THE WAY TO THE NORTH POLE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 807, 23 January 1877, Page 3

THE WAY TO THE NORTH POLE.

(From the Spectator ) Another daring assault has been made ly man upon one of those regions of b s khcalled domain into which he would seem forbidden to enter, and once agi a he b'** suffered defeat. This defeat, however, is accepted as much more complete tl?»Q it is, for setting aside the possible inv.n*iou of methods'of locomotion, other then sledding, over the rugged and shifting ice-ma«seß which cover the Polar eeas (as, for instance, the adaptation of the lifdngpower ot buoyant gases to this woifc), only one of the many routes has as yet been shown to be " impracticable." It must be remembered that supposing there is a practicable ronte to the .Norih Pole, no experience yet obtained can enable Arctic voyagers to form any idea as <o the probable position of t at so far as parts of it are concerned which not yet been reached, and so fi.r as ihe difficulties (Upend on the arrangement of land and sea. It is important to notice this, because in the discu.uons which took place before the last expedition started, a tone was adopted which seemed to im,>ly that the ex perience of Arctic voyagers as to the r(giois tbey havj passed ovt-r entitled them to pronounce on the probable nature of the regions into Vvhich they had not penetrated. The theory that the land on the western side of Smith's Souud and Kennedy Channel extends northwards as far as the Pole, or beyond it, was advocated as cocflduntly by some, as though Kane, or Hsiys, or Hall, had actually seen tue whole of this Polar continent. It turns out thot the land supposed to have been seen by Hall far to the north of hia most northeily position has no real existence. But if President Land had existed, nothing would jet have been known respecting the three or four hundred miles intervening between that supposed laud and the Pole. Yet it was on the hope of land existing farther north that the plans of the last expedition were based, and it was again in this expectation chiefly that the expedition left the line of attack which nature indicates.

We say that nature indicates a certain Hue of attack, and we think we ca': justify the assertion. It must be admitted that the one great cause of difficulty in advancing towards either pole is the extreme cold. Other circumstances operate, no doubt, to modify the dangers and difficulties of various routes, just as other c'rcurmtances render various routes over the accessible parts of the earth more or less difficult or dangerous. But what hitherto has rendered the I'oUr regions actually inaccessible has been the excessive cold. Conssqueutly, the roine which natu'Q indicate as the safeßt and easiest, or rather, as tbe least dangerous and difficult is the route along which the coid is least intense. Captain Nares' expedition, on the contrary, was directed towards the very spot where it was known long before that the greatest winter cold and almost the greatest summer cold must exist. They made for the Pole of greatest cold, rather than for the Pole of the earth, and truly they seem t.o have found what they sought. £ temperature of seventy-three d< grees below the fret zing point has not yet b en rtcoicoJ by man, nor a fortnightly avera.'j of neatly sixty degrees below freezing \ oint. It it singular, indeed, how directly opposed to the evidence of nature were the proceedings ol the expedition as planned at home. Fn.-m the 6aiipe and position of \ha isothermal lines, it appears that there are two Polee ol extreme winter cold, jaud that one of them lies not far from the ph.ee where Hall marked President's Land (the other lying to th? north of Siberia). It was not very far trow this American Pole of cold that Captain Namwas instructed to winter. As summer advances this pole ]ol cold shifts eastwards to

the extreme north of Greenland (as defined by Nares' easterly sledging party), lying still close by the route along which the expedition w.;g to have voyaged towards tiie Pole. Both in winter and in summer, the ;• fore, Nares' parly wore probably as near .v? they could well be to the respective poles of extreme winter and summer cold.

So far, then, as Nature herself can point the way, it wonld seem that, despite cere: -in promising circumstances about the fi at portions of the route followed by the Arm 'icans Kane, Mayes and Hall, and now •'.y flares, scarcely any route threatens greaer difficulties in ihe long run, and specially i the part where the struggle must, in a ;y case, be most critical. Even a route past the Parry Islands would be less directly opposed to the evidence given by the isothermal lines. Indeed, in midsummer the regv n near the Parry Islands is not so cold aa ihe region from which Nares's party made their nearest approach to the Pole. The route agaiu, by Behring'a Strait, directly polewaida promises better than the one Nares followed, if only the cold barrier in the northern parts of the Strait could bo crossed early in the summer season, for from thence for a great distance northwards (how far is not known) the cold in summer steadily diminishhs That region also, it may be nottd, is of special interest at present, since the northern magnetic pole ha 3 passed from the position determined by Kos3 in 1883, to some as yet unknown part of this regioD. But unquestionably the route towards the Pole which the isotherms indicate is that; io which the German geographers have lo:g since pointed ; and we believe that if German sailors had as much experience and endurance as our Arctic seamen, they would ere this have made a nearer approach to the Pole along one or other of the three routes between Greenland and Norway than has been made by Captain Nares's expedition. The history of Arctic travel fully bears us out, we think, in this opinion. We know that Kir B Parry, following the central route by the north-western shores of S;»i f zbergen, w*a able nearly half a centu y ago to reach n nth latitude 82deg45min, and was prevented from advancing further by mischance rather than by any inaupera'ia obstacles. For it cannot be supposed that the drift of the whole ice-field Bouthwaids before the wind, by which his party wt re can ied southwards, is constantly taking ph.ee inthose seas. On the contrary, it is probah'e that the southerly drift is at times replaced by a northerly drift. Again, Parry's party was not nearly so well provided for t.a Nares's. Had they bjen so, they wou>-j, certainly have been able to push fifoy or sixty miles farther northwards, so attaining a higher latitude along theif route than Nares's party aloi'g theirs. Quito possibly they might have carried their sledge boat to the edge of the great floating ico field, finding open channels by which they could have approached tiie Pole still more nearly. The Swedish expedition of 186 S) male a very successful effoit to reach high latitudes in this direction withoat leaving their ship, attaining with comparative ease nearly the same latit ide which wis reached by Captain Hall in 1871 aloi g the Smith's Sound loutp. But the suecrss of Hudson in Jb'o7, and Scoresby in 1806, in attaining very high latitudes along the Spiiz berj/en route, shows what might be expected horn a well found expedition in our ti.-o s, aided by steam, aad by numerous other appliances of modern science available against the difficulties of Arctic travelling. Of the route along the eastern shore of Greenland less can be said than of any of the three between Gre< nlard and the Scandinavian peninsula. Yet the pioneers of the Qermania advanced in their geographical expedition (that ip, taking observations all the time of the Gieeuland coast line) to the 77ih pa allel, and s-tated that " nothing but the want of provisions prevented them from extending their sledge journey indefinite! ." Along this coast also the Dutch travel;>;d nearly to the pa-fdiel more than two centuries a^o.

The third route, between and Novoia Z-nilia. i 3, in »onxe reeptcis, them °t promising of all, and a journey along t- is route seems alai more likely than others to be rewarded by result! of material value. Payer and Weyprecht. pursued this route in 1871, penetrating JSD miles farther noith than any of their predecessors along that rou;e. Beyond the 7Gih degree they still had open sea, tne temperature of the surface varying between sdeg and 7deg above the frei zing point, Want of provisions oblipd them to reiurn. But they set forth again along the sanrj route in 1871, aiming, Irwover, not to roach the Pole, but to round the northernmost cape of A%ia, and eo re"ch BehriDg's Straits. Failing in this, aud indeed getting their ship so imprisoned amidst ice in attempting the task that they had to leave her, they made sledging excurenrfcions towards the north, reaching under exceptionally unfavorable conditions the same latitude which Hall had reached by the Smith's Sound route. They saw beyond tlu expanse of sea in front of them a stretch of land exteuding eastward beyond the B;>rd degree, and now that President's Land Mas been found to be a meie geographical myth) the most northerly land yet seen, or at 1< ast quite as far to the north as the laud in 83deg 7seei seen by Narea's westerly sledging party. We believe that along two, at least, of tH'se routep, Captain Nares would have been able to approach the Pole more nearly, and would hav? encountered fewer dangers and difficulties than alorg the route which he wa3 instructed to follow.