secret of the magnet
A major hazard of navigation in polar regions was a wholesale distortion
of magnetic instruments caused by the proximity of the pure magnetic
impulse. Walton seems to expect that once the actual pole is reached, one
could learn the principles by which to adjust for such distortion.
In 1831 Sir John Ross, thought that he had reached the pole even
though he was still hundreds of miles away on a Canadian landmass. His
account of his supposed discovery
bears an enthusiasm and rhetorical inflation little different from the
tone Walton adopts here. From the evidence gathered in the Parry and Ross expeditions of 1827 and 1829-31, respectively, Michael Faraday was, indeed, to do just
that, as promulgated in what became known as Faraday's Law. A different
desire seems to be drawing the novel's second searcher for the north pole,
and the one who will presumably discover its exact site a full century
before Commodore Parry, Victor Frankenstein's Creature. In Walton's
fourth letter to his
sister (Letter 4.1) he innocently
recounts being passed by this figure on his way to the pole. See also
"wondrous power" above.
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