174 PLEASANT WAYS IN SCIENCE. 



country may well be satisfied with such results (apart 

 altogether from the scientific observations, which are the best 

 fruits of the expedition), even though the Pole has not yet 

 been reached. 



Must we conclude, however, that the North Pole is 

 really inaccessible ? It appears to me that the annals ol 

 Arctic research justify no such conclusion. The attempt 

 which has just been made, although supposed at the outset 

 to have been directed along the most promising of all the 

 routes heretofore tried, turned out to be one of the most 

 difficult and dangerous. Had there been land extending 

 northwards (as Sherard Osborn and others opined), on the 

 western side of the sea into which Robeson Channel opens, 

 a successful advance might have been made along its shore 

 by sledging. M'Clintock, in 1853, travelled 1220 miles in 

 105 days; Richards 1012 miles in 102 days; Mecham 

 1203 miles; Richards and Osborn 1093 miles; Hamilton 

 1 150 miles with a dog-sledge and one man. In 1854 Mecham 

 travelled 1157 miles in only 70 days; Young travelled 

 1 150 miles and M'Clintock 1330 miles. But these journeys 

 were made either over land or over unmoving ice close to a 

 shore-line. Over an icebound sea journeys of the kind are 

 quite impracticable. But the conditions, while not more 

 favourable in respect of the existence of land, were in other 

 respects altogether less favourable along the American route 

 than along any of the others I have considered in this brief 

 sketch of the attempts hitherto made to reach the Pole. 



The recent expedition wintered as near as possible to the 

 region of maximum winter cold in the western hemisphere, 

 and pushed their journey northwards athwart the region of 

 maximum summer cold. Along the course pursued by 

 Parry's route the cold is far less intense, in corresponding 

 latitudes, than along the American roate ; and cold is the 

 real enemy which bars the way towards the Pole, All the 

 difficulties and dangers of the journey either have their 

 origin (as directly as the ice itself) in the bitter Arctic cold, 

 or are rendered effective and intensified by the cold. The 



