Polar region

“ Nares. In general terms, we may say that the vast tract between 70° and 80° of north latitude has been pretty thoroughly explored on the European and American sides of the polar region, while much less is known of the same latitudes on the Asiatic side. How much of the in-lying region is land, or how far covered with water, has [pg 87] yet to be determined. In spite of the very positive utterances of many explorers and scientists, all we really know is that there is much open water, or at all events ice-covered water, and that it may extend to the Pole. ”

“ THE ARCTIC REGIONS
The history of the Polar Regions, of those vast areas, difficult of access, which include millions of square miles of land and ocean at either extreme of our planet, is of surpassing interest and importance. It is not only that we here meet with examples of heroism and devotion which must entrance mankind for all time. It is not only that there are dangers to be encountered and difficulties to be overcome which call forth the best qualities of our race. These, no doubt, are the main reasons for the deep interest which polar exploration has always excited. ”

“ The discoveries along the north coast of Greenland opened up the very interesting question whether the land did not extend right up to the Pole itself. As far as any one had penetrated to the north of the coast, land was still to be seen farther on; it was an open question whether this great ice-covered country was an island, with its northern shores swept by the Polar ice-floes, or whether it extended almost to the dimensions of a continent in the Polar region. ”

“ There is, he said, only one polar basin; the relative distribution of land and water and the geographical distribution of light and heat in the arctic region are absolutely unique. In no other part of the world is a similar climate to be found. The distribution of land and water round the south pole is almost the converse of that round the north pole. ”

“ Geology.—Although much remains to be done in the exploration of the North Polar area, the main features of the physical geography of the region have been determined beyond any reasonable doubt. Within the Arctic Circle the northern portions of Europe, Asia, America and Greenland surround a central area of deep sea, the southern margin of which forms a broad continental shelf bearing many islands. The ring of land and shallow sea is broken only by the broad channel between Greenland and Europe through which Atlantic water gains an entrance to the Arctic Sea. ”

“ Yet, quite independent of material results, Polar exploration presents no unworthy object for scientific investigation—a region of the globe 120,000 square miles in extent never yet entered by man. The Polar question, as a problem of science, aims at determining the limits of land and water, at the perfecting of that network of lines with which comparative science seeks to surround our planet, even to its Poles. ”

“ If there be, indeed, one region where the influence of climate on the constitution of man is manifest, that region is assuredly the Polar Zone. There the conditions of life differ wholly from those which prevail in all other parts of the globe, and it necessarily results that modifications take place in the organism of the men subject to those conditions, which ought to be regarded as wholly independent of the origin of races and of their ethnographic characters properly so called. ”

“ Contrary to a general idea, the polar regions of northern Greenland, Ellesmere Land, and Grant Land have for the experienced hunter a considerable and most attractive fauna, and while there are certain parts where it is virtually impossible to find even so much as a stray polar hare, there are other regions where a very fair amount of meat can be obtained in a comparatively short time by those knowing how, and acquainted with polar topography and the habits of polar animals. ”

“ Last June, when the canals were first seen, those about the Lake of the Sun and the Phoenix Lake were easier to make out than any of the others. Now, this region is the part of the reddish-ochre continent, as we may call it, that lies nearest the south pole. It extends into the blue-green regions as far south as 40 of south latitude. Nor do any so-called islands—that is, smaller reddish-ochre areas—stand between it and the pole. It lies first exposed, therefore, to any water descending toward the equator from the melting of the polar cap. ”

“ The average layman will probably consider the first of these conditions, the extreme cold, as the most serious. As a matter of fact, the second is the most vital, and is the one which has caused the discovery of the north pole to drag along through hundreds of years, while the south pole was attained twice within thirteen years after the first sledge-journey in that region. ”

“ General interest thus re-aroused in Arctic exploration brought about a united effort of all the civilised nations to investigate the conditions of the Polar regions. An international Polar Conference was held at Hamburg in 1879, at which it was determined to surround the North Pole for the years 1882-83 by stations of scientific observation, intended to study the conditions of the Polar Ocean. No less than fifteen expeditions were sent forth, some to the Antarctic regions, but most of them round the North Pole. ”

“ In contrast to the tropical regions, where the sun is always vertically overhead at some place at noon on two days (at the north and south limits on one day) every year, and always reaches in every part an altitude exceeding about 43 degrees, in the Polar Regions the sun is never more than 231⁄2 degrees above the horizon. On account of this great obliquity of the sun's rays in the Polar Regions the sun has less heating power and the regions are colder, while in winter intense cold prevails because of the entire absence of the sun. ”

“ But however variable the conditions of the ice may be, the impediments, even under the most favourable circumstances, are so very great, that we have never been able to penetrate the innermost Polar regions,—penetrate, that is, to where, according to the views of an earlier time, the open Polar Sea should be found. ”

“ From this it will be seen that sea ice especially, and even the surface of glacier ice is swarming with life, and is by no means so sterile as it is usually thought to be. Bacteriological examination has demonstrated that the air of the Polar Regions is sterile, but under natural conditions in the Polar Regions, as in other regions, we may lay down a general law, and say—Where there is water there is life! ”

“ The earth’s north pole is now inclined directly away from the sun and its rays have entirely forsaken the Arctic for the Antarctic zone; notwithstanding the earth’s daily rotation, which brings alternating light and darkness to the greater part of the world, the northern polar regions are in a continuous shadow, and no sunlight reaches these remote parts. ”

“ If we regard, for instance, the polar current—that broad current which flows down from the unknown polar regions between Spitzbergen and Greenland—and consider what an enormous mass of water it carries along, it must seem self-evident that this cannot come from a circumscribed and small basin, but must needs be gathered from distant sources, the more so as the Polar Sea (so far as we know it) is remarkably shallow everywhere to the north of the European, Asiatic, and American coasts. ”

“ Antarctic Land discoveries preceding the year 1910
The polar regions, like any other part of the globe, may be said to be paved with facts, the essence of which it is necessary to acquire before knowledge of this special zone can be brought to even a provisional exactitude. On the face of it, polar research may seem to be specific and discriminating, but it must be remembered that an advance in any one of the departments into which, for convenience, science is artificially divided, conduces to the advantage of all. Science is a homogeneous whole. ”

“ Through inherited qualities and long usage they are so inured to their wretched condition that to a degree they do not realize its discomforts; but steadily advancing agencies are approaching their lands, and at a not very remote period their present inhabitants will have disappeared, and for the same reason that Ento's polar regions are, I may say, well populated, ere long Earth's polar regions will sustain a large number of inhabitants. ”

“ Everything is on a reduced scale here in the Polar regions; we can't afford to be extravagant. ”

“ Their total surface amounts to more than 700 square feet, and they will, if skilfully managed, impart a remarkable deviating power to the balloon. So The Northern Pole will skip along like a sailing-craft with a stern wind.
THE COURSE OF THE SUN IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS.
It must be remembered that in summer-time the winds and storms of the North Pole are far less treacherous than those of the most attractive parts of the tropical, [Pg 313] or even those of the temperate zones. The north polar regions are never visited by cyclones or thunder. ”

“ We thus fix the character of the arctic polar lands to be a close drawing together. Europe has, fortunately for itself, the least share in those inhospitable regions; only her pointed northern shores fringe the shores of the polar sea, leaving the great bulk of the great land-mass of the north to the broad shores of Asia and North America, with their neighboring island groups.
This polar world, as we may call it, in contradistinction to the Orient and the Occident, is not separated from more southerly regions by any great physical line of demarkation. ”

“ An absolutely uniform world-climate is well-nigh inconceivable. All we can maintain is that the conditions during certain prolonged periods were so equable as to allow of the general diffusion of species over vastly greater areas than now; and that such conditions — 352 — extended from low latitudes up to polar regions. Now, among the chief factors which in our day determine the limitation of faunas and floras, we must reckon latitude and the geographical position of land and water. ”

“ At the south pole, Amundsen and Scott stood upon the surface of a great, snowviii plateau more than two miles above sea-level. The lands that surround the north polar ocean have comparatively abundant life. Musk-oxen, reindeer, polar bears, wolves, foxes, arctic hares, ermines, and lemmings, together with insects and flowers, are found within five hundred miles of the pole. On the great south polar continent no form of animal life appears to exist.
Permanent human life exists within some seven hundred miles of the north pole; none is found within twenty-three hundred miles of the south pole. ”

“ The numerous people who imagine that a long stay in the Polar regions makes a man less susceptible of cold than other mortals are completely mistaken. ”

“ If we merely place the South Pole in the conceivably best position (50° S. 45° E.) in the midst of these traces of ice, the remotest traces of land-ice in Brazil, India and Eastern Australia would possess a geographical latitude of not quite 10°, that is, a complete hemisphere of the earth was buried beneath the ice, and had therefore also the polar climate necessary for that purpose. ”

“ The general advancement in the knowledge of our globe, which follows the work of polar exploration, is not at first perceived. The collective results are rearranged and interwoven with the other threads which go to make up the fabric of the various branches of natural science. Around the two poles of the earth, and particularly around the south pole, there are extensive unknown [454] regions. In these regions are hidden the finishing filaments of much exact knowledge. To seek these is the true object of polar exploration. ”

“ The most intrepid discoverers of the Arctic regions - Parry, Penny, Franklin, M'Clure, Dane, and Morton - did not get beyond 83? north latitude, seven degrees from the pole - whereas Australia has several times been crossed from south to north by the bold Stuart; and even Africa, with all its terrors, was traversed by Livingstone from the Bay of Loanga to the mouth of the Zambesi. We are, therefore, nearer to geographical knowledge of the equatorial countries than of the Polar districts."
"Do you think that the Pole itself will ever be reached by man?" inquired Mrs Paulina Barnett. ”

“ For two thousand years it was believed that human life could not exist in the polar and torrid zones. Even as late as the fifteenth century European navigators had great fear of travel into the torrid zone, where the heat was thought to grow more intense as one traveled south, until a point might be reached where water in the sea would boil. The author of the King’s Mirror seems to doubt all this. He regards the polar zones as generally uninhabitable; still, he is sure that Greenland lies within the arctic zone ”

“ So far we know little of this vast continent, which is probably as large as Europe and Australia combined. What coast-line has been discovered was nearly all discovered before any of the more recent expeditions sailed to the south. It is interesting to note that the depth of the North Polar Basin is more or less equal to the height of the Antarctic continent. ”

“ From Cape Columbia we were to go straight north over the ice of the Polar Sea,—four hundred and thirteen geographical miles. Many persons whose memories go back to the smooth skating ponds of their childhood, picture the Arctic Ocean as a gigantic skating pond with a level floor over which the dogs drag us merrily—we sitting comfortably upon the sledges with [194] hot bricks to keep our toes and fingers warm. Such ideas are distinctly different from the truth, as will appear.
There is no land between Cape Columbia and the North Pole and no smooth and very little level ice. ”