Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/653

Rh have been chiefly of that stock. The Romanic nations, no less seafaring people, have kept away from the north pole; but France has done something in south polar exploration.

The south pole has been comparatively neglected on account of the unfavorable character of its surroundings. Large masses of land are wanting, and the immense wastes of water of the South offer only a few islands possessing neither large mammals nor human inhabitants; while the Eskimos of the North are of incalculable advantage to exploration. Magellan's southern voyage was not followed up for two hundred and fifty years. The first after him to reach high southern latitudes was James Cook, in 1774, and no other similar expeditions followed for fifty years more. Those best known were those of the French under Dumont d'Urville in 1839, of the Americans under Wilkes, and of the English under James Ross, who in 1842 penetrated to the seventy-eighth degree, the highest southern latitude yet attained. After a year's maintenance of a German station on the South Georgian Islands and of a French station at the southern point of America, both of which belonged to the international system of 1883, and after a few dashes southward in later years, a number of nations—Germany, Austria, England, the United States, and others—are again preparing to co-operate in another polar siege at the austral end of the world for the benefit of science.

The question rises, What is the good of all this effort, this toil, this risk incurred in seeking inaccessible regions? The prospect of adventure, of witnessing strange scenes and experiencing unwonted conditions, of displaying prowess and achieving victory over formidable obstacles, may account in part for the readiness with which individuals are tempted to go into arctic expeditions, but not so with governments. And governments can not expect any practical material gain from such enterprises sufficient to justify the expenditures which they willingly lavish upon them.

Yet there is a real gain in a higher sense to be derived from them. They contribute to the enlargement of our knowledge, to the widening of our circle of view, to the increase of our mental capacity and ability; they make us better acquainted with the planet on which we live, and help us achieve a mastery over it.

Nowhere are more questions to be found for which to seek answers than in the polar regions. Here the magneto-electric light of the earth manifests itself in the wonderful phenomenon of the northern lights. All the wind currents of the earth press toward the pole, and the sea currents too. Curious dispositions of Nature are found here, with great volcanoes, the outer cones of which are constituted of strata of ice covered with lava, and