You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the
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commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil
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forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure
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my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success
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of my undertaking.
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I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of
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Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which
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braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this
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feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards
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which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes.
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Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent
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and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of
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frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the
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region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever
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visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a
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perpetual splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put
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some trust in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished;
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and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in
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wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable
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globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the
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phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered
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solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I
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may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may
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regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this
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voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I
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shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world
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never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by
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the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to
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conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this
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laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little
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boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his
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native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you
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cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all
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mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole
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to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are
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requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at
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all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.
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