CHAPTER XVII 



The Search for the Northwest Passage 



ARCTIC exploration has had a double purpose, one commer- 

 cial, the other geographical. The first consisted in efforts 

 to find an available water route north of America or of 

 Europe and Asia, by which the long journey around the southern 

 capes of America and Africa might be avoided and easy intercourse 

 between the East and the West be attained. These long-sought-for 

 channels were known as the Northwest and the Northeast Passages. 

 They have been discovered only in our own days, and their hoped- 

 for commercial utility has proved an illusion, through the almost 

 insuperable difficulties which they present. 



The second consisted in efforts to reach the North Pole, and, 

 as supplementary to this supreme triumph, to gain a general idea 

 of the geography of the polar regions. Such were the purposes 

 of Cook and Peary in their recent exploits. Both the objects named 

 have led to adventurous voyages, and many important results have 

 been attained, while the romantic and perilous incidents involved 

 have been innumerable. 



It may be said here that the earliest voyages of modern navi- 

 gators in this direction had no definite purposes. What they did 

 was the work of chance. Yet as they resulted in the discovery and 

 settlement of Greenland the ice-clad island which forms the 

 American gateway to the Pole some brief mention of them seems 

 here in place. 



The voyagers here referred to were the hardy and daring 

 Norsemen, the Viking adventurers who for so many years kept 



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