CHAPTER XIV. 



TROUBLES OF THE POLAR EXPLORER. 



It is doubtful whether Dr. Cook will ever be able to paint in vivid enough 

 colors the privations he endured in his rush toward the north. To him, prob- 

 ably, much of what he endured will appear as a nightmare. He will start 

 from his pillow, some nights, fancying himself still driving a dog sled through 

 blinding snows. Even if his memory retains distinctly what he suffered, he 

 will doubtless find it hard to pick out words to convey the idea to others. 



To understand it at all, one may go back to the records that are left to the 

 deeds of Cook's predecessors in polar search. No more thrilling suggestion 

 could be found of the experiences men are willing to suffer in the pursuit 

 of knowledge for the sake of outstripping others. 



The early arctic explorers, of course, endured much that Cook was saved 

 through his being able to profit by experience, and through liis taking advan- 

 tage of modern methods. Scurvy, for example, the disease that has brought a 

 horrible end to so many who lived for months in bitter cold, did not threaten 

 him. He knew how to guard against it, and he had foods that did not contain 

 the seeds of that malady. But the death he faced was the same that carried 

 away some eight hundred men who sought the pole at one time or another — 

 the death, slow, torturing, and malignant, caused by intense cold. 



Farther on in this volume will be found an account of some of the early 

 arctic voyages that ended in tragedy. Here, however, an effort will be made 

 to give some idea of the sight and sounds peculiar to the polar region. 



At the north pole itself the sun rises and sets only once in twelve months. 

 From March 21 to September 23 daylight continues; from September 23 to 

 March 21 the sun is never visible. Dr. Cook arrived at the pole during the 

 period of dayfight ; yet it must have been a cheerless daylight he saw. For 

 what is daylight unless it reveals life and beauty? At the pole, so Dr. Cook 

 himself says, there was no sign of animation at all— either of man or beast. 

 It was, he says, "an endless field of purple snows. No life. No land. No 



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