Arctic

“ The white slopes of the Arctic continent blushed like the cheek of a fair girl, brightened by a momentary excitement, while the green ocean and fantastic glittering icebergs formed a magnificent fringe to the blushing slopes of red and white. ”

“ Leaving the river-bed just above the lake, they climbed to the summit of this hillock; and there a sight burst upon them, grand and imposing beyond the power of words adequately to describe. From the rocky bed, only a few miles in advance, a sloping wall of pure whiteness rose to a broad level plain of ice, which, apparently without limits, stretched away toward the unknown east. It was the great mer de glace of the Arctic continent. ”

“ Drearily monotonous as all Arctic scenery must naturally be, when one universal mantle of snow makes earth and water alike, such a tame region as this was, if possible, more so; and walking along the weary terraces, which in endless succession swept far into the interior, and then only rose in diminutive heights of maybe 500 feet, I recalled to memory the like melancholy aspect of the Arctic shores of Asia as described by Baron Wrangell. ”

“ In this way a lake of the loveliest blue is formed, which reaches quite to the base of the ice-cliffs, saps them, as the Arctic waves sap the Greenland glaciers, and receives from them the broken masses which it has undermined. ”

“ But it seems to us certain that the Arctic World has a romance and an attraction about it, which are far more powerful over the minds of men than the rich glowing lands of the Tropics, or the
“Summer-isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea,” which are crowned with the bread-fruit and the palm, the spontaneous gifts of a liberal soil. We follow with far deeper interest the footprints of a Parry and a Franklin than those of a Wallis, a Carteret, or even a Cook. ”

“ To the north lay an indescribable waste, more utterly desolate than anything I had ever seen, even in the Arctic regions, interspersed with snow-covered islands, all, big and little, of the same low, rounded shape. ”

“ Does it not seem as if long billows of earth roll down toward the Arctic Ocean, where they rest benumbed by the eternal cold? These mountains branch off toward the south, east or west, but scorn to throw so much as a spur northward. ”

“ It is a heroic tale, in which love of adventure and zeal for science have combated with and conquered the horrors of an Arctic winter, the six months' darkness in silence and desolation, the excessive cold, and the dangers of starvation. It is impossible here to go into any of the details which rendered the tale of Arctic voyages one of the most stirring in human history. ”

“ We cannot see print, and hardly paper the fingers cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike, and, except a vague glimmer on the sky that seems to define the hill outlines to the south, we have nothing to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun. ”

“ Nor are these Arctic plant people the pitiful frost-pinched unfortunates they are guessed to be by those who have never seen them. Though lowly in stature, keeping near the frozen ground as if loving it, they are bright and cheery, and speak Nature’s love as plainly as their big relatives of the South. ”

“ Arctic summer means a slight melting of snow in wind-swept valleys, means black up-thrust of rock and cliff here and there where the snow-cap has slipped. It is in this brief period, the only time when the contour of the terrain of this ice-locked land is even slightly exposed, that geologist and scientist and gold prospector must make their swift search for the treasure held in Arctic rocks. ”

“ That there is a new world south of the pole is maintained by Science; it is the unalterable belief of the explorers, the hydrographers, the geographers. But what may that world be like? What was it like? Long millions and millions of years before our time the Arctic north was the procreant cradle of ALL LIFE! From it streamed the currents of animal and vegetable creation; it was warm; forests of palms flourished along river and lake-side, and within them roamed the creatures of tropical or semi-tropical climates. ”

“ The geological evidence is complete as to the existence of a genial climate in Tertiary times as far north as the present land extends, and of a climate less severe than that of to-day in the Quaternary period. The existence of raised sea margins in many Arctic lands and especially in the American Arctic archipelago bears evidence to a recent elevation of the land, or a withdrawal of the sea, which has been influential in forming some of the most prominent features of the present configuration. It is noteworthy that no great mountain range runs into the Arctic region. ”

“ There is one part of the Arctic and Sub-arctic regions, and one only, where a country retaining the warmth and the adaptability of the temperate zone as an abode for civilised man extends far beyond the Arctic Circle, and, as it were, connects the vast tracts of ice and snow with the habitable earth. ”

“ Now, during the winter the Arctic regions come much farther south than they are marked on the map. Very few people know this, though you would think they could tell it by the ice in the jugs of a morning. And just when George and Jane were starting for the North Pole, the Arctic regions had come down very nearly as far as Forest Hill, so that, as the children walked on, it grew colder and colder, and presently they saw that the fields were covered with snow, and there were great icicles hanging from all the hedges and gates. ”

“ We were steaming in tolerably open water when I came on deck. The Arctic was ahead. Birds were numerous—some geese with hundreds of eider and guillemot. After breakfast we saw land ahead, that is, to the west, and during the afternoon were within a mile or so of it,—Princess Charlotte's Monument. There was much loose ice to the south and a straight floe edge to the north of us, and to this we hooked on two hundred yards to the east of the Arctic. We did not care to go closer to the rocks lest the ice should come in on us. ”

“ But one must have been in the Arctic regions to understand how eager one is to get out of their dreary confines. In a very short time, trees became more and more numerous on either bank—in fact, it almost seemed as though we had crossed an invisible line beyond which they could not grow, so sudden was the change once past it. ”

“ THE ARCTIC LANDS—FAUNA—FLORA—GREENLAND—ICELAND—NOVAIA ZEMLAIA—SIBERIA.
We have already pointed out that in the northernmost regions of the Arctic lands the year is divided into one prolonged and bitterly cold night of several months’ duration, and one glorious summer’s day extending over nine or ten weeks, which brings the scanty vegetation to a sudden maturity. We have indicated that even within the limits of perpetual snow the life of Nature is not altogether crushed out ”

“ Arctic People.—The conditions of life in the continental parts of the Arctic regions are extremely severe as regards temperature in the winter, but it has been found possible for civilized people to live permanently both in the extreme north of North America and in the north of Siberia. ”

“ The Arctic Ocean encircles with a belt of eternal ice the desert confines of Siberia and North America—the uttermost limits of the Old and New worlds, separated by the narrow, channel, known as Behring's Straits. ”

“ The fact, however, that the Arctic species have migrated around the whole Arctic circle, and have advanced southward and retreated to the north, again and again, without changing their constitutions or forms, augurs for them at least a remarkable fixity as well as continuity. ”

“ This primary physical fact, that arctic navigators have not been stopped by a merely frozen sea, but by a combination of glacier fragments with the frozen water of bays, and creeks, and fjords, should be better understood than it is at present; for when it is understood, the popular and fallacious notion that the difficulties of arctic progress are merely dependent on latitude, and must therefore increase with latitude, explodes. ”

“ And it must be admitted that our national virtues of resolute perseverance and patient courage have never been more happily displayed than in the prosecution of the great work of Arctic Discovery. Our explorers have refused to know when they were beaten; and in defiance of a terrible climate, of icebergs and ice-floes, of hurricanes and driving snow-storms, of obstacles, dangers, and difficulties, have pressed onward, until the latest adventurers have crossed the Threshold of the Unknown Region, and confronted the immense plain of ice that extends for four hundred miles from the Pole. ”

“ This popular delusion which pictures the Arctic regions as the abode of perpetual freezing, is so prevalent and general, that some explanation is demanded.
The special characteristic of Arctic climate is a cold and long winter and a short and hot summer. The winter is intensely cold simply because the sun never shines, and the summer is very hot because the sun is always above the horizon, and, unless hidden by clouds or mist, is continually shining. The summer heat of Siberia is intense, and the vegetable proportionately luxuriant. ”

“ One of the most interesting features of Arctic waters, especially between Greenland and Spitsbergen and to the north of Spitsbergen well into the Polar Basin, is the existence of an intermediate layer of comparatively warm water in the Arctic Ocean between the surface colder water and the colder water beneath. ”

“ She motioned toward her shelf of books upon the Arctic. "They breed in summer above the Arctic Circle, Geoff, in the islands in the Arctic Ocean almost to the Pole. When winter comes there they fly south to the Gulf shores. ”

“ As the continent grew by the slow upheaval of the land, and the islands gained in height, and the climate around these hills grew milder, the Arctic plants would retreat to higher zones, and finally occupy an elevated area, which probably had been, at first, or in the Glacial period, always covered with perpetual snow. ”

“ Those who have worked at the microscopic life of the Arctic Region know that it must survive extreme cold. somehow. The Arctic Region has a, genial summer climate of some months duration, with abundant water and a vegetation of higher plants. The winter might be passed by resting eggs, and a new generation produced each summer. ”

“ Many of the polar plants that bloom in this Arctic world were probably brought here from the Arctic Circle by the vast and prolonged flow of ice from the north during the last ice age. Stranded here by the receding, melting ice, they are growing up with the country under conditions similar to those in the Northland. ”

“ Now, for ethnologists, the question is, Can an Arctic Continent be inhabited, should one exist? This may be met by the already expressed surmise that the latitude of 78° is about the point of lowest mean temperature. The earth is about thirty seven miles more in diameter at the equator than from pole to pole, having enlarged at one point and flattened at another, because of its revolving motion. ”

“ Nearly all writers upon the subject, whether those who have themselves experienced its effects, or those whose knowledge is derived from study, dwell with great force on the terribly depressing effect upon the physical organization of natives of the median zones caused by the long Arctic night whenever brought within its influence. ”

“ The result is that the geology of the Arctic lands has to be inferred from observations made at isolated points where the fortune of the ice stopped the ship, or where on land journeys a favourable exposure was found. Almost every geological formation is known to be represented, from the Archaean to the Quaternary, and there is a general resemblance in the known geological features of most of the great Arctic islands. ”

“ In regard to the difficulties of taking observations in the arctic regions, I have found a tendency on the part of experts who, however, have not had practical experience in the arctic regions themselves, to overestimate and exaggerate the difficulties and drawbacks of making these observations due to the cold. ”

“ Baffin’s Bay, Behring’s Straits, along the coast of Greenland, and from Spitzbergen, mainly because on them all we are met by the great Arctic currents, which act as channels to carry off the ice of the Polar basin. These currents carry with them vast masses of ice, which they deposit on all the coasts which they strike. ”

“ It is difficult to determine with precision the limits of the Arctic lands, since many countries situated as low as latitude 60° or even 50°, such as South Greenland, Labrador, Alaska, Kamchatka, or the country about Lake Baikal, have in their climate and productions a decidedly Arctic character, while others of a far more northern position, such as the coast of Norway, enjoy even in winter a remarkably mild temperature. ”

“ The story of the lands within the Arctic Circle is a record of the brave deeds of healthy men. This would seem to be true were we to take the story, if we could, back to the days when man followed the retreat of the glaciers, as he may in turn have to retreat before them, such a condition of things being not beyond the range of probability though it may be remote. ”

“ In the Arctic basin the clouds, the melted snow, and the great rivers, which have their mouths on the north of both continents, produce considerable quantities of fresh water, which, mixing with the waves of the Polar Sea, form a bed of mean density light enough to maintain itself and flow off towards the Atlantic Ocean. ”