DANGERS OF THE NORTH POLE.

Evening Star, Issue 4296, 2 December 1876, Page 2

DANGERS OF THE NORTH POLE.

There is, of course, one great difficulty in the way of a naval officer who tries to sail his vessel to the Pole. We do not now refer to such obstacles as ica and polar bears, but to the fact that the Pole is situated is situated in no less than 360 separate degrees of longitude. Now, your scientific navigator, on being ordered to carry his ship to a point situated at the crossing of any single degree of latitude with any single degree of longitude, will take his chronometer, his sextant, and a good slate and pencil, amj will sson find his way to the designated place provided it is not an inland town. But what can the best of navigators do when ordered to sail to the 90th degree of north latitude and 360 distict and separate degrees of east or west longitude—the choice of the particular species of longitude being, perhaps, left with him ? This is a problem concerning which the best treatise on navigation is silent; and the effect of such an order as the one proposed would probably be to convince the most accomplished navigator that the Admiralty authorities were a collection of rare and carious idiots. But let at suppose that the commander of the British expedition leaves his ships at some reasonable degree of latitude, and, setting out overland on sledges, contrives to reach the North Pole without confusing his mind with nautical observations. When he arrives at his destination, he will find one particular spot of the earth’s surface which will be the a Jtual extremity cf the axis of the earth. Being a British mariner, he will, of course, plant himself upon that precise spot, holding the Union Jack in his hand, and range his men about in order to salute the emblem of Lis country in a proper manner. Mark the inevitable result. The unfortunate commander will instantly begin to revolve on his own axis with the same speed with which the earth revolves. The axis of the earth will, of course, correspond with his personal spine, and the latter, will so to speak, a mere prolongation of the former. He will have his regular day and night, and his inclination to the plane of the ecliptic will give him his proper seasons. The spectacle of a captain in the Royal Navy revolving at tremendous speed on his private axis, with perhaps the sun rising behind his eastern whiskers, or gilding the top ef his western ear as it sinks below the horizon of his waistband, can hardly fail to appal the minds of his officers and crew, ana to keep them rooted to the spot until they are frozen with horror and the prevailing area of low temperature. Of course, giddiness would almost immediately seize upon the revolving captain and settle for ever the question of his return to England. The assembled ring of marines would, however, fare no better. Those on one side of the Pole would see those opposite to them revolving from east to west, waxing and waning iu the shadow of their unhappy commander’s legs, and at times totally eclipsed by his coat tails. If they survived this awful sight, ai d rushed headlong from the Pole bent upon an immediate return to England they could not toll what course to Steer! A divergence ol a quarter of an inch from the true route to London might carry them to Oshkosh or Ksmschatka; and the hope of picking out the meridian of Greenwich from the other 359 tangled degrees of longitude would bo simply hopeless. It is true that scientific persons assert that none of these terrible calamities are possible, and that a party of explorers at the North Pole would undergo no more inconvenience from the revolution of the earth than they would were they at the Equator. Thia is all very well; but it should be noticed that, while the scientific persons are perpetually egging on the simple mariner to go and tmd the Pole, they never offer to pttty him. The duly explanation of this lift

8 that they are reluctant to try tie expert* fflcnt o' revolving on their own axis. They may seek to conceal this humiliating truth by whole slates full of figures and the most impressive display of familiarity with the precession of tho equinoxes and other aristocratic astrononvcal phenomena. Common sense teaches ua that if a man perpetually whirls on his axis at the rate of speed maintained by the earth he would undergo a terrible ettack of vertigo, and until some scientific person goes to the Pole and returns in good condition, we should decline to accept the airy assertion that sailors can visit that locality without danger, or indeed, with the slightest reasonable hope of ever coming back again. New York ‘Tunes.’