to exercise the ingenuity of some and the curiosity of others.
The Philadelphia Ledger made the following suggestion:—
“The future acquirers of the Arctic regions have doubtless ascertained by calculation that the nucleus of a comet will shortly strike the earth in such a manner that the shock will produce the geographical and meteorological changes for which the clause provides.”
This sounded scientific, but it threw no light on the matter. The idea of a shock from such a comet did not commend itself to the intelligent. It seemed inadmissible that the concessionaries should have prepared for so hypothetical an eventuality.
“Perhaps,” said the New Orleans Delta, “the new company imagine that the precession of the equinoxes will produce the modification favourable to the utilization of their new property.”
“And why not,” asked the Hamburger Correspondent, “if the movement modifies the parallelism of the axis of our spheroid?”
“In fact,” said the Paris Revue Scientifique, “did not Adhemar say, in his book on the revolutions of the sea, that the precession of the equinoxes, combined with the secular movement of the major axis of the terrestrial orbit, would be of a nature to bring about, after a long period, a modification in the mean temperature of the different parts of the Earth, and in the quantity of ice accumulated at the Poles?”
“That is not certain,” said the Edinburgh Guardian, “and even if it were so, would it not require a lapse of twelve thousand years for Vega to become our pole-star, in accordance with the said phenomenon, and for the Arctic regions to undergo a change in climate?”
“Well,” said the Copenhagen Dagblad, “in twelve thousand years it will be time enough to subscribe the money. Meanwhile we do not intend to risk a krone.”
But although the Revue Scientifique might be right with regard to Adhemar, it was probable that the North Polar Practical Association had never reckoned on a modification due to the precession of the equinoxes. And no one managed to discover the meaning of the clause, or the cosmical change for which it provided.
To ascertain what it meant application might perhaps be made to the directorate of the new company? Why not apply to its chairman? But the chairman was unknown! Unmentioned, too, were the secretary and directors. There was nothing to show from whom the advertisement emanated. It had been brought to the office of the New York Herald by a certain William S. Forster, of Baltimore, a worthy agent for codfish, acting for Ardrinell and Co., of Newfoundland, and evidently a man of straw. He was as mute on the subject as the fish consigned to his care, and the cleverest of reporters and interviewers could get nothing out of him.
But if the promoters of this industrial enterprise persisted in keeping their identity a mystery, their intentions were indicated clearly enough.
They intended to acquire the freehold of that portion of the Arctic regions bounded by the eighty-fourth parallel of latitude, with the North Pole as the central point.
Nothing was more certain than that among modern discoverers only Parry, Markham, Lockwood and Brainard had penetrated beyond this parallel. Other navigators of the Arctic seas had all halted below it. Payer, in 1874, had stopped at 82° 15′, to the north of Franz Joseph Land and Nova Zembla; De Long, in the Jeannette expedition in 1879, had stopped at 78° 45′, in the neighbourhood of the islands which bear his name. Others, by way of New Siberia and Greenland, in the latitude of Cape Bismarck, had not advanced beyond the 76th, 77th, and 79th parallels; so that by leaving a space of twenty-five minutes between Lockwood and Brainard’s 83° 35′ and the 84° mentioned in the prospectus, the North Polar Practical Association would not encroach on prior discoveries. Its project affected an absolutely virgin soil, untrodden by human foot.
The area of the portion of the globe within this eighty-fourth parallel is tolerably large.
From 84° to 90° there are six degrees, which, at sixty miles each, give a radius of 360 miles and a diameter of 720 miles. The circumference is thus 2216 miles, and the area, in round numbers, 407,000 square miles. This is nearly a tenth of the whole of Europe—a good-sized estate!
The advertisement, it will have been noticed, assumed the principle that regions not known geographically and belonging to nobody in particular belonged to the world at large. That the majority of the Powers would admit this contention was supposable, but it was possible that States bordering on these Arctic regions, or considering the regions as the prolongation of their dominions towards the north, might claim a right of possession. And their pretensions would be all the more justified by the discoveries that had been made having been chiefly due to these regions; and of course the Federal Government, as nominators of the auctioneer, would give these Powers an opportunity of claiming compensation, and satisfy the claim with the money realized by the sale. At the same time, as the partisans of the North Polar Practical Association continually insisted, the property was uninhabited, and as no one occupied it, no one could oppose its being put up to auction.
The bordering States with rights not to be disregarded were six in number—Great Britain, the United States, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Holland, and Russia. But there were other countries that might put in a claim on the ground of discoveries made by their navigators.
France might, as usual, have intervened on account of a few of her children having taken part in occasional expeditions. There was the gallant Bellot, who died in 1853 near Beechey Island, during the voyage of the Phœnix, sent in search of Sir John Franklin. There was Dr. Octave Pavy, who died in 1884 at Cape Sabine, during the stay of the Greely expedition at Fort Conger. And there was the expedition in 1838–39, which took to the Spitzbergen Seas, Charles Martins and Marmier and Bravais, and their bold companions. But France did not propose to meddle in the enterprise, which was more industrial than scientific; and, at the outset, she abandoned any chance she might have of a slice of the Polar cake.
It was the same with Germany. She could point to the Spitzbergen expedition of Frederick Martens, and to the expeditions, in 1869–70, of the Germania and Hansa, under Koldewey and Hegeman, which reached Cape Bismarck on the Greenland coast. But notwithstanding these brilliant discoveries she decided to make no increase to the Germanic empire by means of a slice from the Pole.
So it was with Austria-Hungary, which, however, had her claims on Franz Joseph Land to the northward of Siberia.
As Italy had no right of intervention she did not intervene—which is not quite so obvious as it may appear.
The same happened with regard to the Samoyeds of Siberia, the Eskimos who are scattered along the northern regions of America, the natives of Greenland, of Labrador, of the Baffin Parry Archipelago, of the Aleutian Islands between Asia and America, and of Russian Alaska, which became American in 1867. But these people—the undisputed aborigines of the northern regions—had no voice in the matter. How could such poor folks manage to make a bid at the auction promoted by the North Polar Practical Association? And if they outbid the rest, how could they pay? In shellfish, or walrus teeth, or seal oil? But surely they had some claim on this territory? Strange to say, they were not even consulted in the matter!
Such is the way of the world!
CHAPTER II.
TO SYNDICATE OR NOT TO SYNDICATE.
If the new company “acquired” the Arctic regions, these regions would, owing to the company’s nationality, become for all practical purposes a part
