THE WAY TO THE NORTH POLE.
,4 NOTHER daring assault has been made by man upon one ti of those regions of his so-called domain into which he would seem forbidden to enter, and once again he has suffered defeat. This defeat, however, is accepted as much more complete than it is, for setting aside the possible invention of methods of locomotion, other than sledging, over the rugged and shifting ice-masses which cover the Polar seas (as, for instance, the adaptation of the lifting-power of buoyant gases to this work), only one of the many routes has as yet been shown to be 4' impracticable."
It must be remembered that supposing there is a practicable route to the North Pole, no experience yet obtained can enable Arctic voyagers to form any clear idea as to the pro- bable position of that route, so far as those parts of it are concerned which have not yet been reached, and so far as the difficulties depend on the arrangement of land and sea. It is important to notice this, because in the discussions which took place before the last expedition started, a tone was adopted which seemed to imply that the experience of Arctic voyagers as to the regions they have passed over entitled them to pronounce on the probable nature of the regions into which they had not penetrated. The theory that the land on the western side of Smith's Sound and Kennedy Channel extends northwards as far as the Pole, or beyond it, was advocated as confidently by some, as though Kane, or Hayes, or Hall had actually seen the whole of this Polar con- tinent. It turns out that the land supposed to have been seen by Hall far to the north of his most northerly position has no real existence. But if President Land had existed, nothing would yet have been known respecting the three or four hundred miles in- tervening between that supposed land 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 line of attack, and we 'think we can 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 circumstances render various routes over the accessible parts of the earth more or less difficult or dangerous. But what hitherto has rendered the Polar regions actually inaccessible has been the excessive cold. Consequently, the route which Nature indicates as the safest and easiest, or rather, as the least dangerous and difficult, is the route along which the cold is least intense. Cap- tain Nares's 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 to have found what they sought. A temperature of seventy-three degrees below the freezing-point has • not yet been recorded by man, nor a fortnightly average of nearly sixty degrees below the freezing-point. It is singular, indeed, how directly opposed to the evidence of nature were the proceed- ings of the expedition as planned at home. From the shape and position of the isothermal lines, it appears that there are two Poles of extreme winter cold, and that one of them lies not far from the place where Hall marked President's Land (the other lying to the north of Siberia). It was not very far from this American pole of cold that Captain Nares was instructed to winter. As summer advances this pole of cold shifts eastwards to the extreme north of Greenland (as defined by Nares's easterly sledging party), lying still close by the route along which the expedition was to have voyaged towards the Pole. Both in winter and in summer, therefore, Nares's party were probably as near as 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 would seem that, despite certain promising circumstances about the first portions of the route followed by the Americans Kane, Hayes, and Hall, and now by Nares, scarcely any route threatens greater difficulties in the long-run, and specially in • the part where the struggle must, in any ease, 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 region near the Parry Islands is not so cold as the region from which Nares's party made their nearest approach to the Pole. The route again, by Behring's Strait, directly polewards, promises better than the one Nares followed, if only the cold barrier in the northern parts of the Strait could be crossed early in the summer season, for from thence for a great distance northwards (how far is not known) the cold in summer steadily diminishes. That region also, it may be noted, is of special interest at present, since the northern magnetic Pole has passed from the position determined by Ross in 1833, to some as yet unknown part of this region.
Bat unquestionably the route towards the Pole which the isotherms indicate is that to which the German geographers have long 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 Sir E. Parry, following the central route by the north-western shores of Spitzbergen, was able nearly half a cen- tury ago to reach north latitude 82° 45', and was prevented from advancing further by mischance rather than by any insuperable obstacles. For it cannot be supposed that the drift of the whole ice-field southwards before the wind, by which his party were carried southwards, is constantly taking place in those seas. On the contrary, it is probable that the southerly drift is at times re- placed by a northerly drift. Again, Parry's party was not nearly so well provided for as Nares's. Had they been so, they would certainly have been able to push fifty or sixty miles farther northwards, so attaining a higher latitude along their route than Nares's party along theirs. Quite possibly they might have carried their sledge-boat to the edge of the great floating ice-field, finding open channels by which they could have approached the Pole still more nearly. The Swedish expedition of 1869 made a very successful effort to reach high latitudes in this direction without leaving their ship, attaining with comparative ease nearly the same latitude which was reached by Captain Hall in 1871 along the Smith's Sound route. But the success of Hudson in 1607, and Scoresby in 1806, in attaining very high latitudes along the Spitzbergen route, shows what might be expected from a well-found expedition in our times, aided by steam, and 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 Greenland and the Scandi- navian peninsula. Yet the pioneers of the ' Germania ' advanced in their geographical expedition (that is, taking observations all the time of the Greenland coast-line) to the 77th parallel, and stated that "nothing but the want of provisions prevented them from extending their sledge journey indefinitely." Along this coast also the Dutch travelled nearly to the 80th parallel more than two centuries ago.
The third route, between Spitzbergen and Novaia Zemlia, is, in some respects, the most promising of all ; and a journey along this route seems also more likely than others to be rewarded by results of material value. Payer and Weyprecht pursued this route in 1871, penetrating 150 miles farther north than any of their pre- decessors along that route. Beyond the 76th degree they still had open sea, the temperature of the surface varying between 5° and 7° above the freezing-point. Want of provisions obliged them to return. But they set forth again along the same route in 1871, aiming, however, not to reach the Pole, but to round the northern- most cape of Asia, and so reach Behring's Straits. . Failing in this, and indeed getting their ship so imprisoned amidst ice in attempting the task that they had to leave her, they made sledging excursions towards the north, reaching under exception- ally unfavourable conditions the same latitude which Hall had reached by the Smith's Sound route. They saw beyond the
expanse of sea in front of them a stretch of land extending east- wards beyond the 83rd degree, and (now that President's Land has been found to be a mere geographical myth) the most northerly land yet seen, or at least quite as far to the north as the land in 83° 7' seen by Nares's westerly sledging party.
We believe that along two, at least, of these routes, Captain Nares would have been able to approach the Pole more nearly, and would have encountered fewer dangers and difficulties than along the route which he was instructed to follow.
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