Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/607

Rh from ocean to ocean, unscathed and without the loss of a single man. It was by readiness and prompt decision that he steered the Sofia to what, but for the Englishman, Parry, had then been the farthest north, and that on another voyage he burst the icy barrier of southeastern Greenland, which had defied assault for three hundred years.

These expeditions to Greenland were inspired largely by his desire to see the remains of the ancient Österby, the settlement of the Norsemen, an inspiration as much sentimental as scientific. On the other hand, his early voyages to Siberian waters, though not unfruitful of scientific results, were as grossly commercial as those of his fellow-pioneers, Captains Carlsen and Wiggins. But mere trade would not have taken Nordenskiöld to the mouth of the Yennissei, and we believe that in the night-watches there ever loomed before him the shadow of Tchelyuskin, the cape that he would be the first to double.

As keeper of the minerals in the State Museum at Stockholm, Nordenskiöld had to deal with objects that may be thought petty in comparison with his famous exploits. But the professor was a poet, always seeing the greater in the less, and thus it was that the dust falling on Arctic snows through the long night was for him a message from other worlds than ours, a suggestion of some primeval harbinger that brought to a cooling planet the germ of all life. So, too, a prolonged study of cracks in granite, to which his attention was first directed on Spitzbergen, led him, by a process of reasoning too complicated for repetition here, to the belief that they must penetrate to a depth of thirty to forty meters below sea-level and no further, since there they would meet with a system of horizontal cracks. Water would sink through the first set of cracks to that depth, and there would form a constant source of supply. The theory was proved correct by the diamond drill, and from it wider consequences of geological import inevitably result. But the practical benefits, especially in the large granitic areas of Sweden and Finland, are no less, and at Nordenskiöld's instigation large numbers of bore-holes have now been sunk, lighthouses on seagirt rocks furnished with a never-failing spring, and factories supplied with pure water previously obtainable only at great expense. 'Nordenskiöld's wells' will soon be household words, and they who understand neither mathematics nor geology know at least that like the prophet of old he has brought forth water from the stony rock.

But it is not my purpose to discuss the scientific labors of Nordenskiöld, so much as to illustrate his personality. Stern and reserved in appearance, he was often so in reality, but this arose rather from his abstraction in deep problems than from any aloofness of nature. He was not high-minded, however proud his looks, and could unbend without a trace of condescension. He was not a good speaker, but he was an inveterate one, and, as we have seen, his freedom of youthful speech cost him his post and his native land. On the triumphal homeward voyage of the Vega, there were banquets at every port of call, and Nordenskiöld, who of course spoke, employed always the language of the country. It was his custom. Even in Japan, after a few weeks' stay, he replied to the toast of his health in Japanese. The speech was not reported.

Wherever he went he collected objects of interest, and the collection he made in Japan was characteristic. He bought up all the books and manuscripts he could lay hands on, and so it is that there now exists in the Royal Library at Stockholm perhaps the finest collection of Japanese literature in Europe. The catalogue by Professor Rosny, of Paris, is well known to Orientalists.

Nordenskiöld was also a voluminous