658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



never be reached by any such parties as have hitherto been sent 

 out. The men who so freely risked their lives were not to the 

 manner born, and what they were called upon to endure was so 

 violently opposed to all their ordinary experience that they were 

 heavily handicapped at the very start. With the uneducated sea- 

 men the resulting mental depression must have been a most diffi- 

 cult thing to combat, thus creating a double tax on the already 

 strained nervous courage of their more highly educated leaders. 

 British seamen are fine fellows and possess in a high degree the 

 courage of their race, but nothing would induce a Canadian sur- 

 veyor to lead a gang of them into the arctic regions, or even take 

 them out on an ordinary bush survey. They would simply be use- 

 less. What are wanted are trained voyageurs who are equally at 

 home in canoes or on snowshoes ; and not too many of them. With 

 the exception of Dr. Kane's (by far the most successful), arctic 

 exploring parties have been too unwieldy. The one hundred and 

 five ill-fated souls who abandoned the Erebus and Terror starved 

 to death where a party like the Tyrrells' would probably have 

 won their way back to civilization. Had Kane been backed up 

 as he should have been, he would most likely have reached the 

 pole, and when that point is attained, as it certainly will be, it 

 will be over the course followed by him, and by means of dog 

 trains and canoes or boats. 



In spite of probable criticism, I am going to sketch a plan for 

 reaching the north pole, drawing on my own experience and that 

 of Canadian surveyors and explorers. I assume at starting that 

 expense is simply no consideration whatever. If a feasible scheme 

 is put forward, I believe that there is enough enterprise, private 

 and governmental, among Anglo-Saxons to carry it through, even 

 if it cost a million. 



The exploring party would be carried by steamer to the head 

 of summer navigation on Baffin Bay, where a depot would be 

 established as a base of operations. Here provisions, houses, 

 steam launches, sailboats, canoes, dogs and sleighs, fuel, and all 

 the other accessories, with the exploring party, would be landed, 

 and the steamer could return to winter at Upernavik or Disco. 

 The former place is only one thousand miles from the pole, the 

 distance covered on foot by the Tyrrells, in the middle of winter, 

 with the thermometer often at 40 F., and without tents. A point 

 to be considered is, whether it would not be well to have a second 

 steamer built on the principle of the St. Ignace, the steam ferry 

 at the strait of Mackinac. This boat made an extraordinary 

 record on her trial trip, shearing through ice three feet thick 

 with the greatest ease. With such a vessel, it might be possible 

 to push a long way up Smith's Sound. That point could be 

 determined by a preliminary survey of the head of Baffin Bay. 



