THE POLAR COAL-FIELD.
“But are there any coal-fields at the Pole?” Such was the first question
that presented itself.
“Why should there be coal at the Pole?” said some.
“Why should there not be?” said others.
Coal-beds are found in many parts of the world. There is coal in Europe;
there is coal in America; and in Africa; and in Asia; and in Oceania. As
the globe is more and more explored, beds of fossil fuel are revealed in
strata of all ages. There is true coal in the primary rocks, and there
is lignite in the secondaries and tertiaries.
England alone produces a hundred and sixty millions of tons a year; the
world consumes four hundred million tons, and with the requirements of
industry there is no decrease but an increase in the consumption. The
substitution of electricity for steam as a motive power means the
expenditure of coal just the same. The industrial stomach cannot live
without coal: industry is a carbonivorous animal, and must have its
proper food.
Carbon is something else than a combustible. It is the telluric
substance from which science draws the major part of the products and
sub-products used in the arts. With the transformations to which it is
subject in the crucibles of the laboratory you can dye, sweeten,
perfume, vaporize, purify, heat, light, and you can produce the diamond.
But the coal-beds from which our carbon at present chiefly comes are not
inexhaustible. And the well-informed people who are in fear for the
future are looking about for new supplies wherever there is a
probability of their existence.
“But why should there be coal at the Pole?”
“Why?” replied the supporters of President Barbicane. “Because in the
carboniferous period, according to a well-known theory, the volume of
the Sun was such that the difference in temperature between the Equator
and the Poles was inappreciable. Immense forests covered the northern
regions long before the appearance of man, when our planet was subject
to the prolonged influence of heat and humidity.”
And this the journals, reviews, and magazines that supported the North
Polar Practical Association insisted on in a thousand articles, popular
and scientific. If these forests existed, what more reasonable to
suppose than that the weather, the water, and the warmth had converted
them into coal-beds?
But in addition to this there were certain facts which were undeniable.
And these were important enough to suggest that a search might be made
for the mineral in the regions indicated.
So thought Donellan and Todrin as they sat together in a corner of the
“Two Friends.”
“Well,” said Todrin, “can Barbicane be right?”
“It is very likely,” said the Major.
“But then there are fortunes to be made in opening up the Polar
regions!”
“Assuredly,” said the Major. “North America has immense deposits of
coal; new discoveries are often being announced, and there are doubtless
more to follow. The Arctic regions seem to be a part of the American
continent geologically. They are similar in formation and physiography.
Greenland is a prolongation of the new world, and certainly Greenland
belongs to America—”
“As the horse’s head, which it looks like, belongs to the animal’s
body,” said Todrin.
“Nordenskiold,” said Donellan, “when he explored Greenland, found among
the sandstones and schists intercalations of lignite with many forest
plants. Even in the Disko district, Steenstrup discovered eleven
localities with abundant vestiges of the luxuriant vegetation which
formerly encircled the Pole.”
“But higher up?” asked Todrin.
“Higher up, or farther up to the northward,” said the Major, “the
presence of coal is extremely probable, and it only has to be looked
for. And if there is coal on the surface, is it not reasonable to
suppose that there is coal underneath?”
The Major was right. He was thoroughly posted up in all that concerned
the geology of the Arctic regions, and he would have held on for some
time if he had not noticed that the people in the “Two Friends” were
listening to him.
“Are you not surprised at one thing, Major?”
“What is that?”
“That in this affair, in which you would expect to meet with engineers
and navigators, you have only to deal with artillerists. What have they
to do with the coal-mines of the North Pole?”
“That is rather surprising,” said the Major.
And every morning the newspapers returned to this matter of the
coal-mines.
“Coal-beds!” said one, “what coal-beds?”
“What coal-beds?” replied another; “why, those that Nares found in 1875
and 1876 on the eighty-second parallel, when his people found the
miocene flora rich in poplars, beeches, viburnums, hazels, and
conifers.”
“And in 1881–1884,” added the scientific chronicler of the _New York
Witness_, “during the Greely expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, a bed of
coal was discovered by our men at Watercourse Creek, close to Fort
Conger. Did not Dr. Pavy rightly consider that these carboniferous
deposits were apparently destined to be used some day for contending
with the cold of that desolate region?”
When these facts were brought forward, it will be easily understood that
Impey Barbicane’s adversaries were hard up for a reply. The partisans of
the “Why should there be coal?” had to lower their flag to the partisans
of “Why should there not be?” Yes, there was coal! And probably a
considerable amount of it. The circumpolar area contained large deposits
of the precious combustible on the site of the formerly luxuriant
vegetation.
But if the ground were cut from under their feet regarding the existence
of the coal, the detractors took their revenge in attacking the question
from another point.
“Be it so!” said the Major one day in the rooms of the Gun Club itself,
when he discussed the matter with Barbicane. “Be it so! I admit there is
coal there; I am convinced there is coal there. But work it!”
“That we are going to do,” said Barbicane tranquilly.
“Get within the eighty-fourth parallel, beyond which no explorer has yet
gone!”
“We will get beyond it!”
“Go to the Pole itself!”
“We are going there!”
And in listening to the president of the Gun Club making these cool
answers, talking with such assurance, expressing his opinion so
haughtily and unmistakably, the most obstinate began to hesitate. They
felt they were in the presence of a man who had lost nothing of his
former qualities; calm, cool, with a mind eminently serious and
concentrated, exact as a chronometer, adventurous, and bringing the most
practical ideas to bear on the most daring undertakings. Solid, morally
and physically, he was “deep in the water,” to employ a metaphor of
Napoleon’s, and could hold his own against wind or tide. His enemies and
rivals knew that only too well.
He had stated that he would reach the North Pole! He would set foot
where no human foot had been set before! He would hoist the Stars and
Stripes on one of the two spots of earth which remained immovable while
all the rest spun round in diurnal rotation!
Here was a chance for the caricaturists! In the windows of the shops and
kiosks of the great cities of Europe and America there appeared
thousands of sketches and prints displaying Impey Barbicane seeking the
most extravagant means of attaining his object.
Here the daring American, assisted by all the members of the Gun Club,
pickaxe in hand, was driving a submarine tunnel through masses of ice,
which was to emerge at the very point of the axis.
Here Barbicane, accompanied by J. T. Maston—a very good portrait—and
Captain Nicholl, descended in a balloon on the point in question, and,
after unheard-of dangers, succeeded in capturing a lump of coal weighing
half a pound, which was all the circumpolar deposit contained.
Here J. T. Maston, who was as popular as Barbicane with the
caricaturists, had been seized by the magnetic attraction of the Pole,
and was fast held to the ground by his metal hook.
And it may be remarked here that the celebrated calculator was of too
touchy a temperament to laugh at any jest at his personal peculiarities.
He was very much annoyed at it, and it will be easily imagined that Mrs.
Scorbitt was not the last to share in his just indignation.
Another sketch, in the Brussels _Magic Lantern_, represented Impey
Barbicane and his co-directors working in the midst of flames, like so
many incombustible salamanders. To melt the ice of the Palæocrystic Sea,
they had poured out over it a sea of alcohol, and then lighted the
spirit, so as to convert the polar basin into a bowl of punch. And,
playing on the word punch, the Belgian designer had had the irreverence
to represent the president of the Gun Club as a ridiculous punchinello.
But of all the caricatures, that which obtained the most success was
published by the Parisian _Charivari_ under the signature of “Stop.” In
the stomach of a whale, comfortably furnished and padded, Impey
Barbicane and J. T. Maston sat smoking and playing chess, waiting their
arrival at their destination. The new Jonahs had not hesitated to avail
themselves of an enormous marine mammifer, and by this new mode of
locomotion had passed under the ice-floes to reach the inaccessible
Pole.
The phlegmatic president was not in the least incommoded by this
intemperance of pen and pencil. He let the world talk, and sing, and
parody, and caricature; and he quietly went on with his work.
As soon as he had obtained the concession, he had issued an appeal to
the public for the subscription of fifteen millions of dollars in
hundred-dollar shares. Such was the credit of Barbicane & Co., that
applications flowed in wholesale. But it is as well to say that nearly
all the applications came from the United States.
“So much the better!” said the supporters of the North Polar Practical
Association. “The work will be entirely American.”
The prospectus was so plausible, the speculators believed so tenaciously
in the realization of its promises, and admitted so imperturbably the
existence of the Polar coal-mines, that the capital was subscribed three
times over.
Two-thirds of the applications were declined with regret, and on the
16th of December the capital of fifteen millions of dollars was fully
paid up. It was about thrice as much as the amount subscribed for the
Gun Club when they made their great experiment of sending a projectile
from the Earth to the Moon.