AMERICA'S FIRST POLAR EXPEDITION 



Bv ALBERT WHITE VORSE 



Y THE present generation of grandfath- 

 ers the first important exploring expe- 

 dition sent forth by the United States is 

 clearly remembered. In their prime it 

 was a public scandal, and to every loyal 

 American, the great Wilkes-Ross con- 

 troversy which followed it, was a pri- 

 vate issue. Hints of the controversy have descended to 

 sons and grandsons; so also have records setting forth the 

 fine achievements of the expedition; but the story of its 

 organization is stowed away in the obscure memory cells 

 of men far beyond their youth, and buried in the dusk of 

 libraries. For the sake of the illustration it affords of 

 the bearing of petty jealousies upon great enterprises, this 

 story is perhaps worthy to be pieced together. 



The expedition was organized in the days when there 

 was still the fascination of mystery about ocean voyages. 

 The maps of continents still showed blank spaces. The 

 chart of the South Sea was not dotted with islands. Mer- 

 chant ships sailed under instructions, not only to trade in 

 known lands, but also to discover new ones. Governments 

 still dispatched fleets to rove about the ocean, merely to 

 satisfy the white man's curiosity concerning the world 

 upon which he lived. This was little more than half a 

 century ago. One of the objects of the United States Ex- 

 ploring Expedition which sailed in 1838, was to determine 

 accurately the longitude of Rio de Janeiro. 



With the enthusiasm of discovery, the citizens of the 

 United States were highly charged. Following in the 

 course of Captain Edmund Fanning — he of " Fanning' s 

 Voyages," a popular book in the time when narratives of 

 sea travel were sought out by other readers than school 



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