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Show DECEIT IMPOSSIBLE. Writing about Polar expeditions, the Rev. W. Rigge, S. J., thus explains the impossibility of deceit in this matter in a communication to the Omaha Sunday World-Herald: "It is not possible for Dr. Cook to deceive us in his claim of having reached the pole. His observations ob-servations will show a regular variation in the data, which no man could possibly put down in bad faith without being detected. Dr. Cook must have kept a double record of his journey, an astronomical astronomi-cal one and tlje one by dead reckoning, each of which was a check upon the other. By the latter method he noted the direction in which he was traveling and the rate of progress. This would give him his positions differentially with respect to previous positions, and would enable him to find his way in cloudy weather, in the same way exactly as is done at sea under the same conditions. "As the latitudes and longitudes of his previous position were known, those of his subsequent stations sta-tions became known also. By the astronomical method he found his positions from the sun by means of his sextant, or small transit, and his chronometer. chro-nometer. These observations would give his position po-sition absolutely without reference to other stations. sta-tions. The difference between his stations found in this way ought, of course, to be practically the same as the method of dead reckoning. It would be a practical impossibility for Dr. Cook to deceive de-ceive us in the original data and figures which he will show us in his note books. "First of all, there are his sextant or transit readings. These readings are affected by instrumental instru-mental errors, by the sun's actual position and motion, mo-tion, and especially by the unusual refraction of the air at such low temperatures as his thermometers recorded. "Secondly, there are the chronometer readings, which are subject to the errors of a variable rate caused by traveling under such severe conditions, and by the usual temperature mentioned, and also to some etxent, by the barometer. "Thirdly, his barometer readings must be con-sisten con-sisten with those observed at other stations. While these stations were, of course, pretty far away, still it would not be very difficult for an expert weather man to trace his barometer gradient to American or Siberian stations. "Fourthly, Dr. Cook's thermometer readings should also, to some minor extent, tally with those observed elsewhere, and should at least be consistent consist-ent with themselves, with the -weather he recorded, the violnce and direction of th winds, the probable effect of weeks of isolation and the like. - "Fifthly, his data concering the variation of the magnetic needle, of its declination and of its inclination, if he observed them, should be consistent, con-sistent, and not too wildly at variance with known or supposed data. "Sixthly, the low temperatures he experience, the rough handling his instruments were exposed to, and unavoidable accidents which no human ingenuity in-genuity could foresee' and provide for, must have introduced many accidental errors of observation, which may tax an expert to the limit of his ability when he investigates their effects upon the recorded re-corded data. "That any one mortal man should be able to design such a journey; such a connected series of observation; that he should introduce into the theoretically correct data a host of practical errors of observation; and especially that he should devise de-vise such a consistent chain of figures that all the experts of the world should not be able to detect the forgery, is surely an undertaking that immensely im-mensely surpasses the genius of the greatest mathematician, math-ematician, the greatest abstract and practical scientific sci-entific man, and of the greatest and shrewdest detective de-tective that ever lived." |