The Purchase of the North Pole
A Sequel to From the earth to the Moon
9781465631435
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The Arctic territories, properly so called, according to the highest geographical authorities, are bounded by the seventy-eighth parallel, and extend over fourteen hundred thousand square miles, while the seas extend over seven hundred thousand. Within this parallel have intrepid modern discoverers advanced nearly as far as the eighty-fourth degree of latitude, revealing many a coast hidden beyond the lofty chain of icebergs, giving names to capes, promontories, gulfs, and bays of these vast Arctic highlands. But beyond this eighty-fourth parallel is a mystery, the unrealizable desideratum of geographers. No one yet knows if land or sea lies hid in that space of six degrees, that impassable barrier of Polar ice. In this year, 189—, the United States Government had unexpectedly proposed to put up to auction the circumpolar regions then remaining undiscovered, having been urged to this extraordinary step by an American society which had been formed to obtain a concession of the apparently useless tract. Some years before the Berlin Conference had formulated a special code for the use of Great Powers wishing to appropriate the property of another under pretext of colonization or opening up commercial routes. But this code was not applicable, under the circumstances, as the Polar domain was not inhabited. Nevertheless, as that which belongs to nobody belongs to all, the new society did not propose to “take” but to “acquire.” In the United States there is no project so audacious for which people cannot be found to guarantee the cost and find the working expenses. This was well seen when a few years before the Gun Club of Baltimore had entered on the task of despatching a projectile to the Moon, in the hope of obtaining direct communication with our satellite. Was it not these enterprising Yankees who had furnished the larger part of the sums required by this interesting attempt? And if it had succeeded, would it not be owing to two of the members of the said club who had dared to face the risk of an entirely novel experiment? If a Lesseps were one day to propose to cut a gigantic canal through Europe and Asia, from the shores of the Atlantic to the China Sea; if a well-sinker of genius were to offer to pierce the earth in the hopes of finding and utilizing the beds of silicates supposed to be there in a fluid state; if an enterprising electrician proposed to combine the currents disseminated over the surface of the globe so as to form an inexhaustible source of heat and light; if a daring engineer were to have the idea of storing in vast receptacles the excess of summer temperature, in order to transfer it to the frozen regions in the winter; if a hydraulic specialist were to propose to utilize the force of the tide for the production of heat or power at will; if companies were to be formed to carry out a hundred projects of this kind—it is the Americans who would be found at the head of the subscribers, and rivers of dollars would flow into the pockets of the projectors, as the great rivers of North America flow into—and are lost in—the ocean. It was only natural that public opinion should be much exercised at the announcement that the Arctic regions were to be sold to the highest bidder, particularly as no public subscription had been opened with a view to the purchase, for “all the capital had been subscribed in advance,” and, “it was left for Time to show how it was proposed to utilize the territory when it had become the property of the purchaser!”
