LITERARY NOTICES. 



127 



the redress of all kinds of wrongs. The 

 ideal should rather be to reduce its func- 

 tions to the narrowest limits in order 

 that all the more life may reside in 

 our local institutions, and all the more 

 scope be left to private initiative. It 

 is easier to stereotype a civilization than 

 people imagine, and the way to do it is 

 to look to the Government for every- 

 thing. 



To show how easy it is to make a 

 fallacious use of figures, we may men- 

 tion that in the alarming statistics fre- 

 quently published in support of the 

 Blair Bill for Federal aid to education in 

 the South statistics intended to show 

 what an overwhelming mass of igno- 

 rance existed in the Southern States 

 no account was taken of the fact that 

 a very large proportion of the illiterate 

 blacks belonged to a class the adult 

 population whom educational meas- 

 ures could never reach, however lib- 

 eral might be the appropriations made 

 therefor. A recent writer has pointed 

 out that when we come to compare 

 the percentage of children attending 

 school in the South with the percentage 

 so attending, say, in New England, the 

 difference is by no means very striking. 

 The South is evidently doing well, and 

 will yet do better, if no intrusive and 

 demoralizing aid is afforded to it out 

 of the national treasurv. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Three Years of Arctic Service. An Ac- 

 count of the Lady Franklin Bay Ex- 

 pedition of 18Sl-'84, and the Attain- 

 ment of the Farthest North. By 

 Adolphus W. Greely. New York : 

 Charles Scribner's Sons. Two vols. 

 Pp. xxv-428, and 444, with Maps. 



No story of tragic adventure has ever 

 excited greater interest or invoked stronger 

 sympathy than that of the life and suffer- 

 ings of Lieutenant Greely and his party of 

 twenty-four men at Cape Sabine during the 

 winter of 1883-84. Other parties have 

 suffered intense privations and pains, in the 

 Arctic regions and other inhospitable parts 

 of the globe ; but, as a rule, there have been 



features of some kind to set off and relieve 

 the uniformity of their misery, or else, all 

 having perished, the world has escaped the 

 sorrow of viewing the picture of their suf- 

 fering in photographic detail. But with this 

 party of our countrymen there were nine 

 months of monotonous uniformity of suffer- 

 ing, and slow, steady progress toward death ; 

 and enough have survived its perils to de- 

 scribe the pains in all their colors. It is 

 right that we should have this full story of 

 the expedition from its commander. He 

 was responsible for its management, and 

 he was the member of it, if any, who was 

 best able to take a complete view of it as a 

 whole, and in all its aspects. In preparing 

 his account,' he has, he says, spared neither 

 health nor strength. For materials he has 

 drawn upon his own diary, the official field 

 reports, and the journals of Lieutenant Lock- 

 wood and Sergeant Brainard, the only com- 

 plete ones, with his own, that were kept. 

 As is fitting, the story of the last terrible 

 days of starvation, freezing, and death, is 

 told almost wholly in the words of the dia- 

 ries as it was recorded from day to day at 

 the time, with hardly a word of comment. 



The expedition commanded by Lieuten- 

 ant Greely was intended to establish one of 

 the international stations for circumpolar 

 observation that had been decided upon 

 after the suggestion of Lieutenant Wey- 

 precht, of the Austrian Navy, by the Polar 

 Conferences which met in Hamburg and 

 Berne in 1879 and 1880.' Two of the four- 

 teen stations established were assigned to the 

 United States one at Point Barrow, in lati- 

 tude 71 18' north, longitude 156 24' west, 

 under Lieutenant Ray, and one at Lady 

 Franklin Bay, latitude 81 44' north, longi- 

 tude 64 45' west, under Lieutenant Greely. 

 The station at the latter point, when estab- 

 lished, was named Fort Conger, after Sen- 

 ator Conger, of Michigan, who had inter- 

 ested himself specially in behalf of the ex- 

 pedition. Hardly had the party landed, 

 when a defect in its organization revealed 

 itself, in the shape of inharmonious ele- 

 ments and the want of strong enough au- 

 thority. The circumstance, says Lieutenant 

 Greely, emphasizes " the necessity of select- 

 ing for Arctic service only men and officers 

 of thoroughly military qualities, among 

 which subordination is by no means of see- 



