Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/107



X.

HE North Polar region has always had great attraction for the imagination of mankind, and we find during times past the most extreme views as to its real character. Centuries ago some Dutch geographers held the opinion that there was an open sea with a warm climate at the North Pole, and ships set sail to discover a shorter route across this sea to China and India, but they always met with impassable ice. Only some forty years ago the American hydrographer Maury advanced a similar theory of an open Polar sea, and very cleverly tried to prove the correctness of this theory in a scientific way. When, however, this open sea was