Dr. Silex

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. It is now some ten years since the Silex Expedition left England to discover the North Pole, and though fresh interest has been directed to it from time to time by relief expeditions, and more recently by the publication of the will of Dr. Silex, yet the cursory reader of the newspapers may be glad to have his memory strengthened by a recital of the main facts.<br><br>Dr. Silex was an intimate friend of my own, and I feel that it is my duty both to him and to the readers of the extraordinary story I have now to make public, to first of all give some description of the character and personality of a very remarkable man.<br><br>In 1890 - a year before the Expedition left England - Dr. Silex was best known to the world as a man of vast wealth, and to his friends and acquaintances as one whose whole life from boyhood had been devoted to the study and purchase of rare books. All his ideas of beauty and happiness were confined to the four walls of his magnificent library. He had never, so far as I know, been in love with a woman, nor had he ever been heard to express admiration for a beautiful face. He was content to read about the other sex, and kept his real affections and hatreds for the characters depicted in his books.