Year: 1872

tion.


We reprint to-day, from late issue Of the
London Telegraph, significant appeal to
British pride in behalf of new Arctic explora-
tions. This plausible paper, evidently from
the pen Of great physicist. is q wall of geo
graphic remorse that. while all England and
the world were verbosely debating the fate of
Livingstone, Stanley was already cutting his
way through African wilds to the relief of the
great British explorer. Stung with mortifca-
ton at having been outrivalled by the early
Portuguese discoveries in Southern Africa and
the Spanish acquisition of o new world under
the lead of Columbus, Henry the Seventh OF
England, in 1907, inaugurated the daring and
wild undertaking Of retrieving his lost oppor-
tunities of fame and opulence by finding
northwest passage to India; and now our
great English contemporary would have his
countrymen console themselves for their Atri-
can humiliation by seeking fresh glory amid
the unconquered terrors Of the Pole, where
The earth is rook-the heaven


The dome OF greater palace Office.


Certainly nothing can be more remote from
our desire than to repress if we could, this
spirit of geographic research; and the whole
world will attest that in the advocacy and
furtherance of every movement looking to an
increase Of scientific or popular knowledge OF
the globe the HERALD has been ever foremost.


But the magnificent ideas Of the English
Journal or rather the entire modern scheme
of North Polar discovery, is double anach-
ronism. Viewed in the light of present
geographical progress, nothing can appear
more inconceivable than the project Of sail
ing around the shores Of Northern Europe
and Asia to find practicable and safe ship
lane to India and China. But about the mid
die Of the fifteenth century the Turkish mas
terry of Constantinople and the discovery of
the passage around the Cape Of Good Hope
by vasco di CANA had entirely broken up the
old channels Of Oriental commerce (via Suez)
and thrown the worlds carrying trade almost
exclusively into the hands of the Portuguese,
with whose naval power the English could
not then vie. This circumstance, rendering
the London merchants so dependent and des-
| perate, suggested the precarious endeavor of
northeast passage. 1t was undertaken as
forlorn hope by the dauntless navigator, Sc
bastian Cabot; but the luckless result has
| perpetuated the memory of his own and Sir
Hugh Willoughby's failure in the poetic lines
| Of their countryman-


He for the passage sought, attempted since
So much in vain, and seeming to be shut
| BY jealous nature with eternal bars.


| The scheme of Cabot was, however, based
upon national necessity in developing the
trade and material prosperity of his adopted
country, as well as in the hope of securing to
her the sovereignty of the SEAS The modern
ambition of Polar enthusiasts can lay no claim
to such solid and useful ends, but with NIL
its high scientific aims and moral heroism, is
unsupported by any promise of gain or recon-
pense at all commensurate with the lavish out
lay of men and money it exacts. 1t is not
strictly true, as our contemporary so elo-
quently asserts, that Mcclure and his company
shave shown that it is possible to set sail
from Liverpool, and so, leaving Greenland on
the right, skirt the great North American Con-
tinent, leave Kamtchatka on the right again
and cast anchor in the waters of the Mikado."
If DR.. Scoresby and others have found whales,
harpooned in the North Pacific and swimming
transfxed with the unmistakable barb, in the
Greenland waters showing an open north
western passage for them, it does not by any
means follow that any navigable way exists,
unless we assume that vessel may venture to
follow in the Arctic track of o right whale
The further assumption of on open and glo-
rious sea around the North Pole, ''where the
whale wallows and the seal and walrus herd,'
has as yet been verified by no mortal eye. The
theory Of continuous undercurrent of warm
sea water ever moving toward the Pole and
rising near it to form huge and mild Arctic
sea for the mariners keel to furrow at will
is at variance with the most authentic
and accurate observations of surface currents
and deep sea explorers. We know, from the
reports of Carpenter, Thomson, Irminger, and
from the monographs of Petermann, Won Mid
dendorf and Won Freeden, that the warm Gulf
Stream moves on the marine surface with con-
stantly diminishing temperature, and does
not pass as an insulated undercurrent, retain
ing its heat but is freely radiative. The most
ardent advocates of Polar research have never
claimed the possibility of safe navigation
through the moving ice masses of the Circum-
polar Sea and, while the current of popular
belief in the existence of on open Polar sea
has sometimes been strong, the most eminent
living Arctic explorers, as Sherrard Osborn,
McClintock and others in England and on the
Continent, strenuously deny that the report of
Kane's party under Morton, even if accepted
in good faith verbatim, can prove the exist
ence of anything more than a small sheet of
open water. 1t is unquestionably true that
out of the one hundred and twenty Polar ex-
petitions not one can lay claim to any mate
rial usefulness. These enterprises, begun
under the finest auspices and conducted with
oo,sun,n,ata clr;l bava lanp otar;la of oil ooI;d