The Polar Sea

[I. I. Hayesin New York Hcrald.) I have always beheved in the existence of au open Polar sea. I think I Btod upon its shoves n 18fil. I btilieve ttiat seatwivigable, iuid I ñm utterly at & Jobs fco ünderstand why tlie Alert g,nd üiécovery did Slot èail. nrrH fts -tóei-S, unle&fl v,5 aSáumo that the opirit which animated Baffin, Eoss, Parry, and the long list of Aretic héroes h died out with the ndvance of Bteain, the telegraph, and homo comforts. Now, please remeuiber that this great English expedition really etarted -where I left off. The uorth polo -was only approached by I some eighty miles nearer than I approached ik It is said thftt the ide waS eighty foct thiok. In plain Ènglish, I doii't believe it ahd I don't understond how ithappehed that a grand expedition, fltted out with snch a great flourish of trumpete, at such enormous èpöi, shouid have got frighfehed af Ier one winter, and hurried home with the old cry that the north pole can't be reached. They did not stay there long onough to teil anything about it. To be sure, the matter of getting to the north pole is of little consequence in a business point of view. It niay be of no corisequenoe whatever, but hero íb an exriedition fitted out expioasLy to do Ít;bftaHnlímited time; has every possiole ádvantago, has the un'qualified support of the British Government, and enyet, frighted by one winter's oxperience, hnrries home to report another failure. The Polaris did l)etter, for even after the death of poor Capt. Hall it stuck until it was crushed by the ice. Had Gapt JRuddingtün been imbued with the same emotions as actaated Capt. Hall I believe he could havo steamed to the north pole, and I venture to say that, whether the Alert could or could not have gone there, one year's experience was not enough to prove it. I am a ftrni belieVer in an open Polar sea. It is not a sea available for the purposes of commerco, but it is certainly a sea or ocean, as you n;ay please to cali it. Whatever interest attaches to it is of a pure'y soientiflc character. To ptirsne söieiice requires patienco, and to go with a great Government expedition, especially to make scientiflc discoveries, with the distinct understanding that there is no other motivo, seems to me to i equire something more thao. a simple " It can't be done." So far as getting to the north pole is concerned, I am sure it can be done, and in failing to do it after only one year's trial 1 think the English expedition has shown a lamentable lack of English pluck. They say they had a dreadful time of it, some people were frozen and three r iour of them died. That was iheir own fault. Traveling in the Aretic regions is not more terrible or more dangerous than traveling anywhere else. It is a matter of care and judgment. Accidenta may happen, bnt it is the duty of a commander to pee that they don't happen. I believe I have made as long a sledge journey as any one on record. I experienced a temperature during that journey of 70 degrees below ero, and yet there was never in all the sixty days occupied by the journey so much as a frost-bite to any of the party, and yet that was in the exact región where the English expedition has been, fin.ding, as they say, eighty feet of ice. The Polaïis was in the samo quaïter and got nearly as far north. The Polaris met with no such ice, but met with the same evident demoralization. In my opinión there is no serious tronble about geiting to the north pole, but I don't believe it can be done in one year and may be not in two, and I must say, and that most omphatically, that the resulte of this last of the Aretic expeditions are in no way commensurato with its pretensions any more than they are with its opportunities. lts like will never be seen again, and the chance fer a grand ochievement has been tlirown away. In short, the whole thing is a failure without the explanatory clause, " We stuck till the last moment, and did what we could." They had food and all manner of stores for two yoars more, and shouid, in my jndgmert, have stayed there until those stores were eaten up. In the Arctics it is generally down to 29 degrees, but even there it does not freeze unless the Bir is entirely calm, for water in motion does not freeze. I have seen waves rolling at 50 degrees below zero, without a partióle of ice in sight The next day, when the air feil to eahn, the whole sea was covered with a orystal mantle. The Arctio ocean is over 2,000 miles in diameter, and if anybody will once get over the land-ciinging ice belt and into the middle of the Aretic sea he might sail there to his heart's coutent, and I, for one, cannot see why this English expedition should so soon have abandoned the field. Tuero aro certain avenues to this great, inysterious, unknown water. There is the offc-tried Behring Strait, there ia Baffin bay, thore is tlie Spitzbergen sea aüd the Greenlnnd sea. In this last quarter the Germaus have found a new land. This land lies ïniclway between Soitzbergen aud Nova Zembla, which land I prodicted many years ago iu au addrcss before the American Geographical Society. It completes the almost continuous line of land that iñvests the great Polar ?asin. In conclusión, allowme to say that this great English expedition from which so nuch was expected looks very like a arce. The Pandora was 'sent out to carry letters, which she ieft at Littleton sland, near where I wintered in 186061, and, withthe best intantkms in the world, discovered the great expedition, not where it was expected to be, but in midocean on its way home. And now, af ter all, the great object has uot boen attnined. The scientific world and the oorioxu of all civilized uations are grievously disappointed. For onco they were onvinced that, since the British Govrnment had expended its best offorts i nd spent its meaae to the extent of ' $750,000, wo should have some positivo knowlcdge as to what nature is busy with bout the north pole.