Page:In the high heavens.djvu/77

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THE WANDERINGS OF THE NORTH POLE.
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that, therefore, the North Pole had approached Europe. If, however, the North Pole had approached Europe it must have retreated from those regions on the opposite side of the world—say, for instance, the Sandwich Islands. Observations in the Sandwich Islands should, therefore, indicate, if our reasoning has been correct, that the Pole had retreated from them, and that the Equator had, therefore, advanced in such a way that the latitudes of localities in the Sandwich Islands had diminished. The various observations which have been brought together by the diligence of Mr. Chandler, including those which he has himself made with an ingenious apparatus of his own design, have been submitted to this test, and they have borne it well. The result has been that it is now possible to follow the movements of the Pole with a considerable degree of completeness. Professor Chandler has tracked the Pole month after month, year after year, through a period of more than a century of exact observations, and he has succeeded in determining the movements which this point undergoes. Let me here endeavour to describe the result at which he has arrived.

Situated in that palæocrystic region which Arctic travellers have so long essayed to enter, but hitherto without success, is that interesting North Pole which is the object of so much speculation. With a particular centre in this region let a circle be supposed to be drawn the radius of which is about thirty feet. In the circumference of this circle the Pole of the earth is constantly to be found. In fact, if at different epochs, month after month and year after year, the position of the Pole was ascertained as the extremity of that tube from