IN QUEST OF THE POLE. 363 



In a word, I fail to find anywhere sufficient reason for believing 

 that man began his history as a marine ascidian, or as a creature still 

 lower down in the scale of being, and that he has worked his way to 

 his present state of civilization by ceaseless stragglings upward first, 

 in countless forms of brute life, each one succeeding in the series being 

 a little more advanced than that which went before it; and then 

 through an interminable line of savage ancestry, of which the first in 

 the series was only a shade more advanced than the tailless ape of 

 which he was the immediate descendant. And glad I am that it is so ; 

 for this idea of imperfect being ever, and almost forever, straining- 

 after perfection, and constantly failing in the struggle, produces a feel- 

 ing approaching to a painful shudder. At an$ rate, until these and 

 other difficulties are swept away, I find it more easy to accept the doc- 

 trine of the creation than to accept the doctrine of evolution, and to 

 believe that each creature was created perfect in itself, and in its rela- 

 tions to all other creatures, and to the universe of which it is a neces- 

 sary part so perfect as to deserve to be spoken of at the beginning 

 as " very good " and that man originally was no brute-descended 

 savage, living in a wilderness, and fighting his way step by step upward 

 to a higher level, but a demi-god, walking and talking in a paradise 

 with the God in whose image he was made, until, for some fault of his 

 own, he was driven out into the wilderness, a slave to body, naked, 

 and all but altogether oblivious of every thing relating to his high 

 original. London Lancet. 



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EN" QUEST OF THE POLE. 



FOUR centuries ago the great commercial question of Western 

 Europe related to a new way of getting to the Indies. Colum- 

 bus struck boldly westward to solve the problem, and, when he en- 

 countered land, supposed he had solved it ; and named the country 

 India, and the people Indians. But it was at length found that the 

 supposed discovery of Columbus was an illusion, and that a great, new 

 continent barred the way to India. Nothing remained, then, but to 

 go round it if possible, and so navigators struck for a northwest pas- 

 sage. The Cabots traced the American coast from Virginia to Labra- 

 dor, and attempted to make the passage to India by the north. They 

 failed, and navigators then tried the northeast passage, and, disap- 

 pointed there, after many years, they turned back again to the alter- 

 native route. In May, 1501, Gasper Vasco sailed from Lisbon with 

 two ships to accomplish the northwest passage. These parted com- 

 pany in a storm off the Greenland coast, and Vasco's ship was 

 never heard of again. The next year a brother of Gasper went in 



