Okay so, you didn't include a screen shot or anything of what the text is, so I tried my best to answer your question without it.
There may be no land at the North Pole due to the fact that it could just all be ice that's floating atop the Arctic Ocean. Over the past few decades, scientists have discovered that the ice is thinning, therefore the likeliness of land beneath it is not great.
Thoreau means when he says the line “as for work, we haven’t any of any consequence” is all work that we do is trivial and meaningless. He also means that there is not any work of importance, it is all trivial and meaningless. Henry David Thoreau is an essayist, historian, surveyor, naturalist, tax resister, philosopher, and poet.
