I regret this decision of the Harpers, though I have not opposed it, because I do not wish to lead them into any measure that might be accompanied by a loss, and felt as I would feel for myself in a similar case. I would not press a work of my own upon them, nor do I think Mr. Poe would be gratified at my doing so with one of his.
I hope Mr. Poe will pardon me if the interest I feel in his success should prompt me to take this occasion to suggest to him to apply his fine humor, and his extensive acquirements, to more familiar subjects of satire; to the faults and foibles of our own people, their peculiarities of habits and manners, and above all to the ridiculous affectations and extravagances of the fashionable English Literature of the day, which we copy with such admirable success and servility. His quiz on Willis, and the Burlesque of “Blackwood,” were not only capital, but what is more, were understood by all.… Paul Ulric is treated as he should be, but I think Mr. Bulwer’s much overrated in the notice of Rienzi. If Mr. Poe will analyze it, he will find it full of obscurities, incongruities, improbabilities, and affectations. Don’t publish this at your Peril!
—From James Kirke Paulding’s letter to Thomas Willis White, March 3, 1836. Paulding represented the Harper & Brothers publishing company; White was the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, a publication for which Poe was currently working, and had sent Harper & Brothers a manuscript of stories on Poe’s behalf.
Captain Cook’s “Chart of the Southern Hemisphere,” a copperplate map made in 1777 and published in the first volume of A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World. Cook (1728–1779) was instrumental in the British exploration of Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and the Hawaiian Islands, along with more of the Antarctic region than had ever been charted.
A Case for Mapping the Southern Hemisphere
From the opening pages of Jeremiah Reynolds’s Address:
At an early period of my life I imbibed a relish, perhaps accidentally, for books of voyages and travels, when I had not as yet seen the ocean. Though a dweller in the western forests, I could reason from effects to causes, and needed only the roughly sketched history of the early settlement of our country to convince me, that the maritime enterprise of our ancestors was an important element in the foundation of our subsequent power; and that whatever tended to increase the stimulus to exertion, and extend the field of commercial research, was to add more to our national resources, than to discover mines of diamonds, or heap our treasuries with coined gold. The analogy of the sister branches, agriculture and manufactures have come to our aid; and if when fields are run out, the farmer is obliged to till new ones; and if when markets fail, the ingenuity of the manufacturer is tasked to find others, surely he who can indicate to our rapidly increasing marine a new and untried sea, or an undiscovered island, where enterprise may be enriched, and the country acquire a footing, deserves well of his fellow-men.
Reynolds gathers information:
The strong and pressing considerations which called for it [a planned expedition to the South Seas that didn’t end up occurring] at that period, have not been weakened by the lapse of years; on the contrary, they have increased in proportion to the augmentation of our tonnage, and the extent of our voyages into those distant seas. What was once known only by the information derived from others, has since been confirmed by personal experience, and by five years of adventures by sea and land, over a large portion of the earth’s surface, embracing every clime, from the exuding tropics where reigns perennial spring, and where the green foliage scarce fades into the seared leaf before the swelling bud again bursts from its calyx, while the bough from which its beauties are unfolding is still bowed down by the weight of ripening fruit; to the sterile regions of eternal snow and “thick-ribbed ice,” along the confines of the Antarctic circle. Yes, I repeat it! five years of adventure, with every opportunity of observation, have impressed upon my mind the strong and abiding conviction, that such an expedition as that now proposed, is called for by considerations of honour, interest, humanity, and imperious duty. Is this the language of enthusiasm, excited by a spirit of wild adventure, unconnected with sober reality, and unsustained by well-authenticated facts? If there be any of my hearers of this opinion, especially among those whose duty it is to investigate and decide on all matters of national concern, we must bespeak their attention for yet a few moments longer.
For a number of years after our whaleships had doubled Cape Horn, their voyages were made up along the Spanish Main. As their number increased, new grounds were sought, and portions of the ocean traversed which lay far from the usual track of merchantmen. In these untried paths, new reefs, new islands, and new dangers, were constantly encountered, and their situation noted down in the log-books and journals of vessels as they chanced to fall in their way. On their return to the United States, these discoveries generally formed a paragraph, which went the rounds of the press, and then sunk into oblivion. Often, however, it was seized upon by some European constructer of maps, and placed in the charts as an important acquisition to geography, but without mentioning the names, or alluding to the nation of the discoverers from whose individual exertions such information had been derived. For more than thirty years have these contributions to the common stock of knowledge been annually made, until the result presents a picture of more daring and successful enterprise than is to be found in the annals of any other nation. And this, too, has been as silently and unobtrusively progressing as the labours of the zoophyte, that motionless inhabitant of the deep, from whose accumulated exuviae the precipitous ramparts of calcareous rock are formed, until the coral reef, by slow degrees, rises above the surface of the ocean, and, becoming an island, blooms with the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics.
With the view of collecting and arranging the vast fund of knowledge, the scattered gleanings of a thousand voyages, I was arduously employed during the summer and fall of 1828; having visited Newport, New Bedford, Nantucket, and many other places where information was to be procured respecting the Pacific Ocean and South seas. The captains of whaleships were ready to communicate such facts as they had treasured up or recorded during their numerous voyages, and the owners were equally anxious to assist me in furthering the objects of my visits. I interrogated each navigator of those seas who chanced to be in port, with his log-books, journals, and charts, lying before him; and the topography of the whole range of seas from the Pacific to the Indian and Chinese Oceans, with the nature and extent of the fisheries, was the object of my special attention.
The information I obtained was drawn from purely original sources. Nothing was taken at second hand. Log-books which had been thrown aside for years, were overhauled and examined anew. Many facts were received from several sources, each independent of the other; and by this coincidence, the truth of the statements was corroborated and confirmed. The whole were concisely and systematically arranged under appropriate heads; and those voyages which were connected with a train of remarkable incidents, were considered with much attention, and taken down from the mouths of those present, or extracted from the original journals.
I was likewise enabled to collect much information from those engaged in the seal trade. The occupation of these men leads them into seas far remote from the ordinary track of the whaler, and their adventures are of the most daring character. In vessels so small that they might seem unsafe for our coasting trade, or the navigation of rivers and inlets, they take the seal from the rocky shores of Patagonia, and the islands around Cape Horn, girt with a belt of perpetual foam, and range along the entire western coast of South America. Nor is their enterprise confined within these bounds, for they skirt the eastern and western shores of Africa, circle the islands of the Pacific, and, penetrating far into the Southern Ocean, have in some instances completed their cargoes close on the limits of the Antarctic circle!
Reynolds makes the case for an expedition:
During our sojourn in the South seas, and more especially while in the Pacific, connected with our p
ublic service, we had frequent opportunities of seeing many of our whalers, and of learning from their own mouths the nature and extent of the dangers they had to encounter. From them we learned the position of numerous islands recently discovered by them, and not yet embodied in any report.
These are discoveries which make little or no noise in the world; there is no long story, no spirit-stirring incident, no romance, attached to them; there is but a rock, a coral reef, or an island more in the midst of an ocean, where thousands already exist; and yet he who points out a rock, a reef, or an island, unknown before, is a benefactor to the human race. Nor is he less entitled to the appellation, who, after a careful examination, is enabled to decide that a rock, an island, a reef, or a shoal, is either misplaced on the chart, or has no existence. An insulated rock in the midst of the waste of waters, may, while its position continues unascertained, prove the cause of the most intense misery; and families deprived of parents and children, and merchants reduced from affluence to unaccustomed poverty, may ascribe their calamities to that hardly visible speck, mantled with rolling waves, and half hid with the foam of the tumbling breakers. Let those exult in their prosperity who are carried on joyously before its gales, and have not tasted of the bitter reverses which attend upon those who “go down to the sea in ships.” The lesson of experience they have not learned, and would they never may; but they are from this very fact, to a certain degree, incapacitated from forming a just estimate of the importance of results such as we would accomplish. But if any heart-stricken parent or ruined merchant were to determine upon the subject now before you, how decisive would be his reply, and how soon would this expedition depart upon its errand of philanthropy!
In visiting that part of the ocean surrounded by the Society Islands, New Caledonia, and Solomon’s Islands—indeed, the whole of that extensive tract embraced under the name of Oceanica—we find the mariner in constant danger of striking his keel against some point of coral rock, shooting perpendicularly upward from an immense depth, and presenting, in every part, the germs of a new world, “or the magnificent fragments of an old one.”
There the amplest fields for commercial activity have been opened, and are every day extending yet more widely, in the search after numerous productions of those remote regions, many of which have become articles of great value in the interchange of commerce; yet, there the madrepore, or coral insect, is very busy in rearing its vast superstructure to the surface; and the dark volcano, bursting from the depths of the sea, pours its broken fragments and molten lava above the level of the waters, and, by the decomposition of its surface, is rapidly converted into an island.
Over this vast sweep of ocean, speckled with more than a thousand islands, whose position requires to be marked more accurately on the charts, and one-half of that number not to be found on the charts at all, there are many groups inhabited by every variety of savage man. Around these, we have at this moment two hundred ships engaged in the whale fishery alone, measuring more than eighty thousand tons, whose cargoes, without taking into calculation the cost of the vessels and outfits, are at least two hundred thousand barrels of sperm oil, worth not less than six millions of dollars.
Going south:
But one more view of this subject remains, and that we shall present as concisely as possible. We have thus far spoken only of the tropical islands, of their inhabitants, and of our shipping, with the nautical and scientific labours to be performed in those regions. That the picture is not overdrawn we most confidently appeal to the members on the floor of Congress, whose constituents are immediately interested in the various traffic of those seas. To them of right belongs the more able support of this measure, if indeed opposition can be anticipated to an enterprise demanded, we repeat again, by the wisest considerations of national policy, and honour, and the imperious calls of suffering humanity.
We have said, that only one more view of this subject remains to be taken. Follow us, then, for a moment, from the sunny isles of the tropics, to regions farther south, where the indefatigable whaler must yet pursue his mighty prey along the verge of the Antarctic circle, where our intrepid sealers scale the seemingly inaccessible cliffs and mountains of ice in quest of their game, and where the discovery ships should spend a few months during the most favourable season of the southern summer.
What! extend our researches to regions surrounding the South Pole! And wherefore not? Shall the reproach for ever rest upon our character, that we can do nothing, think of nothing, talk of nothing, that is not connected with dollars and cents? The great and beneficial objects of the expedition have been already discussed. Will you not allow us some scope for high and daring adventure? We know that whatever our interest and our honour require, will meet with the approbation and support of the great body of the American people; but we also know, that without some devotion to science and liberal pursuits, though we may become powerful, yea, in an uninterrupted career of prosperity, invincible by land and sea, yet we can never be truly great!
… The southern hemisphere presents by far the more interesting field for discovery, containing as it does, more than one million and a half of square miles, which have never been trodden by the footsteps of man, nor its waters divided by the keel of the adventurous navigator; regions of which, we know little more than we do of the planet Georgium Sidus, or an orb revolving round one of the most distant of the twinkling stars.
Is it not remarkable, that while the most learned and profound of all ages, have been munificently encouraged to ascertain the nature, and the courses, and the times of the planets, that belong to our system, and revolve round a common centre of light and heat, so large a part of our own earth should remain almost as little known to us, as those planets are, though separated from us by distances conceivable only by the mighty mind which ordained them! Man, indeed, in his proud walks, appears anxious to tread the milky way; to extend his researches to the utmost bounds of creation; to mark the bold planet in his career, and unfold the laws that govern him; while he remains, perhaps, culpably negligent of the undiscovered parts of his own little globe, that are still within the bounds of practical experiment.
Few, feeble, and far between, have been the efforts to explore the higher latitudes south. Let us briefly examine them.
—Excerpts from Jeremiah Reynolds’s Address on the Subject of a Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas, which was delivered to the United States Congress on April 3, 1836. The last passage above is followed by a detailed overview of previous expeditions in these latitudes, which Poe paraphrased and sometimes stole outright, in Chapter XVI of Pym. Reynolds was an editor, author, and explorer who lectured on Symmes’s theories of the Hollow Earth and petitioned the U.S. government for funding to further explore the Antarctic.
Poe’s Support of Reynolds and
the Antarctic Expedition
In the Messenger for last August we spoke briefly on this head. What we then said was embraced in the form of a Critical Notice on the “Report (March 21, 1836) of the Committee on Naval Affairs to whom was referred Memorials from sundry citizens of Connecticut interested in the Whale Fishery, praying that an exploring expedition be fitted in the Whale Fishery, praying that an exploring expedition be fitted out to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas.” It is now well known to the community that this expedition, the design of which has been for ten years in agitation, has been authorized by Congress; sanctioned, and liberally provided for, by the Executive; and will almost immediately set sail. The public mind is at length thoroughly alive on the subject, and in touching upon it now, we merely propose to give, if possible, such an outline of the history, object, and nature of the project, as may induce the reader to examine, for himself, the volume whose title forms the heading, of this article. Therein Mr. Reynolds has embodied a precise and full account of the whole matter, with every necessary document and detail.
In beginning we must necessarily begin with Mr. Reynolds. He is the originator, the persevering and
indomitable advocate, the life, the soul of the design. Whatever, of glory at least, accrue therefore from the expedition, this gentleman, whatever post he may occupy in it, or whether none, will be fairly entitled to the lion’s share, and will as certainly receive it. He is a native of Ohio, where his family are highly respectable, and where he was educated and studied the law. He is known, by all who know him at all, as a man of the loftiest principles and of unblemished character. “His writings,” to use the language of Mr. Hamer on the floor of the House of Representatives, “have attracted the attention of men of letters; and literary societies and institutions have conferred upon him some of the highest honors they had to bestow.” For ourselves, we have frequently borne testimony to his various merits as a gentleman, a writer and a scholar.
It is now many years since Mr. R’s attention was first attracted to the great national advantages derivable from an exploring expedition to the South Sea and the Pacific; time has only rendered the expediency of the undertaking more obvious. To-day the argument for the design is briefly as follows. No part of the whole commerce of our country is of more importance than that carried on in the regions in question. At the lowest estimate a capital of twelve millions of dollars is actively employed by one branch of the whale fishery alone; and there is involved in the whole business, directly and collaterally, not less probably than seventy millions of property. About one tenth of the entire navigation of the United States is engaged in this service—from 9 to 12,000 seamen, and from 170 to 200,000 tons of shipping. The results of the fishery are in the highest degree profitable—it being not a mere interchange of commodities, but, in a great measure, the creation of wealth, by labor, from the ocean. It produces to the United States an annual income of from five to six millions of dollars. It is a most valuable nursery for our seamen, rearing up a race of hardy and adventurous men, eminently fit for the purposes of the navy. This fishery then is of importance—its range may be extended—at all events its interests should be protected. The scene of its operations, however, is less known and more full of peril than any other portion of the globe visited by our ships. It abounds in islands, reefs and shoals unmarked upon any chart-prudence requires that the location of these should be exactly defined. The savages in these regions have frequently evinced a murderous hostility—they should be conciliated or intimidated. The whale, and more especially all furred animals, are becoming scarce before the perpetual warfare of man—new generations will be found in the south, and the nation first to discover them will reap nearly all the rich benefits of the discovery. Our trade in ivory, in sandal-wood, in biche le-mer, in feathers, in quills, in seal-oil, in porpoise oil, and in seal elephant oil, may here be profitably extended. Various other sources of commerce will be met with, and may be almost exclusively appropriated. The crews, or at least some portion of the crews, of many of our vessels known to be wrecked in this vicinity, may be rescued from a life of slavery and despair. Moreover, we are degraded by the continual use of foreign charts. In matters of mere nautical or geographical science, our government has been hitherto supine, and it is due to the national character that in these respects something should be done. We have now a chance of redeeming ourselves in the Southern Sea. Here is a wide field open and nearly untouched—“a theatre peculiarly our own from position and the course of human events.” Individual enterprize, even acting especially for the purpose, cannot be expected to accomplish all that should be done-dread of forfeiting insurance will prevent our whale-ships from effecting any thing of importance incidentally- and our national vessels on general service have elsewhere far more than they can efficiently attend to. In the meantime our condition is prosperous beyond example, our treasury is overflowing, a special national expedition could accomplish every thing desired, the expense of it will be comparatively little, the whole scientific world approve it, the people demand it and thus there is a multiplicity of good reasons why it should immediately be set on foot …
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket Page 22
