THE LAST CKUISE OF THE MIRAKDA. 133 



ing toward the land, and hears the helmsman chant a song of 

 the sea, wild and clear and wonderful : 



Till his soul was full of longing, 

 And he cried with impulse strong, 



" Helmsman ! for the love of heaven, 

 Teach me, too, that wondrous song ! " 



" Wouldst thou," so the helmsman answered, 



"Learn the secret of the sea ? 

 Only those who brave its dangers 



Comprehend its mystery ! " 



And only by braving the dangers of the Arctic regions can 

 one comprehend their mysteries. 



The season of 1894 was a particularly disastrous one for 

 Arctic expeditions of any kind. Peary and Wellman and 

 Jackson were all baffled by it ; so little wonder if we did not 

 attain, except partially, the objects of our much less ambitious 

 enterprise. Since this disastrous season there has been a wide- 

 spread cry of Cut bono ? as regards Arctic expeditions in gen- 

 eral. A senseless cry it is, coming from those who have given 

 the subject no adequate consideration. There is scarcely a 

 department of human knowledge that does not owe a deep 

 debt to the baffled heroic men who have struggled to reach 

 the Pole. They have given lessons to the world in patience, 

 self-sacrifice, and heroic endurance. If as yet they have not 

 attained their ultimate object, they have attained still larger 

 results in extending the domains of science, of geographical 

 knowledge, of civilization and commerce. If we justly honor 

 our great historians, shall we not honor these men who have 

 given us new chapters in a greater, larger history than that of 

 man the history of the world, the history of the universe ? 

 This material age should at least recognize the material 

 benefits that have followed in the wake of Arctic explorations. 

 The cod fisheries of Newfoundland, the whale fisheries of the 

 Northern Hemisphere, the great fur industries, which have 



