The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-06-17

WISCASSET, Me, June 16.-Prob- ably the question most often asked of explorers is, why do you go?' Because he has missed only two out of the last fifteen years in the Arctic, because in 1908 he voluntarily relinquished his profession as col lege professor at Worcester academy to sail north with Peary on his me morable dash to the Pole, Dr. Donald B. MacMillan seems to stand forth pre- -eminently as the man to answer the question.
 Even now he Is outfitting his S9foot schooner Bowdoin to sail for the Arctic on Juno 23. He will spend months locked in the ice.
 Here is Dr. MacMillan's answer;
 "The average mans conception of the north is so forbidding that he Is naturally puzzled to know why the expenditure of thousands of dollars and the loss of men should not deter She explorer.
 Norsemen Were the First.
 Drawing upon his imagination and tho narrowing accounts of our early explorers. the reader pictures a great white lana swept by drifting snows driven by biting winds, void of all animal and plant life, a dead world revolving beneath a long sum mer's sun and wrapped In the death- like stiffness and solitude of the long, dark winter night.
 What good or enjoyment can pos sibly be derived from a visit to such a land? Is the purpose search for mere adventure. for valuable min eral, for lands rich in resources, for scientific knowledge or purely geo. graphical-that is, an accurate plot ting of all lands upon the worlds surface?
 Undoubtedly the Norsemen were our first Arctic explorers. Those hardy mariners more than thou sand years ago dared to turn the prows of their open boats north ward through scattered ice floes to- ward the land of the midnight sun Eventually they beheld stretching out before them that apparently limitless and impenetrable field of ice and wondered what was beyond Man has wondered ever since and will continue to wonder just so long as there is a mountain that obstructs the vision of a point of land around which he cannot see. It is the task of the explorer to surmount the ob- stacles of nature and to learn the truth.
 Truth Guessed At For Ages.
 From the earliest times various conjectures have been rife as to what man would find at the top of the world if he ever SuCceeueu III at taining that distant point, which many of our best students of Arctic history sdeemed impossible. In the days of antiquity there were poetical and mythical conceptions galore. Such are always supplied where is- norance rules.
 "For years. prior to the discovery of the Pole, our own scientists per- sisted in the belief of an open Polar sea- Dr. Elisha Kent Kane claimed sto have seen it. Dr. Isaac Israel sHayes believed in it. Strong and tscientific reasons were advanced for sit
 For many years man believed that If he would only persist in going on sover the ice pack at the periphery ,of the Arctic ocean, finally he would abe rewarded by the sight of blue Awater, over which he could joyfully sail to the pole
 "The British North Pole expedition sof 1875, @elaborately equipped, had .faith in this mythical open sea and 4started bravely northward from the sshores of Grant Land, pulling their sheavy boats through and over the Epressure ridges of the Polar basin. O O o
 sMen Drop From scurvy.
 One by one they dropped with sscurvy, brought on by exhaustion Swith their heavy load. Fortunately, Zone man had strength to summon trelief.
 f There existed in this country for