12 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
Five hundred years and five had 
passed into history, when, in 1496, 
John Cabot sailed into the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, the first European since 
Lief to set foot upon the American 
continent. Prompted by the desire 
for increased geographical and com- 
mercial gain, the nations warmly vied 
with each other in commissioning ex- 
peditions to search for new lands 
upon which to unfurl their national 
standards. 
The men who managed these fragile 
barques, in which today we would 
hesitate to navigate the Mississippi, 
imbued with the impelling spirit of 
the times, pushed boldly into unknown 
waters, with no knowledge of the 
currents, ignorant of the natural 
boundaries of the sea, they sailed, 
with but a rudimentary knowledge of 
the science of navigation, heedless 
alike of the unknown danger and. the 
known, in days when mysteries awed, 
when ignorance and superstition were 
rife,—these men, I maintain, exhibited 
greater courage and manifested deeper 
faith in the protecting powers of the 
sea than those today, who, equipped 
with all that modern science and Saxon 
ingenuity can afford, turn the prow of 
a specially constructed staunch and 
thoroughly seaworthy vessel, like the 
Fram, into the pack-laden waters of 
the Kara Sea, the berg-stranded ex- 
panse of Smith Sound, or the Scylla 
and Charybdis of the East Greenland 
coast. 
You know the rest,-—- How Spain, 
France and England planted their 
colonies, how the Dutch whalers dis- 
covered Spitzbergen, establishing a 
self-sustaining colony of 14,000 souls 
north of the 78th parellel, yielding to 
Holland an annual revenue of a 
million and a quarter dollars ; how the 
Scandinavian walrus hunters explored 
the sea of Barents; how Richard 
Chancelor discovered Nova Zembla, 
reached the mouth of the Dwina in 
the White Sea and was welcomed by 
Ivan the Terrible at Moscow, result- 
ing in an English-Russian treaty, 
teeming with remarkable possibilities 
to the commercial world ; how Jack- 
man and Pet, with judgment cool and 
courageous, forced the passage into 
the Kara Sea, and how the Russian 
fishermen established navigation east- 
ward from Tromsoe to the mouth of 
the Obi and the Yenisei. 
Then followed a _ notable list of 
scientific explorers, heroes of the ice 
—Franklin, Kane, Hayes, Norden- 
skidld, Hall, Melville, Greely, Nansen, 
and finally, he whom the American 
scientist delights to honor — the skill- 
ful, energetic Peary. 
With interest and profit we might 
devote a chapter to a review of the 
labors of this intrepid group of ice 
travellers, who, voluntarily severing 
all connection with the known world, 
have plunged into the frigid wastes 
of the north to be surrounded by all 
the terrors of the pack, a force so 
formidable as to defy description ; 
men who have made land marches of 
extraordinary length, during which 
they have struggled ever onward to 
attain the object of the expedition, 
who, like dogs, have harnessed them- 
selves to the sledge, straining at the 
drag-ropes for weeks together; men 
who have borne without flinching the 
monotonous solitude, the awful silence 
of the Polar night, a season of dark- 
ness, dense, continuous and depress- 
ing; men who have toiled through 
tedious weeks upon the floes, the 
glaciers and the hummocks, when the 
mercury was always frozen, and an 
instant’s exposure foretold of ampu- 
tation. These men have endured a 
monotony that would have unbalanced 
weaker minds, withstood privation 
and abided hunger that ematiated the 
body and impaired the faculties, yet, 
in every case, reason rose supreme 
above the formidable obstacles that 
opposed, and science, in all of: its 
branches, gaimed immeasurable incre- 
ments, resulting in positive benefits 
to the industrious portion of the 
human race. 
Upon what page in history can the 
hero-worshiper point such notable 
exemplars of self-sacrificing heroism 
for the general weal as this little 
group of leaders, who have taken life 
in hand to increase the scanty store 
of knowledge of our globe ; men, who, 
in every sense are the truest expon- 
ents ot the shrewdest foresight, the 
firmest self-reliance, the  sublimest 
courage, of a patience that is infinite, 
a fortitude unconquerable and else- 
where unrecorded, of devotion to a 
comrade unspread upon the pages of 
any secret order, unparalleled on his- 
tory’s musty scroll. 
It is too long for our purpose to re- 
count what they have. accomplished 
for the exact sciences, from each of 
which we reap material benefits — 
benefits which the casual thought 
does not attribute to such causes but 
nevertheless directly traceable to 
these efforts. 
If any man doubts that, for the 
necessities, the comforts, the luxuries 
of modern life, that he is wholly in- 
debted to the personal sacrifice of 
generous individuals, who have con- 
ducted costly and painstaking inves- 
tigations in forbidding and apparently 
barren fields, let that man imagine 
himself retracing the steps of progress 
back into the tenth century, the men- 
tal midnight of the Christian era, 
when the Saxon race was in swad- 
dling clothes and systematic, Fene- 
ficial science yet unborn. 
The path of progress has been il- 
lumined by a few lights of amazing 
$20.00. 
&.. W. LU Ghia ee ©: 
HOUSE FURNISHERS. 
GLOUCESTER. 
