengers need not feel alarmed, for one of their number is probably the most experienced ice pilot living. He is Captain I. K. Kjeld- sen of Tromso, Norway who has spent the last thirty years in navigating the polar regions. lodging icebergs and steering through half-frozen sounds in every sort of a sea-going craft, from two-masted fishing smack to 5,O0O-ton 2 steamship.
 Captain Kjeldsen has received a med al from King Oscar II of Sweden for rescuing three fishermen imprisoned in the ice, and has taken part in eighteen polar relief expeditions. His latest ex- ploit was the finding of Anthony Fiala and thirty-six of his crew, who went On the last expedition sent out by the late William Ziegler to discover the North Pole. and were stranded in Neplitz Bay < by the loss of their ship, the America.
 Tn appearance the captain is a worthy descendant of the old Norwegian vik- ings. A thick set, heavily built man of sixty-flve, with a long, grizzled red beard, bushy gray eyebrows and deep set blue eyes, he needed only big oak chair on dais, an ermine robe, and a tankard of mead beside him to make the fit hero of an old Icelandic saga. As it was he looked out of touch with his surroundings when seen in a New York hotel lobby before he sailed.
 AS MODEST AS BOLD.
 The captain was decidedly reluctant to talk of his exploits as an ice-pilot.
 "Its like any other work" he said, ''easy when you know how; but 1t takes a long time to learn. I've been at it thirty years, and don't know it all yet, not by long shot.
 'Piloting a steamship, though, is chi1d's play compared to handling a sailing vessel You can steam out of the way of an iceberg easily enough in nine cases out of ten, but when you de- pend on the wind to help you, and there isn't any you're in a bad. fix.
 I've had some pretty hard work get ting steamers through the ice, but nothing to compare with the job it's been to sail a ship between couple of bergs a hundred feet high, that may topple over on you any minute, or shut off your breeze when you get in be- tween them, and then mash you to a pulp before you can get clear. That keeps 8 man on the jump, can tell you.'4'
 Captain Kjeldsen intimated also that handling fishing smack in the Polar seas when the thermometer was so low that a man froze stiff if he stayed at the helm more than twenty minutes was more strenuous job than sailing catboat at Bar Harbor.
 He insisted, however, that his rescue of the Fiala party, when for six weeks he drove the Terra Nova through solid Ice foes, was lrot worth speaking of. Captain Kjeldsen professed himself skeptical as to the likelihood of any one finding the pole.
 ''They don't go about it right" he de- clared. "The only way is to make a try for it every year. Most seasons every thing is frozen up tight; but once in a while there is open water, and then g.! ship might get up there."
 ''Why they should want to beats me" he added with shake of his head. 'I've never been on a ship bound for the pole. Hunting for the men who try to get there and don't has kept me fairly busy
 When the subject of polar bears and their reputed ferocity was broached, the ice-pilot laughed. 'T would as soon tackle one as sheep" he said. "'They haven't any fight in them. have walk ed right up to a ste-bear and taken her three cubs away without her doing a thing. Your grizzly bears must be quite a different sort of bast if what I hear about them is true.'
 Asked as to what he thought of New York, Captain Kjeldsen said: T don't it.. It is too noisy and you rush around too much. can't see the sense of it"
 On his return to Tromso Captain KjeIdsen intends to retire from active service as a navigator.
 T am sixty-five years old" he said, aand feel that it is time for me to quit"
 He said he thought his country would be better off under Prince Carl than it was before, .bu that he hoped to see Norway a republic before he died.-I New York Globe.