The explorers sought the "Northwest Passage," or a water route around the northern end of North America, and so on to India and the riches of the East.

Sir John Franklin, in the voyage that proved his last, demonstrated that such a passage could be made, but not for any practical or useful purpose.

After him it was abandoned, and geographical research, and the struggle to reach the pole, became the motives that took men into the Arctic.
"But why," many people ask, with some reason, "should there be this determined search for the North Pole.

What good will come to the world with its discovery?
Is it worth while to go on year after year, pouring out treasure and risking human lives, merely that any hardy explorer may stand at an imaginary point on the earth's surface which is already fixed geographically by scientists ?" Let the scientists and the explorers answer, for to most of us the questions do not seem unreasonable.
Naturally, with the explorers' love for adventure, eagerness to see any impressive manifestations of nature's powers, and the ambition to attain a spot for which men have been striving for half a century, are the animating purposes.

So we find Fridjof Nansen, who for a time held the record of having attained the "Furthest North," writing on this subject to an enquiring editor: "When man ceases to wish to know and to conquer every foot of the earth, which was given him to live upon and to rule, then will the decadence of the race begin.