le. That quest--which has written in its history as many tales of
heroism, self-sacrifice, and patient resignation to adversity, as the
poets have woven about the story of chivalry and the search for the Holy
Grail--was begun only in the middle of the last century, and by an
American. But for three hundred years English, Dutch, and Portuguese
explorers, and the stout-hearted American whalemen, had been pushing
further and further into the frozen deep. The explorers sought the
"Northwest Passage," or a water route around the northern end of North
America, and so on to India and the riches of the East. Sir John Franklin,
in the voyage that proved his last, demonstrated that such a passage could
be made, but not for any practical or useful purpose. After him it was
abandoned, and geographical research, and the struggle to reach the pole,
became the motives that took men into the Arctic.

"But why," many people ask, with some reason, "should there be this
determined search for the North Pole. What good will come to the world
with its discovery? Is it worth while to go on year after year, pouring
out treasure and risking human lives, merely that any hardy explorer may
stand at an imaginary point on the earth's surface which is already fixed
geographically by scientists?"

Let the scientists and the explorers answer, for to most of us the
questions do not seem unreasonable.

Naturally, with the explorers' love for adventure, eagerness to see any
impressive manifestations of nature's powers, and the ambition to attain a
spot for which men have been striving for half a century, are the
animating purposes. So we find Fridjof Nansen, who for a time held the
record of having attained the "Furthest North," writing on this subject to
an enquiring editor: "When man ceases to wish to know and to conquer every
foot of the earth, which was given him to live upon and to rule, then will
the decadence of the race begin. Of itself, that mathematical point which
marks the northern termination of the axis of our earth, is of no more
importance than any other point within the unknown polar area; but it is
of much more importance that this particular point be reached, because
there clings about it in the imagination of all mankind, such fascination
that, till the Pole is discovered, all Arctic research must be affected,
if not overshadowed, by the yearning to attain it."

George W. Melville, chief engineer of the United States Navy, who did s