DR. NANSEN'S PROJECT.
" COLUMBITS must have talked to Isabella very much in that way." That is, we conceive, the sentence which has risen unbidden to the lips of almost every one who has heard or read Dr. Nausea's wonderful exposition delivered on Mon- day before the Royal Geographical Society of his new plan for reaching the North Pole. The plan may be wrong or right—we shall discuss that presently—but there can be no doubt that the audience who listened to it, and who were, for the most part, doubtful of its merit, were enthusiastic, and with reason, for the man. He belongs so clearly to the type of the greatest discoverers, the men who are in reality religious fanatics, though the subject which possesses them is a geographical idea, and not a creed. Dr. Nansen bases his idea on concrete evidences, as Columbus also did, but the evidences have begotten in him a faith which they do not altogether justify, which transcends reason, and outstrips experience, and which may prove to be either an illusion born of imperfect know- ledge in a man with magnificent power of decision, or an inspiration. At all events, Dr. Nansen, who has demon- strated his ability as an Arctic explorer past all question, so entirely trusts his theory that he is not only ready to stake his life upon it,—that is common,— but to risk out of pure conviction of its truth years of torture for himself and his companions. He has established to his own satisfaction and by scientific evidence which, if the data are only correct, is irresistible, the fact that a current of water, large enough to supply the vacuum caused by Southern currents in the Polar Sea, flows northwards through that sea from beyond the New Siberian Isles. Relics of the ` Jeannette '—a vessel lost in Siberian waters—a broken harpoon-thrower belonging to an islander of the Siberian side, specimens of driftwood covered with minute organisms only existing on the Siberian coast, have all been found on the other side of the Hidden Sea ; and how did they get there, unless carried by a current ? There must be
such a current somewhere, or the Polar Sea would dry up ; it must be a mighty one to supply the volume of water known to rush to the South; and the drifts show, in Dr. Nansen's judg- ment, where it is. He has, therefore, resolved to follow that current right across the Pole until he comes to clear water on the other side, and re-emerges in the world with the great geographical secret solved for ever. Vain to tell him that there is no such current. He knows there is, as well as he knows that the world is round ; and as he maintains on the same kind, though not the same quantity, of evidence. Vain to tell him that his ship will get jammed in pack-ice. Of course it will, but the ice itself must be drifting on the current too, and with that ice—or, if his ship is squeezed to bits, in two boats laid upon that ice —he will be carried too, the mighty floes being, as it were, harnessed to his service. And finally, vain to tell him that, even if his floes move as he calculates they will, the movements of ice are slow ; for he is prepared, with his twelve men, to live five years upon his glacial rafts in that extremity of cold. He has obtained his money from the Norwegian Storthing, persuaded into un- wonted generosity, partly by his great achievements in Green- land, and partly by an honourable national pride, but partly also by the marvellous persuasiveness of the man, akin, as we have said, to that of Columbus. He has built his little steamer —600 tons displacement—so strongly, that she will bear to be " nipped" by the great ice-fields and only rise in air, to secure which movement she " slopes from bulwarks to keel,"— is, in fact, only a broad wedge. He has collected provisions for five years, and in the Spring he intends, confident in his ideas, in his men, and in his experience as ex- plorer, to plunge into the unknown, and either perish of starvation, probably after years of suffering, or to emerge master of the Polar secret with a name which will live for ever. God be with him ! say all Englishmen ; for whether he is a fanatic deceived by an illusion, or an inspired explorer, there have been on earth few braver men than he. He has nothing to gain but knowledge ; he tempts none but experts in the Arctic seas to share his danger, and he leads a forlorn- hope to an enterprise which is to last five years, during every day of which he and they may suffer as only Arctic explorers can. If he succeeds, no nobler subject of song will ever have been offered to poet ; and if he fails, man can die but once, and to his own con- sciousness, and that of the long list of Arctic voyagers, though not that of all good men, this is an undertaking for which men who are competent to the work may fittingly con- sent to die. At least, he will increase the vitality of all men within his ancient State by making them feel that the blood of the old Vikings has not shrunk to a puddle yet, and that were Norwegians but numerous, they might yet be among the great peoples of the world.
But will Dr. Nansen succeed ? The old giants of Arctic exploration shook their beads vehemently at the Geographical seance, and assured Dr. Nausea, with an admiring yet scornful politeness, that they should welcome him back from a successful voyage with enthusiastic pleasure. At least he would increase our knowledge of the Arctic seas. They, however, evidently believed that he would either be baffled at the outset, or would never return. They are men of repute and daring, and experience, and their judgment must weigh heavily against that of a comparatively young man, who has only shown unusual energy and resolution. The argument, from reason, too, is mainly on their side. Dr. Nansen's current must exist, if his data are all correct; but, then, are they correct, or are they based—like some of Columbus's ideas, again—on the loose talk of puzzled seamen and Indians, scarcely able to give evidence on what they actually saw, much less to draw accurate de- ductions from things seen? Have the Arctic seas been so searched, that life should be risked on a theory that certain minute organisms can come only from a particular coast Suppose the Polar Sea resupplied, as the level of the Mediterranean is maintained, by currents flowing in opposite directions, but at different depths, what becomes of Dr. Nan- sen's plan ? Only the upper current can affect a ship. Then there is the risk from the ice-fields. Dr. Nansen trusts to the strength of his ship, and no doubt ships have been lifted by a nip" without being destroyed; but where is the proof that any strength whatever that can be given to a structure made by man, and made to float, can resist the frightful impact of
converging fields of ice, afloat, and weighing, perhaps, millions of tons ? There is no proof that there will be time to launch the two provisioned boats ; and if there is not, what are the calcula- tions as to provisions worth P The special floe upon which Dr. Nansen and his boats are to ride, may as well take twenty years for its voyage, even if it never stops, as five. A glacier slips in centuries, not days, and it slips because, in a sense, it is afloat. And finally, there is the cold. Dr. Nansen, on his own theory, is going higher than man has ever yet been, and how does he know what the power of the cold will be ? He has faced Arctic cold, no doubt, and so have his men ; but it has been when he was in motion, with success within his grasp, and with food which, however disgusting, was at least sufficient. How will it be, if when worn with years of waiting and ill- success, perhaps with despair creeping on, the men are reduced to quarter-rations, and fresh meat is unprocurable, and vitality is lowered below the standard at which, in that cold, life can be maintained ? The chances of failure from these causes are endless, while of success there is but one,—the remote chance that in Dr. Nansen, and the vote of the Storthing, and the management of the expedition, the man, and the means, and the destined hour have, as in the case of Columbus, at last been found combined.
The doubts are all well founded, and are most of them unanswerable, and yet they have not shaken the faith of Dr. Nausea, who has heard them all a hundred times, whose experience is only second to that of the doubters, and whose life depends upon the one being wiser than the many. That faith is his strength, and the history of the world shows that it is not always, or in all persons, faith unjusti- fied. Nothing could seem to the soldiers of his age more certain than that Alexander could not conquer India— indeed, the very men of the Phalanx shrank back appalled when the one true difficulty of their task was over—and yet we all know now that the Macedonian boy was right, and that if his soldiers had not shrunk, be might have marched from the Sutlej to Travancore, and never en- countered a defeat. The evidence against Columbus was, in the opinion of experts, irresistible ; yet we celebrate his four hundredth anniversary as that of the discoverer of a world. How many of our readers remember the arguments which convinced most engineers, the Indian Government, Lord Palmerston, and the present writer, that M. de Lesseps' scheme was impossible, that no means would suffice for its accomplish- ment, that Nature itself had decreed that a wall should exist between the Mediterranean and Asia ? The fanatics were right in those three conspicuous cases, as they have been in hundreds of smaller enterprises which the world leaves ;un- recorded. Why they were right, who shall say ? for constantly they could not tell themselves, and had only to oppose to the doubters an immovable conviction, and the energy which such conviction usually imparts. The truth is, such convictions are, in some rare men, the evidence itself, there being a genius for action wholly distinct from ability, as there is a genius for poetry or music or sculpture wholly distinct from the qualities which make up efficient men. We do not often recognise it, except in soldiership, in naval command, and, curiously enough, in money-making, but it exists in all departments, even in one so inferior as the effort to export frozen meat across half the world. In all you will occasionally see a man, often not recognised as specially strong, pursue steadily some idea, over which the experts shake their heads as lamentably unwise, but yet which lands him in the end in success and recognition. He has not triumphed by force of calculation, but through the strength of a faith in himself and his own conviction, the genesis of which he himself could not fully describe. That faith is not always a guarantee of success, or Mr. Gladstone would certainly carry his Home-rule measure ; but it is a source of energy, and sometimes confers, as in the cases of Alexander and Columbus, a clearness of vision before which experience is compelled in the event to acknowledge itself purblind.
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