DRAMATIC ANNOUNCEMENTS OF COOK AND PEARY 19 



There was much here to be proud of and grateful for, and that this 

 new section of the earth would be claimed as part of our great 

 country was beyond reasonable doubt. 



To those who might ask what did it all signify, of what use 

 was such a discovery to mankind, what had been really gained by 

 the long search, we may reply in the one word, "Knowledge." Since 

 man first came upon the earth knowledge has been his continual 

 quest. Knowledge about the earth, the air, the sea, the stars of 

 heaven; knowledge of all nature's doings, of the trees, the rocks, 

 of storm and calm, summer and winter, of everything that falls 

 before the human eye or appeals to the human mind. 



Man came upon the earth as a new tenant of a great unknown 

 universe, full of mysteries and marvels, and the desire "to know" 

 was early born within him. Whatever the purpose of this desire, 

 it was there. No doubt one leading purpose was to aid and benefit 

 himself, to obtain something that would be to his advantage, to 

 explore new realms in search of food or something else of use to 

 him in his task of subduing and fitting for his own ends the animal 

 and vegetable life of the earth. 



But it was not this alone. In time there developed within the 

 mind of man the thirst for knowledge for its own sake, the wish to 

 widen his store of information, to develop his intellect, to grasp all 

 that the world had to offer him of mental food. This was the birth 

 of the spirit of science, the basis of which is knowledge, its super- 

 structure the conception to which knowledge leads. 



Geographical discovery was long in becoming a main object to 

 man. The primitive tribes spread over the earth simply through 

 the nomadic instinct or as the result of the increase and crowding 

 of population. So far as we are aware, it was not until the palmy 

 days of the Greek civilization that travelers like the historian 

 Herodotus, for example first set out to discover what was worth 

 seeing and knowing in the rest of the world. And not until within 

 the last few centuries has the desire to know what the remote 



