SCOPE AND VALVE OF ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS 
39 
Close communion in spirit and thought with their recorded 
labors for many years has made for me many friends among the 
great Arctic dead, and so particularly segregates in my mind, from 
this alphabetical list, the twin Arctic compeers, Franklin and 
Parry, sls facile princeps in this great company. 
But the history of these men is inextricably interwoven with 
the wonderful development of the British Empire, and their 
deeds forever abide to the glory of the English-speaking race. 
And of the Arctic dead of Europe, Asia, and America, from 
the earliest Othere of Norway and the Zeni of Italy to the latest 
fallen in Sweden, Nordenskiold the younger, promising son of 
his distinguished father, there may well be quoted the words of 
an American soldier : 
On Fame’s eternal camping ground 
Their silent tents are spread, 
And Glory guards with solemn round 
The bivouac of the dead. 
Storm-stayed and ice-beset no longer, their dust awaits the 
change and fate ordained by God’s eternal laws. 
The end they sought, the work they wrought, the courage and 
devotion they showed should stand as ideals and patterns for 
the men of the future in the accomplishment of the great Arctic 
work which it shall be their good fortune to undertake. 
But now we look again to England to retake its former place 
in Arctic research. Shall we look in vain ? I believe not. ' 
Let her remember that the beginning of the end will have 
come for the ever extending and ever developing British power 
when this insular people would ever consent, for any sum in 
pounds and pence, that the Arctic relics of Greenwich should 
be scattered, or that there should ever be removed from West- 
minster Abl)ey, rich with its clustering memories and gathered 
treasures of a thousand years, the tribute of genius to heroism, 
of England’s poet laureate to its Arctic dead. 
Well has it been for Britain that hundreds of its youth have 
imbibed together learning and patriotism, love of the beautiful 
and admiration for glory, while translating into classic verse 
these immortal words : 
N(jt here. Tlie white north lias tliy bones, and thou. 
Heroic sailor .soul. 
Art passing on thine hapjtier voyage now 
Towards no earthly pole. 
