uch
notable service in the Jeanette expedition of 1879, writes in words that
stir the pulse:

"Is there a better school of heroic endeavor than the Arctic zone? It is
something to stand where the foot of man has never trod. It is something
to do that which has defied the energy of the race for the last twenty
years. It is something to have the consciousness that you are adding your
modicum of knowledge to the world's store. It is worth a year of the life
of a man with a soul larger than a turnip, to see a real iceberg in all
its majesty and grandeur. It is worth some sacrifice to be alone, just
once, amid the awful silence of the Arctic snows, there to communicate
with the God of nature, whom the thoughtful man finds best in solitude and
silence, far from the haunts of men--alone with the Creator."

Thus the explorers. The scientists look less upon the picturesque and
exciting side of Arctic exploration, and more upon its useful phases. "It
helps to solve useful problems in the physics of the world," wrote
Professor Todd of Amherst college. "The meteorology of the United States
to-day; perfection of theories of the earth's magnetism, requisite in
conducting surveys and navigating ships; the origin and development of
terrestrial fauna and flora; secular variation of climate; behavior of
ocean currents--all these are fields of practical investigation in which
the phenomena of the Arctic and Antarctic worlds play a very significant
role."

Lieutenant Maury, whose eminent services in mapping the ocean won him
international honors, writes of the polar regions:

"There icebergs are launched and glaciers formed. There the tides have
their cradle, the whales their nursery. There the winds complete their
circuits, and the currents of the sea their round in the wonderful system
of inter-oceanic circulation. There the aurora borealis is lighted up, and
the trembling needle brought to rest, and there, too, in the mazes of that
mystic circle, terrestrial forces of occult power, and vast influence upon
the well-being of men, are continually at play.... Noble daring has made
Arctic ice and waters classic ground. It is no feverish excitement nor
vain ambition that leads man there. It is a higher feeling, a holier
motive, a desire to look into the works of creation, to comprehend the
economy of our planet, and to grow wiser and better by the knowledge."

Nor can it be said fairly that the polar regions have failed to repay, in
actu