We know that, if attained, the North Pole would probably be like any other part of the Arctic regions, presenting a landscape of ice and snow, perhaps with black rock showing here and there, containing fossils of a former age of heat, perhaps broken by pools or lanes of open water. The pole has no physical mark any more than the top of a spinning coin has, and the pole is not even a fixed point; like the end of the axis of the spinning coin, it moves a little to and fro on the circumference. If the geographical point were reached, the pole-star would be seen shining almost vertically overhead, describing a tiny circle around the actual zenith; and all the other stars of the northern half of the sky would appear slowly wheeling in horizontal circles, never rising, never setting, and each completing its circuit in the space of twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes. In summer the sun would appear similarly, never far above the horizon, but circling for more than half the year in a spiral, winding upward until about 25 deg. above the horizon, and winding downward again until lost to view. The periods of daylight and darkness at the poles do not last exactly six months each, as little geography books are prone to assert. Such little books ignore the atmosphere for the sake of simplicity, but the air-shell that shuts in our globe bends the rays of light, so that the sun appears before his theoretical rising, and remains in sight after his theoretical setting. At the pole, in fact, the single "half-yearly day" is a week longer than the one "half-yearly night." At the North Pole there is only one direction--south. One could go south in as many ways as there are points on the compass card, but every one of these ways is south; east and west have vanished. The hour of the day at the pole is a paradoxical conception, for that point is the meeting place of every meridian, and the time of all holds good, so that it is always any hour one cares to mention. Unpunctuality is hence impossible--but the question grows complex, and its practical solution concerns few. No one needs to go to the pole to discover all that makes that point different from any other point of the surface. But the whole polar regions are full of unknown things, which every Arctic explorer of the right stamp looks forward to finding. And the reward he looks forward to most is the approval of the few who understand and love knowledge for its own sake, rather than the noisy applause of the crowd who would cheer him, after all, much as they cheer a winning prize-fighter, or race-horse, or political candidate.