No hope of profit drew the seamen of all maritime nations into the dismal and desolate ice-floes that guard the frozen North.

No lust for gold impelled them to brave the darkness, the cold, and the terrifying silence of the six-months Arctic night.

The men who have--thus far unsuccessfully--fought with ice-bound nature for access to the Pole, were impelled only by honorable emulation and scientific zeal.
The earlier Arctic explorers were not, it is true, searchers for the North Pole.

That quest--which has written in its history as many tales of heroism, self-sacrifice, and patient resignation to adversity, as the poets have woven about the story of chivalry and the search for the Holy Grail--was begun only in the middle of the last century, and by an American.

But for three hundred years English, Dutch, and Portuguese explorers, and the stout-hearted American whalemen, had been pushing further and further into the frozen deep.