FLORIDA MAGAZINE
Florida Magazine January 1902
With this number begins the remarkable narrative of Mr. E. W. Barrington, entitled "The Iron Republic.” It may be unnecessary for the Magazine to disclaim any responsibility for the truth of this extraordinary story. The writer claims to have absolute and demonstrable evidence of the truth of the article on board his vessel now lying in Tampa Bay; but we have not had the opportunity to inspect these proofs.
It is only fair to Mr. Barrington to say, that he invites the public to come aboard his ship and see for themselves. Either as fact or fiction it is a rare story and presents an ideal of society and government that will make the average reader long to be a citizen of the newly discovered Iron Republic.
The Iron Republic
RICHARD JAMESON MORGAN (All rights reserved)
Chapter 1
Dear Sir: Since the visit of your representative to my vessel, I have thought over the matter and decided to respond to your invitation to give an account of my strange adventures for the benefit of your readers. I write the narrative for your magazine because you have been kind enough to ask for it and because your interest and consideration is in marked contrast to that of other editors who have treated me with positive discourtesy, refusing to accept the statement of my experiences seriously. I am well aware that much of what I shall relate will appear incredible, and doubtless the whole story will be set down by many as a purely fanciful creation, like the fictions produced by Bellamy and other theorists within the past few years.
About this matter, though I give myself no concern, as the many incontrovertible proofs, documentary and otherwise, which I have on board, will when presented to the proper authorities, receive the recognition of the government in due and proper form, as also that of geographical and scientific societies the world over.
I regret that my narrative proved, and demonstrated as it will be, must unsettle scientific theories and make it necessary to reconstruct some of our schoolbooks. But while this will result in temporary inconvenience and shake the faith of some in the dicta of science, upon the whole the benefit will far exceed the injury. It is well to have our scientific theories unsettled every now and then, or we would become fossilized and arrogant like the bigots of the middle ages and oppose any further advance in knowledge.
It is unnecessary to say that after my narrative has been accepted, the Zetetic theory of the earth as a plane will have to be recognized and the geographies made in conformity therewith.
In writing this history of my adventures, I wish it distinctly understood that I make no pretensions to literary style or ability and my account will probably be crude and faulty in many respects. My only effort will be to tell a round unvarnished tale true in every particular, for I realize that it is only in its truthfulness that the story can be of any value.
A man whose literary efforts have been limited to lawyer's briefs, few and far between, and whose supreme and most extended written effort was a spread eagle thesis on the science of politics, at the conclusion of an uneventful college career, cannot be expected to be a model of literary excellence.
But to come to my story. In the autumn of '94, I was enjoying a comfortable practice in a flourishing county town in one of the great states of the Middle West. I say comfortable practice, because it was one that entailed very little work and gave me plenty of time to devote to society and politics, for the latter of which I had always felt a strong predilection. My father had achieved some distinction as an officer in the civil war and afterwards rose high in the politics of his state. It was the opinion of many that had he entered the arena of politics at an earlier period in life, he might have risen to the very highest office in the nation.
It has always been my desire to emulate his political career, and the prestige of his name with my strong inclination for public life, gave reasonable promise of success. Modesty forbids the mention of other reasons, though I already enjoyed some reputation as a speaker and was regarded by politicians throughout the state as a tighter and a “coming man".
I had adopted the profession of law as nearest allied to politics and a brass plate bearing the name of “J. Edward Barrington, Attorney and Counselor at Law,” adorned my door, though I was known in political circles as Ned Barrington and a “live wire.” There was no great demand for my professional services and I was not displeased that my social and political popularity far outshone my professional fame. The reader will understand my position when I say, by way of explanation, that I was not dependent upon my profession for support, my father, who died during my last year in college, having left an ample fortune for a young man of my steady habits and inexpensive tastes. And so, at the time my story opens I may say without offensive egotism, that I was rather a promising young man of, twenty-four, with a clear conscience, infinite digestion and (I say it modestly) a fair share of good looks.
I was a member of the Young Men's Christian Association, president of a flourishing literary club and had been for a year past the chairman of the republican executive committee of our county. I was also a leading spirit in a local temperance society and was supposed to have considerable influence with the better elements of society in the town and county. I had never been a candidate for any office, but was a worker in my party, content to wait for my time. I am thus particular in these uninteresting details, because on them hinged the events that changed the whole course of my life, and gave me an experience that will, in all probability, make my name as familiar in future generations as that of Galileo or Columbus. The campaign of ’94 was a particularly heated one. “Fatty” Burkheit, a notorious dive keeper, had been nominated by the Republican Party as the candidate for congress from our district and a wave of indignation swept over the country. Meetings were held, several of which I addressed, and this action of the party was condemned on all sides. The district was republican by a large majority, but many life-long republicans declared that they would never vote for such a candidate.
The democratic convention had nominated “Buck” Magee, an expired fighter, of a reputation so unsavory that the alternative of voting for the opposition candidate was not to be thought of.
One evening in September, I was sitting before a comfortable fire in my library reading the evening paper, when my office boy announced a party of gentlemen. Supposing it was some members of the executive committee come to talk over the political situation, or a party of friends to enjoy a rubber of whist, I had them ushered in. To abbreviate this part of my story as much as possible, it transpired that these gentlemen were members of the democratic committee and came with a proposition to cast the bulk of their party vote for me if I would permit myself to be brought forward as an independent candidate. They pointed out that the respectable element of the Republican Party demanded a candidate that it could vote for, and that with this vote and the support I would get from the Democratic Party, my election was assured. It is not necessary to dwell upon the details of that conference. Suffice it to say that the interest was so great and their reasoning so cogent that I consented in the interest of morality and good government, to lead the movement. It seemed to be the providential opening to a great career, and when, in the enthusiasm occasioned by my acquiescence, the four gentlemen (who seemed to be men of wealth,) shook hands with me and with each other and pledged a thousand dollars apiece in support of the campaign against corruption, I could do no less than hand them a check for a like amount.
This part of my narrative may be tiresome reading but it is a part of the story and in telling a story as in solving a problem, there is nothing like having all the factors stated at the beginning.
I will pass over the exciting events of that campaign; the speeches I made, the letters received, commending, warning, threatening even; the abuse heaped upon me by members of my own party, is all a part of the political history of the district. Up to the last week of the campaign, it seemed that my election was certain.
A few days before the election I was waited upon by a committee of “workers,” with a letter of introduction from the chairman of the democratic committee, which stated that the support of these gentlemen was absolutely essential to my success at the polls. After reading the letter, I turned to the party, which had remained standing and asked what I could do for them. Taking the stub of a cigar from his mouth and squirting a lot of tobacco juice on my carpet, the leader a big-nosed Dutchman, made two or three awkward attempts to speak and finally blurted out something like the following: “dots all right cabding, you dond vanst ter ged lefd at der pallot box. Goot! Id dakes monish der make der mare drot. See? Ve vill gif you der subbort of der zaloon geepers for ten thousant tollars vich buts you in gongress vare you can makes id back on one vode. See? You puts oop der ten thousant ter shwing der vode ant goes to gongress; You dond put oop und sthays ter hoom. Und now vich is it?”
And replacing the cigar stub in his mouth and putting his arms akimbo, he looked for the world like a fiery fat jug with a handle on both sides. To say that I was astonished, does not express it. I was utterly dumbfounded. The appearance of the men in my house had been an insult and when the vile proposition was made, it was more than I could endure and without standing on the quality of my English, I turned them summarily out of doors.
The balance is soon told. The democrats voted solidly for their candidate as it was intended they should, and as I drew about fifty per cent of the republican vote, a democrat was elected to congress for the first time in the history of our district.
I learned afterwards that if I had paid the ten thousand dollars it would in no wise have affected the result. The money I did advance was not used in furthering my candidacy at all and the whole scheme was a device to divide and defeat the republican party in the district.
The morning after the election, I was the most universally hated man in the state. I was abused, ridiculed, cartooned. Life-long friends turned their backs upon me as a man who had sacrificed principle and sold himself in the vain hope of gratifying an inordinate political ambition. Some of those even, who had supported my candidacy, shook their heads dubiously and said there, had been selling somewhere!
This, with the natural mortification I felt at having been used as a cat’s paw and defeated, thus cutting off prematurely my anticipated political career, made existence a burden and I determined to leave forever the scene of my disgrace.
But where could I go? My name was familiar from one end of the country to the other, even my features, from a half-page cartoon in a New York paper representing me as a cat's paw pulling out of the fire a most self-satisfied looking chestnut, which revealed the countenance of the successful democratic candidate. After some bitter reflection, I decided to convert my property into money, and purchase a vessel large enough and strong enough to bear me beyond the confines of civilization, for only there did I feel that I could escape from the scorn of my fellowmen.
My eventful voyage, my discovery of the “Iron Republic” with its remarkable government and industrial conditions, my residence on this hitherto unknown continent, and study of its wonderful advancement
in civilization and the arts of life, I will give an account of, to the best of my ability in this narrative, which I trust may be as interesting as it is true. In the meantime the people of Jacksonville are welcome on board of my vessel at all times, where they will be at liberty to inspect the many articles of interest which I brought from the land which lies beyond the ice barriers of the Antarctic circle.
Chapter 2
As soon as possible after the disastrous termination of my first and last political campaign, I turned everything I had into gold and going down to New York bought the fine vessel which now lies in this harbor, somewhat the worse for wear, but still staunch and seaworthy. I shipped a good crew and a captain who had spent twenty years of his life playing hide and seek with icebergs as master of a whaler. My intention was to go on a three years’ cruise into the Arctic regions and probably remain there, devoting the remainder of my life to the good of those isolated people, running the ship back and forth to the, port of some civilized country.
After a conversation with Captain Brent, however, I changed my plans and decided to go south instead of north. My reason for this was that Captain Brent had done all of his whaling in southern waters and was familiar with every piece of terra firma from the straits of Magellan to Kirguelan’s Land and knew nothing whatever about the Arctic regions. And inasmuch as my object was to get away and as far away as possible from the haunts of civilized men, I readily agreed and drew the papers for a three years’ cruise to extend as far south as I should desire, “open water permitting.”
On the 17th day of June 1895, having on board stores for a three years’ cruise, fifty thousand dollars in gold coin in an iron safe in my private cabin and a picked crew. I sailed out of New York harbor literally shaking the dust of my native country from my feet, and carrying a lighter heart than I had for months past.
It is not necessary to draw out and magnify the incidents of this voyage. There are writers, (W. Clark Russel for instance,) whose business in life is to describe sea voyages. The chief interest in this story must lie in what was accomplished by the voyage and not the voyage itself. In my cabin with my books, under an awning on the poop with Captain Brent,—who was extremely well informed for a seaman—or making myself at home with the sailors before the mast, every hour was pleasantly employed. Winds were very favorable considering the season of the year and we drew down rapidly towards the tropics.
On the 10th of August we crossed the equator and I brought out half dozen bottles of wine and a box of cigars and had the sailors, who were all smart American boys, aft. About the last of September, we passed the cape and began to realize that we were indeed leaving the habitable world and passing into a solitude of waters whose southern boundaries were unknown. And here our real voyage began.
There is a fierceness and blackness in these wild waters below the cape that those familiar only with the ship courses of the Atlantic and Pacific, can form no conception of. Wilder and wilder grew the sea as we drew southward, but Captain Brent was an old navigator and I feared the terrors of the whole An-arctic region not so much as a single cartoon in an American newspaper.
In a hundred and fifty-one days after leaving New York, we encountered ice and a month later, we were sailing along the southern ice barriers that towered like sapphire cliffs as far as the eye could see in either direction. It was now summer time in these regions and Captain Brent said he had never seen the sea so clear of ice. Whales spouted in every direction and seafowl by thousands sailed above us or perched among the icy precipices. The grandeur of the scenery about us at this time baffles description. As we sailed leisurely east by south, there was a wall of ice on our right, ranging from fifty to three hundred feet high, giving out with a splendor which no artist may portray, the gorgeous hues of the rainbow. In some places, the cliffs overhung making great grottoes in which the largest ship might float.
On the 23rd of December we sighted the lofty summit of Mount Erebus, the only volcano, so far as is known in the Antarctic regions. On the 29th., turning a spur or promontory of ice that jutted out many miles into the sea, we ran into a great cove land-locked, or rather ice-locked, where the water was smooth and where the cliffs shelved up gradually from the water's edge, reaching back and up many thousand feet, to where the opal tinted ice shaded off into the dull gray and brown of the rugged and barren rocks of Mount Erebus.
Standing on the deck of the ship and looking up the wide and irregular incline of ice that extended from the water's edge up to where the rugged sides of Mount Erebus showed above, I enjoyed one of the grandest sights ever looked upon by man. This sloping incline was broken into hundreds of terraces down which the melting snow water dashed in innumerable cascades and poured into the sea, making great banks of fleecy foam that froze and floated away, as it were, gossamer icebergs.
As I gazed up this terraced incline from the placid sea to the towering heights beyond, it looked like a marble stairway leading up to heaven, so broad and grand in its mighty sweep that all the tribes of earth might mount upon it. It was a picture that Milton or Homer might have used in their immortal epics of gods and angels.
The water lapping over terraces and leaping downward here and there was as white as milk and in the distance looked like gauzy draperies of lace and down spread on the mighty stairway, as archangels might spread them for gods to walk upon. No grander sight was ever looked upon by seer or prophet in the most enraptured vision.
This phenomenon, so remarkable in these regions of ice and snow, where the temperature is always be-low the freezing point, was caused by the heat of Mount Erebus melting the ice and snow that climbed up its sides for thousands of feet. The volcano was in a mild state of eruption and I suppose the hidden fires on this side had melted down the ice walls and worn away this great thoroughfare to the sea by pouring down a continuous flood of water. The ascent looked accessible and I determined to make an effort to reach the great cone and have a view of these unknown regions. We had Christmas dinner on board, after which Captain Brent read from his manual a service suitable for the occasion, and perhaps with the exception of myself, everyone on the ship yearned for home and its associations, on this day of universal joy and gladness. The boys looked blue enough until I brought out a great bowl of punch, but that soon brought them back to a state of warmth and merriment. A fine carouse the fellows had and when I proposed to lead a party to climb Mount Erebus next day, every one volunteered to go and my only difficulty was in making a selection. I chose three of the hardiest and the next morning with rubber boots reaching to our waists and so wrapped in woolens that we might pass a night without harm, (if we could but get above the ice and water,) we lowered a boat and pulled in to the shelving beach, taking along an extra crew to carry the boat back to the vessel. Laying our boat alongside the ice, we had no difficulty in effecting a landing, as the water was quite smooth and in many places we could easily step out on the ice.
SYNOPSIS OF FORMER CHAPTERS.
Mr. J. E. Barrington a brilliant and wealthy young lawyer and politician of one of the great middle western states is duped and sold out by the professional politicians in his campaign for congress, and chagrined and embittered against his country and the entire human race be converts all of his property into gold and going to New York purchases a vessel with which be sails down into the Antarctic regions with the intention of devoting his life and means to polar explorations or finding some isolated country beyond the pale of civilization and out of the track of sea travel where he will be lost to the world.
Chapter 2 — (Continued.)
To my surprise, I found the ascent less difficult than I expected. Picking out the easiest ways and keeping as much as possible out of the water, we reached a secondary cone or summit about two-thirds of the way up as darkness, or rather the twilight of the Antarctic night, closed in upon us. The surface was quite dry and warm and I never spent a more comfortable night in these frozen regions than on this lofty peak of Mount Erebus. Getting under a ledge of rocks that sheltered us from the wind, which cut like a knife, we slept soundly without fear of mice or bedbugs. That night we witnessed the grandest display of the aurora australis that perhaps any human eyes ever looked upon before. We were eight or nine thousand feet above the sea, and the luminous bands of purple and orange colored light seemed to spring up from all around us and as they spread towards the zenith and then dipped umbrella shaped to the horizon, the white desolation of this frozen world was suffused with supernatural glory. As we looked out and away on the endless panorama of crags and cliffs and peaks of what seemed to be mountain ranges below us. All deathly white in this unearthly light, it looked like the ghost of a dead world. The scene was overpowering and after a hasty survey, we were glad to clamber down into our little gorge, out of the uncanny light and smoke our pipes, and hear each other's voices, to bring us back, as it were, to ourselves. This volcano is on the coast of Victoria Land and in all probability; we were the first human beings who ever set foot on it. It is between 70 and 80 degrees south latitude and looking east or west as far as the eye could see, with the exception of the stairway like slope tip which we had climbed, stretched an unbroken wall of ice. Looking southward though, with the aid of a glass, I could plainly see an open sea very much like that on the north and clearer of ice. I studied the situation carefully. Here was the impenetrable ice barrier that had baffled every explorer of these southern seas. All below this latitude was supposed to be a continent of ice and snow. Men had sailed down here and been dashed against this wall or had gone back dismayed. But here on the south was the open sea which, if it could be reached, offered to the curious navigator opportunity to go. Heaven only knew where. The more I looked at that great open sea. The more I became convinced that there was a passage somewhere through the icy wall connecting these two bodies of water.
We made the descent without incident, and I instructed Captain Brent to hold a safe distance from the ice and circumnavigate the entire Antarctic Circle or find a passage through the ice. Fully imbued then with the idea that the earth was a sphere, I supposed that this body of water on the south was simply an open polar sea, surrounded by walls of ice.
The next day it came on to blow a gale of sleet and snow and we ought northward for four days through such a storm as can only age in the frozen seas about the South Pole. During these entire our days it was so dark that we could not see the topmast from the deck though every spar and shroud was white with ice. Several times, we were in dangerous proximity to icebergs, but standing to windward as we were, we could smell the mighty monsters though we could not see them, and keep away. This "smell of an iceberg, as it is called by seamen, is the peculiar crispness of the air blowing over one of these great bodies of ice and may be felt for miles. The vessel was awash from capstan to wheel, and though we could carry scarcely more canvas than would give us steerage way, her lee scuppers were most of the time dragging through the hissing brine and it was absolutely necessary for every man above deck to lash himself to the rigging to keep from being washed overboard. Cooking was out of the question and for four days there was no fire in the cook's galley, our diet during this time consisting of sea biscuit and tinned food with an occasional panicking of rum to keep up the warmth. It was a fearful time and though we had encountered much heavy weather on the voyage, we had experienced nothing comparable with this. Indeed. Captain Brent said afterwards, that in all his twenty years of voyaging in these waters he had never passed through so terrible a gale.
Only the staunchness of our ship and the skill and experience of our skipper saved us from destruction. It may not be irreverent or presumptuous in me also, to feel that an over-ruling Providence guided us through this ice strewn and storm whipped sea, that the great results of our voyage might be achieved.
When the terrific storm subsided and the atmosphere cleared so that we could again see about us, the towering ice barriers were nowhere to be seen. How much northing we had made it was impossible for us to tell as we had entirely lost our reckoning. Heading southward again until we raised the ice wall along which we had been coasting before the gale, we shaped our course parallel to it and held on with the view of finding a passage through it, if there was such a thing.
Fourteen days after this, during which time we encountered all sorts of weather, (for there are never many days together in these seas without a wild snort of wind and snow from some direction,) Captain Brent called me up from my cabin and handing me his glass directed my attention to an opening in the wall of ice before us. Two crystal promontories jutted out into the water on either hand and between, a narrow but well-defined and opened strait. We could not see through, as it was sinuous, but after observing it for some time, we could perceive by the loose ice that was floating about the mouth that a current set into it.
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