AMUNDSEN

66

ANÆSTHETIC

has all the adjuncts of a progressive city. Population, 31,267.

Amundsen, Capt. Roald. For nine months of the year no stranger comes to the mining camp of Eagle City, Alaska. It is on the Arctic circle, and its one long street of log houses fronts on the frozen flood of the Yukon. When, therefore, one short, dark day in December, 1905, a dog-sledge dashed into town over the ice of the river, not from the coast 150 miles to the west, but from the east, down the slope of the Canadian Rockies, everyone was amazed. The stranger was of powerful build and had the sea-blue eyes and blond coloring of a Norse viking. He was clothed in yellow seal-skins, and his dogs were of Esquimaux breed, unlike Alaskan huskies.

"Captain Roald Amundsen of the Steamship Gjoa, Christiania, Norway," is the way he registered in the big log hotel. It was the Danish explorer, whose little ship had been reported crushed in the ice six months before. He had steamed from Greenland to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, through the Northwest Passage that had been sought for more than four hundred years—from the time Sebastian Cabot coasted along Labrador, in 1497. He had spent a year and a half on King William's Land, where Sir John Franklin had finished sixty years before; had determined the position of the north magnetic pole; and had brought his gallant little craft and crew of eight men through unharmed.

Roald Amundsen was born of Danish parents in the city of Christiania, Norway, in 1870. After completing a common school education he became a sailor. At 25 years of age he joined a south polar expedition. Returning, he sought the friendship of Dr. Nansen, the Arctic explorer, for he had decided to try to locate the magnetic pole and to make the Northwest Passage, both of which Sir John Franklin's expedition had determined to lie in the neighborhood of King William's Land and Boothia. Amundsen spent six years in study and preparation. He fitted out a 73 foot, 60 ton sloop to be propelled by a petroleum engine and manned by eight Norse sailors. A cockleshell of a boat it was, and many thought him foolish to venture with it into a region where hundreds of big whalers had been lost. He left Christiania in June, 1903, got dogs and supplies at Godhaven, Greenland, and disappeared. Two years later he left his observation station, and turned the prow of the Gjoa westward for the narrow, tortuous, 200-mile long passage, slipping through the sounds and straits, lying in sheltered bays to let the drift-ice go by, nosing between bergs, creeping over shallows, winning his way to the whaling fleet at Herschell Island, Mackenzie River. It was then October, and the little craft was soon frozen in. With the captain of a whaler, Amundsen made

the overland trip of 700 miles across a 7,000-foot mountain range in the dead of the Arctic winter. The journey took six weeks, but not a finger was frost-bitten nor a good dog lost. In the spring Amundsen went back and took the Gjoa around through Bering Strait to San Francisco— a historic voyage, as this is the first time in history that a ship has voyaged from the Atlantic to the Pacific by a northern route. There is a plan afoot to secure the Gjoa as a permanent relic and monument of human courage, endurance and devotion that have at last conquered the desolation of the frozen north and made it give up its scientific secrets. The hero of this latest Arctic expedition is only 37, and may do other deeds as daring.

Anaconda (ănra-kŏn'dá), a large serpent allied to the boa-constrictor, is found in South America, especially in Brazil and in Guiana. It sometimes grows to the length of forty feet, and is the largest serpent in America. It passes much of the time in the water, choosing the shallow parts of a lake or stream. It is not poisonous.

Anacon'da, Montana, a city, the county seat of Deer Lodge County, situated about 28 miles west by north of Butte, and reached by the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern and the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway. Its chief industry is copper-smelting, the works of which employ usually about 1,500 men. The town is growing rapidly, and has some fine public buildings, including the Hearst Free Library, several banks, opera houses, schools, etc. It has also a system of public parks. Its industries include foundries, railway and machine shops, brick works and copper smelting. It has graphite deposits in the vicinity, while sapphires are among its earth-bedded treasures. Population, 10,134.

An' æsthet' ic, the name applied to any agency which causes either partial or complete insensibility to pain. There are two kinds of anaesthetics : those called local anaesthetics, which affect only a limited area; and those called general anæsthetics, which cause temporary insensibility of the whole body. Anæsthetics of various kinds were used by the ancient Greeks and by the Chinese as early as the third century A. D. When men began to study chemistry systematically, toward the close of the eighteenth century, various anæsthetics were discovered, but it was some time before they came into common use. In 1844 Dr. Horace Wells of Hartford, Conn., used nitrous oxide gas to render the extraction of teeth painless. In 1846 Dr. Morton of Boston employed the vapor of sulphuric ether for the same purpose, and afterwards applied it in cases requiring surgery. In 1847 Sir James J. Simpson of Edinborough announced the discovery of chloroform,