SEEKING THE NORTH POLE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2096, 22 September 1875, Page 3

SEEKING THE NORTH POLE.

Of the expedition to the North «Pole, whose grand farewell the mail told us so much about, the following particulars will be interesting:—The voyagers are expected to reach" Disco, on the Western Coast ot Greenland, in a fortnight; they will then creep on between the pack ice and the shore to Proven, a Danish station where they will take leave of civilisation. About August nest'the expedition may be in Melville Bay, where Sir John Franklin was last seen in 1815. They will then proceed up Smith's Sound to "Hall's Basin," the highest point reached by the Polaris four years since. The Discovery will "be anchored in some secure bay while Captain Nares pushes on in the Alert with.his gallant crew, his object being to get his ship as far north as possible. When her course is arrested he will take to sledges, and travel on the ice about a hundred miles to lay up provisions, returning to the ship in order to resume operations in the following spring.

The Times say 3:—" At about the 70th degree of latitude the. expedition will reach the other side of the Magnetic Pole, and will hare to steer by rules the contrary of our own, and becoming more and more complex till the needle points finally to the centre of the earth. At the Pole uot only the compass, but even the sun, moon, and stars will cease to bo available for the usual purposes of observation ; that is, if any hing should happen to the chronometers, for all will then depend on the preservation of Greenwich time. The forlorn hope told off for the Pole will have to mark its track very carefully if it would be sure of retracing its course back again." The highest latitude yet attained was achieved by the Great Arctic navigator, Sir Edward. Parry, who in 1827 reached a point rather more than four hundred miles from the Pole. .