Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... the glory of the impossible The Anglo-Saxons, some one has remarked, have always had of their number those who loved to creep on a little beyond the margin of the traveled world; men to whom beaten tracks were a burden and to whom "free air to the windward was ever more than new-found territory, however rich." The search for the sources of the Nile, the penetration of Asia, and the attempts to discover the Poles are illustrations of this spirit. Returning from his south polar expedition, and replying to a toast at the Royal Societies Club, Sir Ernest Shackelton voiced the sentiment of such hearts when he said: "When once men have been out beyond those parts of the world which are known to men, there is an indescribable call to their hearts to return--a call more appealing than that of London or of the pleasures and luxuries of life. I have spoken to my companions since they are back in this country, and have found that they are tired of it and ready to go back to the Antartic. There is in the ice and in the wild that 'luring of the little voices' of which the Canadian poet spoke: "They're wanting me, they're calling me, the awful lonesome places, They are whining, they are whimpering, as if each one had a soul;"' They are calling from the wilderness, the vast and God-like spaces, The stern and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole." It is the glory of the untrodden path, the distant goal, the difficult journey, the impossible achievement that lures the explorer back again and again to his unfinished task. Sven Hedin writes that he was uncomfortable and ill at ease when he reached Peking again after crossing Asia; and when there were two easy and comfortable routes back to Sweden, he chose the hardships of an overland journey by a third...