New Lands Within the Arctic Circle |
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Author:
| Payer, Julius |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-51706-5 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2009 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $21.33 |
Book Description:
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THK PENETRATION OF THE REGIONS WITHIN THE POLAR CIRCLE; THE PERIOD OF THE NORTH-WEST AND NORTH-EAST PASSAGES. i. Around the lonely apex of the Pole stand cairns of stone which serve to mark the points to which the restless spirit of human enterprise and discovery has penetrated. In its zenith...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THK PENETRATION OF THE REGIONS WITHIN THE POLAR CIRCLE; THE PERIOD OF THE NORTH-WEST AND NORTH-EAST PASSAGES. i. Around the lonely apex of the Pole stand cairns of stone which serve to mark the points to which the restless spirit of human enterprise and discovery has penetrated. In its zenith wheels the sea-gull in its flight, and the harpoon- persecuted seal finds on its ice-floes an unapproachable asylum; but the Pole itself remains the goal which no human effort has yet reached. 2. As all knowledge is perfected slowly and gradually, so man's knowledge of the earth and its configuration forms no exception to this general rule. Of the few attempts of early antiquity to enlarge the domain of geographical knowledge, tradition tells us only of the Argonautic expedition of the Greeks, of the voyage of the Phoenicians to Ophir, and their bolder circumnavigation of Africa. With the conception of the spherical form of the earth the still vague notion of climatal zones makes its appearance, and to this, four centuries before Christ, Pytheas of Marseilles gave the first scientific elucidation and the first approximation to modern theories by his doctrine of the Polar Circle. Almost contemporaneously Alexander's expedition to the wonder-land of India created a paradise for commerce and navigation, to secure which a shortened route, the route througli the ice?the most perverse notion that ever entered into the mind of man to conceive?was one thousand eight hundred years afterwards eagerly and passionately sought. 3. Rome had extended her knowledge to Scandinavia, and Seneca's prophetical mind foresaw the discovery of newworlds. But the deluge of religious strifes, the migrations of nations in the earlier part of the Middle Ages, the holy zeal for destruction in the...