MOTIVES or POLAR BESEARCIL Exploration in the far north has been more extensive than that in the far south, chiefly because the Arctic is much nearer to the great maritime nations and its waters merge with those which in modern times have been the predominant highways of ..ea trade, The whale and seal fisheries of the north opened the great era of Arctic discovery in the seventeenth century. For 150 years after Henry Hudson in 1607 examined the long edge of the pack-ice from Greenland to Nova Zembla, the annals of the Dutch and English whaling trade provided nearly all information of the Arctic area.
The commercial instinct that led to the first great Arctic voyages had two distinct phases. Inc was the endeavor to extend the limit; of the northern fisheries; and while the prosecution of the Arctic whaling industry added a vast sum to the wealth of the world—c.itimated at over $600,000.000 in 200 years before the middle of the nineteenth century—it naturally resulted in largely extending our knowledge of the north 1)01:11. world. The other phase was the desire to the water route between the ports of West Europe and the rich Orient by finding either a northwest or a northeast passage be tween them. This ambition was a great stimulus to Arctic exploration from the days of Itarents, Bailin. and ltuIson near the opening of the
seventeenth century till the time of Sir john Franklin in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The commercial incentives for polar explora tion thus predominated until far into the nine teenth century and were strongest in the north near the seafaring nations, with the result that while the unknown area of the Arctic regions is now only about as large as European Russia, that of the Antarctic domain is double the size of Europe.
The fact that the largest discoveries of the eighteenth century were made by sailors, that period being an era prei.;minently of the survey of coast lines and the discovery of islands, had the effect of stimulating voyages both into Arctic and Antarctic territory for geographical pur poses; but the era of scientific research in the polar regions scarcely began till the first half of the nineteenth century. The humanitarian im pulse that led many expeditions to engage in the search for Sir John Franklin resulted in enor mous additions to our knowledge of Arctic America. In recent years the avowed purpose of the most worthy expeditions has been scientific research.