THE NORTH MAGNETIC POLE. 



569 



— thus pointing nearly downwards, — 90° being, of course, the 

 amount of variation from the horizontal line of the ordinary 

 compass which would have made it directly vertical. Com- 

 mander Ross was extremely desirous to stand upon the wonder- 

 ful spot where such an effect would be observed, and joined a 

 number of Esquimaux who were proceeding in the direction 

 where he imagined it lay. He determined, if possible, so to set 

 his foot that the Magnetic Pole should lie between him and the 

 centre of the earth. Arriving at a place where the dipping- 

 needle pointed to 89° 46', and being therefore but fourteen 

 miles from its calculated position, he could no longer brook the 

 delay attendant upon the transportation of the baggage, and 

 set forward upon a rapid march, taking only such articles as 

 were strictly necessary. The tremendous spot was reached at 

 eight in the morning of the 1st of June. The needle marked 

 89° 59', — one minute from the vertical, — a variation almost 

 imperceptible. We give the particulars of this most interesting 

 event in the words of the discoverer himself: 



"I believe I must leave it to others to imagine the elation of 

 mind with which we found ourselves now at length arrived at 

 this great object of our ambition : it almost seemed as if we had 

 accomplished every thing we had come so far to see and do, — as 

 if our voyage and all its labors were at an end, and that nothing 

 now remained for us but to return home and be happy for the 

 remainder of our days. 



"We could have w T ished that a place so important had pos- 

 sessed more of mark or note. It was scarcely censurable to 

 regret that there was not a mountain to indicate a spot to which 

 so much of interest must ever be attached ; and I could even 

 have pardoned any one among us who had been so romantic or 

 absurd as to expect that the Magnetic Pole was an object as 

 conspicuous and mysterious as the fabled mountain of Sinbad, — 

 that it even was a mountain of iron or a magnet as large as Mont 

 Blanj. But Nature had here erected no monument to denote 



