[Read before the Albany Institute, January 16, 1883.] 



Year by year the unexplored portions of the earth are growing less 

 and less. Africa has been intersected from all directions by the tracks 

 of the man of science, the man of traffic, or the man of the newspaper, 

 until it has yielded up the secrets of its lakes and mountains. Remains 

 alone the enterprise of penetrating an ice-pack barrier that fringes a 

 circle of distance varying from seventy-two to eighty-three degrees 

 from the north pole, and embracing an area of one and a half million 

 square miles. 



In all ages the distant north has had its place in early myths and 

 European literature. It was the frozen north and the land of Cim- 

 merian darkness to the old Roman ; the home of the frost king and 

 the frost giants of Teuton and Scandinavian. When traffic first began 

 to inspire the sailors of Europe to the undertaking of hazardous voy- 

 ages of discovery in the reigns of Henry VIII and his daughter 

 Elizabeth, Barents from the Netherlands and Hudson from England, 

 first sailed up against that formidable ice barrier and skirted it from 

 Greenland to Novaya Zemlya. Their ships were not over one hun- 

 dred tons burden, but they pressed as far almost to the north in them 



larger vessels and ampler equipments. At the bidding of commerce 

 they were struggling with the ice-pack to find a path over the north 

 pole to China and the orient. And after these came Fotherby and 



failed. The 'barrier erected by nature at the gateways of the Arctic 

 basin has been impassable. 



This barrier is one of floe ice broken up and the pieces piled on each 



bergs wedged and frozen in and the whole so broken and irregular 

 that one might as well attempt to drive a carriage from the roof of 

 Trinity church to Harlem high bridge as to drive a sledge over this 

 mass of ice. But this barrier is not always in such a solid condition. 



