Classic Audiobook Collection - The Northward Course of Empire by Vilhjalmur Stefansson ~ Full Audiobook [history]

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

The Northward Course of Empire by Vilhjalmur Stefansson audiobook. Genre: history In The Northward Course of Empire, Arctic explorer and writer Vilhjalmur Stefansson challenges familiar ideas about the far north and argues that northern lands are not barren margins of civilization, but the next great frontier of human development. Drawing on his own expeditions, historical examples, and wide-ranging observations, Stefansson examines how geography, climate, trade, and technology have steadily pushed settlement and power into colder regions. He presents the Arctic not as a place of endless hardship, but as a region rich with possibility for transportation, resources, and permanent human life. Along the way, he blends travel narrative, political argument, and cultural analysis, inviting listeners to reconsider long-held assumptions about what makes a land habitable or valuable. More than a record of exploration, the book is a bold vision of the future, shaped by Stefansson's confidence in human adaptability and his fascination with northern peoples and environments. For listeners interested in exploration, geography, and the ideas that shaped twentieth-century thinking about expansion and empire, this work offers an ambitious and provocative look at the world above the usual maps. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:18:35) Chapter 01 (00:44:34) Chapter 02 (01:16:58) Chapter 03 (02:00:22) Chapter 04 (03:04:01) Chapter 05 (03:42:10) Chapter 06 (04:30:05) Chapter 07 (05:24:37) Chapter 08 (06:24:57) Chapter 09 (06:31:27) Chapter 10 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Northwood Course of Empire by Villiamer Stephenson, with an introduction by Dr. Edward William Nelson, Chief of the United States Biological Survey, with illustrations and a map. A number of these chapters appeared as articles in the world's work and in the National Geographic magazine. The idea of this book is doubtless old, though it came to me only about 1912. Perhaps it was old to the Medes and Persians. It may even have been an ancient revamping of it that led Solomon to remark that there is nothing new under the sun. In another sense, the idea is so new that the history of it can be given briefly. The winter of 1918 to 1919, representatives of Chambers of Commerce of various European countries were touring the United States.

A dinner was given them in New York, and at this I was called upon to make a five-minute talk. One of the sponsors of the dinner was Dr. Albert Shaw, the editor of the Review of Reviews. He said to me that the idea of my walk was new. when I reminded him of Solomon's well-known saying he replied that at any rate he was new enough to make a suitable article for his magazine he asked me to write the article and I said I would

Ideas like many other things have a tendency to expand and in the writing my new theme grew beyond the limits of the review of reviews for they seldom printed an article of more than 2,500 words I found that I had 10,000 Instead of attempting to revise and condense, I submitted it to a magazine that sometimes does print long articles, the National Geographic magazine, edited by Mr. Gilbert Grossener. The idea struck Mr. Groszner also as new, and he wanted for his magazine.

But the theme eventually grew beyond the one article he wanted into a series of four articles, which, after three years of molling over, appeared in the world's work between November 1921 and February 19, 1919. Meanwhile, the talk at the Chamber of Commerce Dinner had been quoted in the papers. My enthusiasm for the message also prompted me to refer to it again and again, and again, it crept into the papers. In New York City, I'm a member of the Canadian Club. Apart from Siberia, there is no country to which my message means more than to Canada. And when the club decided to publish its own magazine and when they asked me for a contribution, I wrote a statement of only a few hundred words, thinking it would not pass beyond the club membership. Curiously enough, the issue of the magazine attracted the attention of some editorial writer on the New York Times,

and my little essay was copied almost in a full July 18, 1920, with the comments both feralable and thought-provoking. In November of 1920, I got a letter from S-colum Guiliphylin, now a professor of social sciences in the University of the South, which he said he had read the Times editorial summary of my article. He enclosed a copy of his article The Coldwood Course of Progress, which had been published in September 1920.

This is the brief and scholarly presentation from which we have borrowed the graph that appears as frontispiece to this volume. When the thesis first presented in 1918 and a five-minute-after-dinner speech was published as a 25,000-word series in the world's work, a meta-reception which encouraged me to

expanded into a book. What promised especially well was that many teachers of geography wrote to the world's work, and to me, asking for the material in a form that could be used in schools. If possible, I was more surprised than I was delighted to find how willing people generally are to accept fresh information and new light on even the old Esuado's scientific dogmas. The first proof of this book had been sent back to the printers. When I presented to a convention of the Association of American Chiroperors in New York, a brief discussion on the colonization of the grasslands of the world that lie north of the tree line.

In his comments on my paper, Professor Ellsworth Huntington said that Professor Gilfillion had written him the summer of 1915, a letter that contained the germ of the idea which Professor Gilfilan led it developed into his paper, the Coldwood course of progress, which, as stated above, was published in September 1920. Up to now, I have supposed that Professor Gilfillon got the original stimulus towards the writing of his paper from my Maple Leaf magazine at the New York Times editorial cited above.

Evidently, this is not the case, and we derive the idea independently from a consideration of the facts of the world we live in. Professor Gilfieland, or anyone else might also well have derived it as a corollary from Professor Huddington's great work on civilization and climate. which the idea is implied. So far as I know, there is one man in the world prevently qualified by experience and training to pass upon the facts and arguments of this book. Through his official position, he has in his files more pertinent evidence than perhaps any other man, which the same official position puts at his disposal for consultation, many trained and keyed minds scarce, less familiar than his with the problems dealt with. This is Dr Edward William Nelson, Chief of the United States Biological Survey.

Between 1879 and 1881, Dr. Nelson spent four years in continuous residents near the northwest corner of Alaska. His space station was in the Yukon Delta, but he made extensive winter journeys both north and south. On these journeys, he gathered information only a part of which he has published in his books and scientific articles. Since his return from Alaska, he has done a considerable. field work in subtropical regions and has under his direction scientific observers who have worked in every climate of the globe. As this book deals with certain fundamental considerations of climate and with effect upon various animals and especially upon man, I submitted the manuscript to Dr. Nelson. When I found him in general agreement with the facts and with their interpretation in this book,

I asked him to write an introduction for it. The general thesis of this book lies closer to my heart than any other result of a 24-year study of anthropology and geography. My anthropological interest has been largely in the movements of peoples and the causes that bring about and hinder migration and colonization. As a traveler, I am chiefly familiar with the North Temperate and North Fid Zones, though my favorite connection with the Explorers Club of New York and the various geographic societies of the world, I know personally many of the travellers who have been examining, interpreting the list known countries during the last several decades. Although the results have been over to me through conversation and through books, I have felt

keenly the need of criticism by the highest authorities. In that connection, I have appealed to the following men and with the following results. With regard to the Canadian government's inquiry into the grazing resources of Arctic Canada, my manuscript was read by Dr. J. Chie Rutherford. by a lifetime of training and experience in helping to determine the land and livestock policy of the Canadian Pacific Railway and of the provincial and national governments of Canada. He is one for the foremost position as an authority upon these subjects. As chairman of the Royal Commission on the Reindeer and Musk-Ox industry, he listened to the testimony of 35 explorers, missionaries, traders and others who had spent considered portions of their lives in various parts of the polar regions. Many of the questions he asked them have a direct bearing upon the thesis of this book,

and his published summary of that testimony is in general agreement with it. On reading the manuscript, Dr. Rutherford found himself to differ with it on two chief points. In one case the difference was only apparent, and the text has been so clarified that the apparent difficulty no longer exists. In the other case, the statement has been modified so as to conform with Dr. Rutherford's view, which was really mine always, only I had overlooked a certain angle of the case. Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University was the chief statistician of the United States Food Administration during the war and is one of the leading authorities on the world's food supply. Professor J. Russell Smith is another leading authority on the same subject.

Neither of these differed in any fundamental, and most of the minor modifications, and additions suggested by them, been incorporated. Dr. Isaiah Bellman was formerly professor of geography at Yale and is now director of the American Geographical Society. He is the author of many books on varied aspects of geography and is besides a distinguished explorer of the tropics in South Temperate lands. Where we compare the tropics with the polar regions, his judgment combines personal experience with scholarship and has therefore been exceptionally valuable. All modifications suggested by him have been incorporated.

Professor Alexander Chey McCuddy is the director of the Blue Hill Observatory, Reedville, Massachusetts. His studies of the atmosphere and especially his investigations carried out in cooperation with the Prince of Monaco have made him, if not the leading, at least one of the leading authorities on the temperature of the air, over both the lands and the seas of the earth.

He has read the sections on air temperature, and these accordingly have the weight of his authority. With regard to the navigation of ice-covered seas by his submarine, I have consulted two authorities, only one of whom I permitted to cite by name. Mr. Simon Lake shares with Holland the distinction of being the best-known American submarine inventor. Through several decades he has made experiments with submarines under ice. He has not read any parts of the manuscript,

but the points considered have been discussed with him by correspondence, and he has finished for use. in this book a photograph illustrating the operation of one of his types of under-ice submarines. Another which he's sent a blueprint drawing seems even better suited. Anyone who desires to compare Mr. Lake's opinions with those of this book can do so by consulting his book, which is included in the bibliography at the end of this volume. Most of the ideas as to the use of submarines under ice were developed independently by Mr. Lake or any other authority.

More recently, I have met an officer of the British Navy who commanded submarines, which operated under ice to the north of Russia during the World War, and I have learned from him that most of my ideas are ultra-conservative. I have not taken the trouble to remodel the submarine discussion in this book to conform strictly with his experiences, for my opinion is already sufficiently beyond what the layman considers probable. The knowledge of the almost marvelous adaptability of the submarine to underwrite's work will, for a time, have to remain the exclusive property of the experts themselves. The comments and advice of these authorities, and of others whom, I am not permitted to name, have given this book added certitude, and me added covenants. But it must not be understood that they have assumed any responsibility as to the facts and views here expressed.

The responsibility for these is mine. I know in fact that some of the greatest authorities cited above differ with me on some points, e.g. as to whether cutting large ranges into small farms will tend to decrease the world's livestock supply. I might not dare to disagree with the authority so eminent, where not that on checking up the points where one or another disagrees with me, I find they disagree with each other. Although the members of my various expeditions and myself have taken thousands of photographs in the Arctic and sub-arctic regions. I am by design using in this volume mainly pictures taken by others.

This is to show that the differs between the Arctic and the sub-Arctic regions of theory and those of fact is no less apparent to the cameras of others than to cameras used by me. We are indebted to the following for permission to use photographs. The American Museum of Natural History, Hawthorne-Daniel, Department of Immigration and Colonization of Canada, Elmo W. E. Explore, the Halt Manufacturing Company, Dr. W. T. Horn Day, Lerman Brothers, and the New York Zoological Society. The Graff Path of Supremacy is used by permission of Professor S. Colm. Gilfieland

and of the Political Science Quarterly. Four of the chapters of this book are used by permission of World's Work and the Chapter of Transpolar Commerce by permission of the National Geographic magazine. Phil Thomas Stephenson, May 10th, 1922. End of preface. Introduction The brilliant and adventurous journey by Stephenson across the polar pack, living off the country,

and the substantial contributions to geography, and many other branches of science brought back by himself and his staff, have been justly applauded as distinguishing a notable Arctic expedition. The contribution of most value to mankind, Brought back by Stephenson, however, is his appreciation that far northern lands not the dread icy deserts are the popular belief, but are possessed a variety of resources and are available for occupation by civilized man. It is true that for years fur traders, gold miners, and in Alaska reindeer herds have extended north to the Arctic coast. But as Stevenson belongs the credit of being the first to have the clear vision to appreciate the potential value. of the North as a whole, and for several years to have carried on an educational propaganda

developing the startling fact that our last frontier did not vanish when the settlement of the United States in Canada reached the shores of the Pacific, but that another vast, untamed frontier lies ready for the adventurous pioneer in the North. With appealing literary charm is developed here and elsewhere the story of the livability of the far north, and showing that his hitherto dreaded regions offers a welcome to men on the stamp of the early pioneers of America. In fact, with present methods of communication and facilities of modern life, such northern cetheros would have much fewer real hardships and deprivations to endure than did many of our not-distant forbearers in occupying what are now some of the most settled

parts of the continent. That far northern winters are enjoyable periods, I can personally testify, having passed through four of them in northern Alaska. There our summers are not unpleasant where periods of certain limitations are into difficulty of travel except by water routes. In winter, however, snow will the land and ice on the rivers and sea offers a free road in any direction. Midwinter was a time when the Eskimos held their festivals, coming from far villages and central points to feast and enjoy social companionship. The fur trader is made their rounds to net villages in search of furs and frequently journeyed hundreds of miles or brief visits to one another. At the beginning of each winter, I looked forward

with keen anticipation to long sledge trips, camping at Eskimo villages or wherever night overtook us in the open. The bracing vigor of the climate gave a sense of well-being and sheer joy of living there must be experienced to be appreciated. After several thousand miles of sledging over Alaskan prairies varied by letter travel in the wilderness of lower latitudes extending to the tropics. I can fully endorse Stephenson's beliefs as to the keen of physical enjoyment of life in these northern latitudes. This sense of physical well-being and the mental acceleration that goes with it, no doubt, in part of least, accounts for the fascination that the north appears to exert on a large share of those who have lived there, and which holds many under its spell.

The illumination thrown by Stevenson on the Great Northern Frontier has added an increment of enormous total value to the vast area in Northern Canada either are considered practically worthless, and the Canadian government may well congratulate itself on this unexpected by-product of a scientific expedition. Furthermore, it has been made plain that not only far northern Canada, but Alaska, and even greater territory of northern Siberia

are potential sources of various useful products, especially of a meat supply on a great scale. The development of this idea is another illustration of the frequent occurrence that geographic and other scientific work may produce unexpected results of untold value to mankind. In Alaska, reindeer growing is already becoming an industry. As a result of Stephens's work, it has been undertaken in Baffinland. In far northern Canada and in Alaska, oil prospecting is being done. done, in addition to mining of other minerals, so the movement is already on to conquer our last American frontier. It has needed, however, the enthusiasm and facile Penis Devinson to draw aside the veil of imaginary terrors which if his road concealed the real facts, as to lay the opening

up to the world of a vast region. Dr. E. W. Nelson, Chief United States Biological Survey. Washington, D.C. February 13, 1922. End of introduction. Section 1 of The Northwood Course of Empire by Vilja M.mora Stephenson. This is a Librevox according, or Librevox Accordings of the public domain. For more information on a volunteer, please visit Libravox.org,

recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 1 The Northward Course of Empire Man has an announcement. animal is indeed a tropical animal, but man as distinguished from animals is not at his best in the tropics or very near them. His fight upward in civilization has coincided in part at least with his marched northward into a cooler, clearer, or bracing air.

For the last few centuries and especially in America, our attention has been centered upon the proposition that Westward the course of Empire takes its way. It has indisputably taken a westerly course during the last few centuries. but it is equally indisputable and more significant, because it rests upon broader national causes that northward the course of civilization has been taking its way, not only through the long period of written history and of tradition, but also through that far longer period, the records of which are the skeletons of the forerunners of men and of near men, and of indubitable men, who developed to civilization through millenniums of crude stone tools and polished stone and copper

and bronze and iron down to Egypt and China as our history show them. There are but two commonly held theories of the origin of man. Each places the spot of origin in or near the tropics, the one because the skeletons of the anthropoids or pre-anthropoids for which they think man descended have been found chiefly in the tropics, and the other because tradition says the Garden of Eden was in tropical lands. With many divergences, both fundamental and superficial, the two theories agree on the geographic origin of man. Man as an animal is not only tropical in origin, but is also by the nature of his body unfit to flourish in any other sort of climate. Even those who assert he was once Harry

refrain from contending that he had fur. Hairy as he was, he would have shivered in Italy and could not have prospered at all in the winter climate of North Dakota or of Russia. Nor would the most thoroughgoing advocate of a meat diet pretend he could flourish through hunting until after the invention of weapons and traps. He must have lived in a country not too cold for the unclaid, furless animal, where vegetables and fruits could not be found at all times of year to constitute either his main diet,

or at least the bridges over necessary gaps in the meat's supply. Then came the inventions of fire and clothing for combating the cold and of weapons for killing the grass-eating animals upon which man could exist, though he could not directly upon the class. With these inventions commenced the northward march of civilization, and we do not yet know how far north it will continue. At least that contention can be made, there it has been made in the face of an overwhelming public opinion to the effect that the northward limit has already been reached. Men at every period of history have been generally of the opinion that the ultimate limit of the northward spread of civilization

had then at length been reached. It is a reasonable assumption deduced from what we know of latter history that even the thoughtful men of Memphis and Babylon failed to see potentialities for much beyond barbarism in the Greece and Italy of their time. We know as a matter of recorded opinion that the Greeks and Romans not only consider the people to the north of them inferior, but believed that that inferiority must continue, largely because of a supposedly hostile climate of the lands to the north.

taggis probably knew as much as any of his contemporaries about the lands beyond the alps and was merely voicing the general opinion of his time and countrymen when he said that nobody could conceive that any one less forced by the stern necessity of war would willingly leave the fertile shores of africa or the plains of italy for the country north of the alps where the climate is as disagreeable as the soil is sterile there is undoubtedly a truce of his time but it is a fact of our time that many people live in paris and other parts of France by choice. Draper tells us in his history of the intellectual development of Europe, that in the Middle Ages, the stables of the moors in Spain were better than the palaces of the kings of England, and we know that the moors at that time were as certain with regard to Britain and Stacchidus had been in his day with reference to France, that the foggy and chilly climate was inimical to a high development, and that nothing much was to be expected of such a country and its people.

Today there can be found as many to agree as to disagree with the contention that prison as for a century been the foremost land of the earth. The undervaluation of the North by the Romans and the Moors is not difficult to explain. With them, and in every other period of history, it is restored on one ground, and does so today with us. Their civilization and ours had a common southern origin. The lands of the South have been the lands of known history, and that problems have been well understood.

at any given time a portion of Egypt or of Babylonia may have been a desert, but the Romans and the Mordes, and we have always understood how deserts may be irrigated and that such problems are not insoluble. But the problems of the north have never been understood, for they are not of the past but of the future. We do not know what they are, and even when we learn what they are, the solution is yet to be devised. It is human nature that we undervalue the distant and exaggerate the difficulties of the unknown. My friend Professor Ellsworth Huntington of Yale once sent out a letter of inquiry to about 200 geographers, ethnographers and other men of white information in various lands, asking them among other things to give their opinion on the degree of civilization of the people of Iceland.

The classification was to be made on the basis of a scale of 10. The people of high civilization being group number 10, and those of the darkest savagery in group of Number 1. The civilization of Iceland was graded as follows. The Asiatics put Iceland at Group 3, the Latin Europeans put Iceland in Group 4, the Americans put Iceland at Group 5, the British put Iceland at Group 6, the Germans and Scandinavians put Iceland in Group 8. Each in Eastern country, these authorities were of approximately equal culture, rank and native intelligence, yet the Asiatics, because they were geographically and culturally remote, but the Icelanders near the bottom of the intellectual scale, while the nearest neighbours of Iceland,

placed it not far from the top. From this classification, we scarcely learn nothing reliable or valuable about Iceland, but we get instead further confirmation of the principle that we tend to do unto value whatever is remote. To the people of the centres of civilisation, the uncolonised north has been more or less remote geographically, and always infinitely remote from a cultural and historical point of view, for the information about it was in a considerable part misinformation, as history and problems lay in the future. On the basis of distance and misinformation,

the North has always been supposed to be dreadful and devoid of resources. These judgments have always been wrong, and this we could prove by dozens of further instances, although we shall deduce only two or three. In 1763, a great struggle had just ended in Europe that is known, on the American side, as a French-knit-in war, and the pleniae of France and England, had met to adjudicate peace.

They haggled over the division of spoils, notably over the political control of certain territories, which they strove to acquire or attain with an eagerness proportionate to their idea of the present and future commercial value of these lands. The greatest commodity of the modern world is oil, and we are now deeply concerned of oil lands. Sugar was not in, 1763, a correspondingly important commodity, but its future significance was realized by commercial leaders, and the sugarlands were remand the chief bones of contention. It was amusing to those familiar with the history of foods to read during the late war

in medical journals and elsewhere. Articles filled with deep concern for the health of the civilized nations on the score of there being compelled to get along on an inadequate sugar ration. Sugar has been a significant element in our food for only a comparatively insignificant period. 400 years ago it was unknown in Europe and honey and other sugar substitutes were then of scarcely great significance in the diet of our ancestors than tomato ketchup is in ours. Many people lived there three score and ten without eating a pound of honey. Three hundred years ago, sugar was a luxury of kings.

Two hundred years ago, it was still unregarded by most people, but a few realize its coming importance, and so the peace coffins of 1763 kept haggling about the sugar lands. The British feeling that they were in a position to do so, asked among other things that the French turn over to them the island of Gordelope. To this the French replied in substance that they decided extremely to give up Gordelope, as it was an island containing sugar plantations a great value to the citizens of France, and suggested they would much prefer to surrender Canada. To this the British objected that while Canada was lighter than Gordelope, it was not good for much. There were, of course, some furs, and there were codfish on the newfound land banks,

but on the whole it was not a very valuable piece of proof. property and the much preferred Gordalup. After a prolonged deadlock, Benjamin Franklin suggested, through a pamphlet that while Gordlop was more valuable than Canada, it was a distant land. While Canada was a contiguous territory, and if we allowed the power of France to develop at our very door, it would be a continual friction. Eventually the British accepted Canada, apparently for political rather than economic reasons. And now, not half of the readers of this book can find Gordelope without looking it up in the

index of some book of reference. In 1867, in America, a great war had come to a close. During that war, the side which eventually triumphed had not been supported so consistently by any major European power as by Russia. Their country was grateful to Russia and it became necessary to translate their gratitude into substantial terms. Deported in modern parlous, they wanted to slip some coin to Russia as a reward for kindness received, and they carried out what was for that time an extremely large but otherwise quite

ordinary political transaction by purchasing Alaska for $7,200,000. Such of the views of many historians as to the reasons for the Alaska purchase. Woodrow Wilson's history seems to consider as the chief motive the extension of the Monroe Doctrine to still another part of the American continent, while others think the United States bought Alaska for some ready money, partly to show European nations which doubted America's solvency and power to recuperate after devastating war that the country was not really broke. There is still other explanations of why Alaska was purchased, but none of them rests on the assumption that the territory was intrinsically worth the price. It may have been that

Secretary Seward and a few others realized that the money was not an actual gift and that Alaska had a great future. Although that was so, Seward must have been a good deal wiser in his generation that Benjamin Franklin had been with reference to Canada in an earlier one. However, that be, the Republican Party and Secretary Seward were attacked in the next presidential campaign for having spent several millions of public money for a lump of ice. If you want to make up your mind what people really thought of Alaska at the time of its purchase and for many years after, turn to the files of the newspapers for the next presidential campaign which resulted in the election of grant, and you will find that Democrats attacking the Republicans

on the score of the Alaska purchase. They put up a bitter fight on this issue, that in itself does not mean much, for such are the tactics of politics. But turned to the fence made by the Republicans and the lamers of it will convince you that they had no pride in what they had done, nor even faith in the future to exculpate,

let alone justify them. They felt themselves to be the pot, and the best way they could do was to call the kettle black. They drew a herring across, the trail by calling the Democrats traders and slaveholders. They shifted the battle to the old reliable issue

of the tariff. I'm not a profound history scholar and my merit is not to go back to Grant's time, but this is history as I have read it. It was not till about 1900 when gold was discovered in Alaska that politicians began to point with pride of Seward on the score of

his purchase, and I believe it was Franklin K. Lane, perhaps because he was born in Canada and had therefore a better understanding of the penitialities of the North, who first among cabinet officials, had a vision of Alaska's coming readiness. When a verse began to dawn on the United States that Alaska was of value, it was her mineral resources they saw. There's a game as a common historical phenomenon. When a Columbus sailed west from Spain, he was ostensibly in search of a short road to the Indies. He probably did not

expect to find America. At least a popular view was that he had been searching for Asia, and when he returned, this was one of the many exploring expeditions that have been called failures because they discovered something quite different from that which had been expected. By way of making the best of the unfortunate fact that America blocked the direct-seerote to China, those who went there unless they were searching for a fountain of youth, were commonly looking for gold and precious stones. None of them were looking for the potato, although it was unhilded discovery as proved of greater value to the world,

then all the gold dug out of the two continents. So it was and will be with Lescar. The first things to be looked for were precious metals and furs, but the greatest things to come out of it will not be those originally looked for. Alesca had its turn as a gold-seekers' paradise, and since 1900 has been much immense mines on that score. Later it was realized that in portions, fairly accessible from the Pacific, there were huge deposits of copper more valuable than the gold, and coal mines are no less promise. And unless the present industrial trend is altered, the forests are likely to become more valuable than either. In 1918 there were many resources of Alaska under cultivation, of which the fisheries were only one. Of the fisheries, the salmon were only a part.

Of the salmon, the sockeye variety was only one, and if the sockeye caught, only a part was canned. Yet the part that was canned was sold for $22 million, giving in one year I had turned more than three times the original purchase price of Alaska. This is merely the beginning of our realization of the accidental or accidental or... or vaguely designed wisdom of Sue its folly, for the salmon, valuable as they are, will soon be far exceeded in value by other food products of Alaska. Seattle, one of the biggest American cities, is already being supplied by the Market Gardens of Alaska. And the estimates of the US Department of Agriculture are that within 15 years the output

of Alaskan reindeer meat and present prices per pound will be worth from $45 to $60 million a year. More than two centuries ago, the Dutch discovered Spitzpitzpard. Hogan, the south tip of which is about 300 miles farther north than the north tip of Alaska, a fact that must, however, be interpreted in the light of the unsymmetrical nature of the polar regions as explained, for instance, in Chapter 2 of the Friendly Arctic, New York, 1921. Whale and seal oil of far greater commercial importance then then now, and this group of islands soon became an important focus of the whale fishery. All of it was claimed by Great Britain,

and all was claimed by Holland and other countries made various claims, but as a matter of fact, most of the country was for a long time controlled by the British and a small part by the Dutch. Later these fisheries declined in value and disappeared when standard oil began to furnish the light of the world. No British or other sailors made any regular visits for years. And Gladstone, as Prime Minister of Great Britain, renounced any claims that Britain might have had, saying and apparently believing that the islands could only be a bill of expense if possession were maintained.

Some years later, the Hamburg-American line and other steamship lines cultivated Spitzbergen as one of the interesting outposts of the tourist trade, exploiting the most commonplace-looking of marvels, the midnight sun, which no one can tell from any other sun by anything but reference to a watch-carrying local time. About the beginning of our century, there were in Sweden, some men of foresight who proposed in the barlet that Sweden should take possession of Spitzbergen. This proposal was promptly turned down on the ground that Sweden had no claims to Spitzbergen and did not want to have as a country was not worth claiming.

And then it happened as some Americans visited the places tourists and came upon some coal on the beach and some iron. On the strength of this and other evidence, engineers were sent there and reported that the islands contained fabulous qualities of easily accessible coal and iron of high grade. An America company was organized for the promotion of these mines, and a Norwegian and an English company were also organized. Several countries then simultaneously awoke to the realization of the value of Spitzbergen. Holland began to claim it because she had discovered it, Great Britain because she had for a long time held possession of it, and Russia and the Scandinavian countries because they had explored it,

and had other possessions not so very many hundreds of miles away from it. Even the Germans claimed it. Each country was a dog in the manger so far as all the other countries were concerned. Anarchy was a consequence. Though huge commercial enterprises were being undertaken, there was on the islands no police officer or judge or any vestige of recognised government, and no way of legally obtaining title to any property. In 1913, on a visit to England,

I met one of the large coal mine owners of Wales, who told me that it was already then clearly for a seat. by himself and all the other coalmen whom he knew that Spitsbergen was soon to become one of the chief competitors, even on the chief competitor of Wales in the coal markets of the world. The representations of the various commercial concerns finally led to an international convention of the countries involved. This convention had met in Norway and was in session when it was suddenly and automatically dissolved by the conflagration of the World War. Later the American cabalists, doubtless partially.

because they failed to secure support from their government, solve their holdings to the Norwegians, and Great Britain and Norway remained the two countries most vitally interested. Now comes a chapter in the story of Spitsbogan that is humorous or tragic, or pathetic according to one's attitude towards the statesmen and industrial pioneers of Britain. In the spring of 1920,

the newspapers carried an announcement that the British had surrendered to Norway their political claims to Spitzpurgan. I was in New York when this news was published, and was interviewed on the subject by some enterprising reporters. As it seems to me clear that Britain had a stronger claim to the islands than any other nation, and so they're much stronger one than Norway. I gave it as my opinion that there must be behind the transaction some secret political bargain, possibly made at a time of war stress and uncertainty,

and that Norway was being rewarded now by Britain for having kept her agreement. Knowing the large investment of English and Scotch Capital in the Spitzburg and coal mines, I did not conceive it possible that English diplomats are now succeeded in doing in this case of Norway what they had failed in 1763 to do with France when they tried to give away or refused to receive Canada. Soon after the publication of this interview I went to England and found that so far as my friends knew

who were interested in the Spitsbergen minds the unbelievable was true. Their statements may have been culled by the heat of their feelings but they told me that the substance of the story was this. The Norwegians had said to the British diplomats in Paris that if Britain didn't mind very much they would like, please, to be given to Spitzburg. To this the British had replied, in substance, that they didn't see why anybody wanted those isolated frozen islands. But if anybody did want them badly enough to ask for them, they didn't see why they shouldn't have them. If this be a true statement, these British diplomats can at least quote an excellent precedent from Takenus.

they were repeating about spitzbergen what he would have said about bridget nearly two thousand years earlier but if the diplomats of paris happened to be ignorant about spitzbergen the press and public in the british isles were not and there arose a storm of protest i still have a feeling that my own guess may have been right that there was with norway some secret british diplomatic bargain to which the politicians have not owed but the coal men i talked with laid it all to pure ignorance When taxed with their blunder, the diplomats had been able to reply only that the Norwegians had agreed to respect the property rights of British subjects, and that capital already invested there, was guaranteed fair treatment. But these disgruntled businessmen said that it is not the same as owning the islands. For Sistburg and for the world as a whole, it may be just as well that Norway should be the overlord. But I have not yet talked with any Britishers who take that detached view, and certainly not their stock. stockholders of the Spitsboken companies. One company is said to be capitalised at $25 million, and the aggregate of the British companies

is said to be more than 50 millions. These figures are not to be relied on except as meaning that British interests in these very remote northern enterprises were large and would presumably soon have become larger. The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain tells us that in 1918, in spite of the extraordinary difficulties due to the unsettled condition of Europe. Europe, and not to the climate or latitude of Spitsbergen. One hundred thousand tons of coal were exported. The journal also says that the Admiralty of Great Britain has published a table of the

comparative steam values of various kinds of coal, which places that of Spitzburgan higher than the best Welsh coal. It says further that while the rich iron ore of Spitzbergen is at present being exported to smelters in Great Britain, this is but a transient phenomenon. In the course of a few years, local smelters are certain to be built. Spitzbergen is one of a very few known places in the world where a large quantity of easily accessible hard coal is found in close proximity to large quantities of easily accessible iron ore of high grade.

It has always been easy for people of that type of mind known as practical, sound and conservative to prove that lands as yet of no value cannot possibly never be of value. striking contrast to this type of mind is out to the born explorer, who must above all things be a man of imagination. Henry Hudson, the second navigator to reach those islands, noted in his journal in the year 1607 that he had no doubt Spitsbergen would be profitable to whoever should adventure it. Chief of the arguments against the value of Spitzbergen 15 years ago was that was located in an Arctic Sea, which though it could be navigated at certain seasons could not be profitably navigated because interrupted navigation was said to be

never profitable. This same argument is at present being advanced most convincingly against the feasibility of the Hudson Bay Road, which the Canadian government is developing as a means of contact between the prairie provinces and Europe by way of Hudson streets. Although the argument sounds convincing when pronounced, with conviction, actual trial has failed to confirm it. I have taught with an able mining engineer who at one time was in charge to the mines of the American firm, a year and long year in Spitsbergen, and he has told me that he believes coal can be cheaply mined and transferred from Spitzburg into Europe, that Spitsbergen will drive Newcastle and Wales out of the continental coal margars north of their latitude, which means, among

others, those of the White Sea and the Merriman coast, and the northern half of the Scandinavian countries. All very interesting, the critics may say, but it's a long time. lane that has no turning. Takadus was wrong when he said people would never by choice live as far north as France. The moors in the Middle Ages were short-sighted when they undervalued the possibilities of Britain. It is strange that an astute man as Franklin thought a small tropic isle like Godilop, commercially more valuable than Canada. Cyrad was wise in buying Alaska at Gladstone and Sybilton to want to renounce Spitzbergen. But surely there must be somewhere

to limit the northward progress. Have we not come to that limit now? We've not come to the northward limit of commercial progress. There was many at pause, but non-stopped the westward course of empire until we came to the place where east is west. In that sense, only is there a northward limit to progress. Corner lots in Rome were precious when the banks of the Thames had no value. The products of Canada were little beyond furs and fish when the British and French agreed,

in preferring Godelope. But values have shifted north since then, and times have changed. Times will continue to change. There is no northern boundary beyond which productive enterprise cannot go to North-Mete's north on the opposite shores of the Arctic Ocean, as east has met west on the Pacific. End of Section 1. Staples Preferred Business Membership, built for busy business owners, because you've got bigger things to think about.

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Section 2 of the Northwood course of Empire by Village Amherstiefen. This is Liberals According. all Librivox Accordings of the public domain. For more information or a volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 2 The North That Never Was If the average American or European university graduate, has ten ideas about the North,

nine of them were wrong. So far as the victims of American education are concerned I know from experience. As to the Europeans, I judge them by their books and a conversation. I happen to be born a British subject in Manitoba, which is British territory, but my parents moved to the United States when I was only a year old, and I've been through the regular middle of American education, common school, high school, and university to the Bachelor of Arts degree at the State University of Iowa. I then had three years of postgraduate study at Harvard,

held a scholarship and two fellowships there, and even became an instructor in a minor capacity. It is therefore reasonable to suppose, that during the period of my formal and informal education, I absorbed the same general type of misinformation as does the average American. When I went north and became an explorer, I found that nine out of ten of my ideas about the polar regions were wrong, and from that I infer that if you are an honor graduate of some university, you are probably in as bad a case.

When I was a student in Harvard, Samuel McCord, Crothers, was preaching just across the way from us. It was a delight to listen to him, whether in church or in the lecture room, and from that delight I passed to the equal joy of reading his essays in books. The reading of one of these essays may not have been exactly a turning point in my life, but it was an event that had a lasting effect on me. The essay was on the advisability of founding a university of unlearning. Wherever I have gone since, but especially in the polar regions, the opening of each nearer vista has brought a further endorsement of the general. wisdom of that proposal. Dr. Crowther has said that this and other lands are filled with schools and colleges

engaged in teaching as things that are not so, and it would be a highly desirable thing, and there could be established in each country, at least one well-known institution, where you might go and unlearn a few of them. These seem to be most a call in each country the National University of Polite Unlearned. For many years, it has been a large part of my activities to say in lectures and writings, and conversation that the far north, both in western and eastern hemispheres, is destined to be colonized in the same general way as were the western prairies of the United States half a century ago, by the same type of people and with the resulting civilization not fundamentally dissimilar. This assertion is met in the minds of readers or listeners by small armies of Egyptians.

The things you think you know about the north arise in a body to declare that the contention is absurd. On such occasions I think of myself as a professor in Dr. Crowther's University of Unlearning, with the initial advantage of knowing what the reader of Orsner thinks he knows about the North, for I knew those things myself once and believed them until they went North and found they were not true. I proceed as follows to demolish his misknowledge. 1. Nearly, if not quite the most fundamental wrong idea by the North, is that the North Pole is the coldest place in the Northern Hemisphere, and that the polar regions are far colder in the coldest part of winter than any countries that are now inhabited

by the average civilised European or American. When we stop to think about it, we see we have really always known that this could not be true, as will appear below. Besides minor considerations, there are three main factors that determine what the possible minimum temperature of any place may be. These are latitude, altitude and distance from the ocean. We see once that the North Pole has in a high degree only one of these three qualifications for being extremely cold. Certainly it is at a high latitude, but the North Pole does not lie high above sea level,

for is located in an ocean which Admiral Piri, at the time he visited the pole, found me more than 12,000 feet deep. And if it is not above sea level, neither is it far away from the ocean, for it lies in the ocean. Possessing only one of the three main qualifications for being extremely cold, it naturally is never extremely cold. Those who theorise about it generally agree that the minimum temperature there seldom, if ever drops blue, 60 blue zero, Fahrenheit.

However, that is a matter of theory. No one has, as yet, spent an entire year at the North Pole. It need not be more than a year or two, and in my opinion it will not be more than a decade or two until somebody goes to the North Pole. stays there a year and brings back to us a coherent account of how cold or warm it is there from day to day for the 12 months. The main handicaps in an attempt at this sort would be the mobile nature of the fractured floating ice that covers the vicinity of the pole. It seems probable that after being formed in the part of the ocean that lies between the North Pole and Alaska, the ice masses drift across the polar areas at the rate of perhaps half a mile per day.

They are bound for the Atlantic. The destination is the ocean to the north of Iceland and Norway, where they meet the warm waters that farther south make of the Gulf Stream are melted and disappear. Anyone who made his camp at the North Pole would learn through astronomical reservations after a few weeks that he was no longer at home and would have to pick up his bed and walk back to the North Pole. Apart from that, living there a year would be easier than some polar achievements that are already history. If the actual minimum temperature of the North Pole is a matter of theory, we are in no doubt about the temperatures on the north coast of Canada or Alaska. For more than 20 years in the case of Canada, and about 40 in the case of the United States, there have been Weather Bureau Observation stations on the North Coast of North America.

I spent in the polar regions 10 winters and 13 summers myself, and during most of that time I've carried reliable thermometers so that I could say from my own. experience how cold is up there in winter, now warm in summer, but I prefer to quote the records of the Canadian and American Weather Biroes. I have written both of them and asked them to give me the lowest temperature ever recorded in the Canadian Station at Herschel Island on the north coast of Canada near the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and the American station near Point Barrow at the north tip of Alaska about 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The reply is the replies in both cases were identical. We have never recorded anything lower than 54 degrees

Fahrenheit below zero. The other day I was reading over a report of the meteorological observations on my Arctic expedition of 1913-18, made by the second in command, Dr. R. M. Anderson. He says, the lowest temperature of the winter, 1915 and 16, was 46 degrees below zero, or about like Saranic Lake, New York State, which is a winter resort. Temperatures as low as 50 degrees below zero are rare on the north coast of north America, and there are many winters when 45 degrees or 46 degrees below is the lowest record. After asking the United States weather bureau for the lowest record applicable to the north coast of Alaska, I inquired for the lowest temperature ever recorded in some settled portion of the United States in some average American community, where a good many Americans lived in comfort. They replied then in a small town near Haverda, Montana. They had registered 68 degrees below zero.

Almost as low temperatures have been recorded in Haverra itself, and Havera is a typical American town of four or five thousand inhabitants, with stores and shops with schools and little children come to school, with churches and people going to church at a temperature of 14 degrees lower than has ever been known to be on the north coast of North America, and about 10 degrees lower than it probably ever is at the North Pole. and Hoverra is not by any means the only place the United States where the minimum cold is lower than on the north coast of North America. I lived for 15 years in Pembina County at the northeast corner of North Dakota, and as a small boy I used to go two and a half miles to a country school at a temperature as low as I've ever seen it in my journeys along the coastline or over the moving sea ice in the polar regions.

All the other little boys and girls did likewise, and none of us realized that we were heroes doing it. Since then, much better dressed and outfitted, and in every way better able to take care of myself. I have done the same thing as Apollo Explorer, and have been counted a hero for doing it. At my birthplace in Manitoba, the minimal government record is 55 degrees below zero, one degree lower than the minimum for the North Coast of North America. accordingly if you happen to be living in Manitoba or Dakota or Montana and want to become a polar explorer about all you have to do for a proper outfit when you start north is to leave at home a few of your clothes I once said substantially this in a lecture at Calispell Montana and noticed that my audience did not seem to be particularly pleased After my talk a number of them came to me and, I had to first saying that my talk had been interesting on the whole,

they went on to say that they resented the way I ran down Montana and hoped that I would not deal it outside the state. Here in Montana they said, we realise that 60 below zero is not particularly dreadful and that you can go about your ordinary work without discomfort at such temperatures. But people outside the state might not realize it and might get the wrong idea from what you say. I replied by saying that I was merely using Montana as yardstick. The merits of Montana are perfectly well known, not only in the state itself, but in Florida and Kentucky and California and Europe. When you speak of a yard stick, you do so because everybody knows how long a yard is.

The merits of Montana are almost as well known as a length of yard. When you think of Montana, you think of vast herds of cattle and sheep and horses that ran out all winter without a barn and without hay, and do pretty well at a temperature lower than that to the north coast of North America. I was merely comparing a place well-known to be excellent with another place little known and supposed to be disagreeable. I was not running down Montana, but praising the north. Coming back to the principle enunciated above,

we see, we have always known Montana, ought to be colder than the North Pole, for the three main factors which determine extreme, winter cold, latitude, altitude and distance from the sea. The North Pole is only latitude while Montana is reasonably far north. It is reasonably high above sea level, even in the towns where people live, and it's far away from any ocean. The combination accordingly produces extremely low temperatures in winter. A moment's thought will show, however, that on the basis of these factors, the coldest point in the northern hemisphere cannot be in North America, for the same factors have a higher value, on a larger continent of Eurasia.

Accordingly, we find the cold pole of the northern hemisphere in Siberia, north of Yakutsk, where, by figures published by the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain, the temperature to 92 degrees below zero in winter. Other sources equally respectable give the minimum temperature at 96 degrees below zero. And this is a settled community. They do not cultivate tropical fruits at Yakutsk, nor indeed wheat or wheat or Indian corn, but they do have oats and barley and rye and garden products, and some of the people are the blonde type of European, very much like the rest of us in complexion and

characteristics, or those showing just now a slightly higher percentage of Bolshevism. 2. A complement of the idea that the north is dreadfully cold in winter is a notion that is also cold through the entire summer, though it is possible to maintain that the winters are dreadfully cold, but only by agreeing that the winters of Northern Vermont and Saranak Lake and Minnesota and Montana are also dreadfully cold. But no one can even glance at the Weather Bureau records for summer temperatures in polar regions and maintain that in any sense of the English language the summers there are always cold. Climate may be classified in various ways. One of them is to make a division between continental and insular climates. The ocean is a great stabilizing influence

In the tropics it acts generally as a refrigerator And in the polar regions as a radiator Even the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico Are colder than the surface of the land in Texas and summer And accordingly the sea breezes keep Galveston And Corpus Christi reasonably cool I was told of Fort Bragg On the west coast of California last summer

That since the town was built the temperature there has never risen above 85 degrees in the shade, for the ocean breezes are continually blowing across it. By 50 miles inland and beyond a range of mountains, they frequently have a temperature of 110 degrees in the shade. Remembering that this is true of Texas and California, we are prepared to hear that the coastlines of the polar regions are never warm in summer. Five miles from the ocean at Point Borough, the temperature probably seldom if ever rises

above 75 degrees in the shade, which is 10 degrees colder, than the similar record for Fort Bragg, California, both places being at sea level and near the sea. But 50 miles inland in California gives you a temperature of 110 degrees in the shade, and 100 miles inland in Alaska will give a temperature approaching 100 degrees in the shade. I inquired from the American Weather Bureau last fall as to the highest temperature ever recorded under ordinary Weather Bureau regulations by their observation station at Fort Yukon in Alaska, four miles north of the Arctic Circle.

The reply to the highest temperature at that particular place was 100 degrees in the shade. New York City and Montreal are both places recognized as frequently uncomfortably hot in summer, yet either of them is likely to be cooler on a given July day than is Fort Yukon in the Arctic. Anyone can find out from the Weather Bureau that the temperature in Alaska north of the Arctic Circle has been known to rise to 100 degrees in the shade. Now I imagine anyone can find out by writing to the officers of the Church Mission Society of the Episcopal Church of the United States at 281 4th Avenue, New York. Just how it feels in Alaska when the temperature is 100 degrees in the shade.

For that organization has maintained a mission and hospital at Fort Yukon for several decades. The summer of 1921, I was at Yuma, Arizona, when the temperature was 100,000. 111 degrees in the shade and nobody seemed to be suffering. In Chicago or New York it is common to see streams of perspiration on people's faces, but in humor the air is so dry that the perspiration is evaporated as fast as the mechanisms of the skin pours it out. It is well known that in the commercial freezing plants low temperatures can be secured by evaporating ammonia, and that doctors can freeze a human skin as a basis for minor

surgical operations by spraying with a warm liquid which produces a lowering of temperature through rapid evaporation Through a similar principle the skin of the human body is a wonderful self-calling device But it works well only in dry climates how 11 in Yuma We felt almost cool for the rapid evaporation and do not suffer A month later at Chicago at 93 degrees in the shade I heard much complaining and believed there was a deal of actual suffering The climate which is intolerable in Chicago at 93 degrees is the same kind of staming heat you have at Fort Yukon, Alaska. The summer of 1918, I was convalescent from Typhoid at St. Stephen's Hospital at Fort Yukon.

That summer the temperature did not go to 100 degrees, but it did go to 97 degrees. The hospital is a three-story building, and on that day most of us moved out the other two stories into the cellar. Ark Deacon Hudson Stuck Who was in charge of the mission Not only that he slept in the cellar But as near to the cool and damp cellar floor As he possibly could I have just consulted a new edition

Of a widely used American school geography And have found the statement that North the Arctic Circle it is always called Either the author is unfamiliar with the Weather Bureau of Records Or else he has a peculiar idea Of the meaning of ordinary English words How far wrong they may be who would guess that the summer will be cold in places where the winter is cold

is strikingly shown by the Encyclopedia Britannica account of Verkoyansk, a town in Siberia about 75 miles north of the Arctic Circle. This town is at or near the cold pole of the earth. It has a minimum record of negative 93.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 125 degrees below the freezing point of water, 54 degrees below the freezing point of mercury, 39 degrees below the greatest cold recorded at the north tip of Alaska and 20 or 30 degrees lower than the estimated minimum temperature of the North Pole.

If summer temperatures were necessarily low where the winter is cold, we would expect a chilly July at Verkoyansk, but we find the thermometer not infrequently above 90 in the shade. The maximum record is positive, 92.7 degrees, or well above the hottest summer days of London or San Francisco. and presently hot for July in Rome or New York. As the sun does not set for weeks in mid-summer and the nights are consequently hot, it is not surprising that certain cereals and garden vegetables can be cultivated

at what is, in winter, the coldest spot north of the equator. 3. After considering the minimum temperatures of winter and the maximum temperatures of summer, we come next to a consideration of the length of the seasons. It is true, generally speaking, that the farther north you go in the northern hemisphere, the longer the winter and the shorter the summer. However, this has far less of a practical meaning than is commonly supposed. A Sicilian may think that a winter of three months' length is intolerable, and if he insists that it is intolerable, you can't very well argue with him,

but you can at least prove to him that numerous prosperous people live in a climate where there are three months of winter. There are those who are used to three months of winter who insist that six months of winter would be intolerable, but you can similarly show them that there are prosperous cities, such as Winnipeg, for instance, where you have winter nearly half the year. But in Winnipeg, you will in turn meet people who say

that while five or six months of winter is no serious handicap to economic development, nine months of winter would be insuperable and intolerable. The argument is of the size of the same, nature and in its essence no more tenable than that of the Sicilian who thinks that even the shortest winter is unbearable. It will be said that you cannot raise wheat or corn where the winter is nine months long. That is true, but this does not necessarily form a serious argument against the value of the north.

You cannot raise cotton in Iowa, but you can raise corn. You cannot raise corn profitably in most parts of Manitoba, but it is one of the greatest wheat countries in the world, and you cannot raise wheat profitably on the Arctic Circle, but you can find something to take the place of the wheat. What that something is we shall leave to be specially answered in a letter chapter. The general objection must, however, be answered, at this point, if only partially and tenderly. This can best be done by suggesting a new version and a new application of an idea similar to the one Tennyson had when he said, better 50 years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay

I shall not contend here Although I may later on That the climate of the north is such As to make our lives delightful to you or me But shall for the moment confine the consideration To a lower form of life than ours That are the Plank Kingdom A botanist

I hope the reader will not mind my Not hunting up his name For the war is recent and he was a German some decades ago laid down the general principle that the growth of plants depends not primarily on the number of months of suitable climate, but rather upon the number of hours of sunlight. It can be shown mathematically that the total number of hours of sunlight in a year, if we disregard cleverness, is leased at the equator and becomes greater because of refraction as you go north. undoubtedly temperature has an effect upon rapidity of growth, but still sunlight has light rather than its heat seems to be the main factor. This explains the rhapsodies of the ordinary tourist who comes back from Yukon or from Alaska with stories which the stay-at-home does not believe, but which are

nevertheless true about the wonderful size and mariously rapid growth of the ordinary garden flowers when they are planted under the midnight sun. Not being a botanist, I do not have vouched for the statement, which I believe to be true, that many plants not only stop growing during the hours of darkness, but also are sluggish in resuming their growth for when the first beams of the morning sun strikes them. It is something like starting a motor car that has been allowed to get cold. In midsummer, a plant has, say, 13 growing hours out of the 24 in Texas, 14 or 15 in Minnesota, 20 up to the Great Slave Lake, and 24 hours on Great Bear Lake.

Another way of stating it is that, in the south, the plants work single shift and the north double shift. A plant on the Arctic Circle, therefore, has almost as much growing time in one month as it has in two months in the southern United States. The northern summer, when measured by plant opportunities for growth, is much longer than it may seem to be when you glance carelessly at the calendar. On the north shore of Great Bear Lake, just north the Arctic Circle, the mosquitoes came out the first week of May, and the lake was not frozen over till late in November, 1910-11. Measureed that way, the Arctic summer there that year was nearly seven months. Let us call it five for conservatism. But see what sort of summer we have up there. On the Copper Mine River north of Great Bear Lake, about 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

I remember one period of three weeks when there was not a cloud in the sky. The sun beat down upon us at 24 hours though, and the heat was to the vicinity of 90 degrees, in the shade every afternoon without dropping lower than 70 degrees or at the lowest 60 degrees at night. Those three weeks were certainly equal an opportunity for plant growth to six weeks of Texas, and they were by no means the whole summer. The mosquitoes that came out early in May divided their reigns, with the sandflies that did not cease tormenting us until in September. The mosquitoes did come out at the early spring, but the summer lasted beyond the sandflies.

There is to be remembered that grass does not ordinarily spend all the summer and growing. Most plants, especially those of a semi-arid climate, grow only for a few weeks and then ripen and turn yellow. From the point of view of grazing animals, they may be nourishing and valuable the whole year, though they grow only for a few weeks or perhaps months. It is obvious then that the northern summer is aptly long for the development of the wild forage plants, and so it is. This is one of the considerations which show that the north is the greatest potential grazing area of the world, but that is a point we can develop fully only a little farther on in this argument. 4. That the ground in the polar regions is always covered with snow,

where the winter or summer is another the widely spread and wrong notions. Before going further, we must realize that there are two ways of looking at this question. If I meet a Mexican and ask him, is there always snow in Mexico? He can answer me either yes or no and defend either answer. If he says yes, he is thinking about the mountain tops. If he says no, he is thinking about the vast average of his country. Even in the tropics, there is permanent snow on the mountain tops if the mountains are high,

and even in the remoteist Arctic regions, the snow all disappears from the land in summer, unless it is fairly high land. Take, for instance, the north coast of Alaska. There is a range of mountains commonly considered a branch of the system of the Rockies, which runs about straight east from Cape Lisbon, toward the mouth of the Mackenzie River, leaving to the north a triangular coastal plain with a total area two or three times that of New York State or a little more than that of England and Scotland put together.

This is a real prairie. In winter it is thinly snow covered and the grass in most places can be seen sticking up through the snow. In summer it is green with grass and golden with flowers and there is never a speck of snow. As seen from the sea, the mountains to the south of this coastal prairie look high, for they rise from the low land by their actual altitude is less than 6,000 feet. In this range you may find some small snowbank in a deep ravine or in the lee of a hill over here. hill that faces north, but nothing large enough to justify in orderly usage of the name of glacier. You cross this first range of mountains and come to a second one, nine or ten thousand feet high.

This altitude is great enough, and here we do have permanent glaciers, although probably not nearly as large as those found in the state of Washington. The Washington glaciers being larger, not merely because of greater altitude, but also because of much heavier precipitation. We learn from the school books a great deal about the iciness of Greenland, and if we did not learn it from the school books, we should learn it from the Him Books from Greenlands, icy mountains, to India's coral strand. But the hymn book is more correct and more careful in its statement than the ordinary geography. For the geography says that Greenland is icy, and lets it go at that,

but the hymn book specifies from Greenland's icy mountains, and that is exactly correct. The mountains of Greenland are icy, and Greenland is mostly icy because it is mostly mountainous. It is a mass of high mountains in a region of heavy precipitation. Just to the east is the Gulf Stream, and from the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, there it continually rises clouds of vapor that are carried to the west and condensed into snow against the mountain tops, somewhat as we have a nearly perpetual snowfall upon the high slopes and tops of the Cascade Mountains in Washington and British. Columbia. The Greenland Mountains are icy, not primarily because they are northerly, but rather because the precipitation upon them is heavy and because they are high. Admiral Peary

proved this about 30 years ago. Somewhere north in the middle of Greenland, he climbed into the interior and found, as everybody expected, that Greenland there as well as farther south as Cuthers inland ice. He travelled north and the season was summer. He was going toward the region which is popularly supposed to be coolest and ice-east, and he travelled at first over ice-covered land, but he finally came to the end of the ice and snow and found before him large stretches of prairies and hills, green of grass and golden of flowers,

with bumblebees and butterflies and birds and herds of grazing animals. Perry was upon the northwest coast of the most northerly land in the world, but because it was lowland, it was free of snow and summer. Since then, further exploration of the island of the north of Greenland has confirmed Piri's view of the extensiveness of these ice-free districts. It is the most northerly possible land, so far as we yet know, and that emphasizes the generalization, which I shall repeat, for it is important and amidst of no expectations. Any land, even in the tropics, is permanently covered with snow, it is very high, and no land, even in the polar regions,

is permanently covered with snow unless it is high. Of course you may have a narrow stretch, of lowland, at the foot of glacier-infested mountains, and the glaciers may pour out upon the plain, but this lowland ice has its berth in the mountains, and so the exception to our rule is apparent and not real. Well, you see, then, that in northern Alaska, an altitude of 5,000 feet is not enough for perpetual snow where the sun can shine. 10,000 feet is enough, but you have a great deal more snow over the 10,000-foot level in the state of Washington or the province of British Columbia, then you have at that level in northern Alaska

or the northern Yukon. This is because of difference in precipitation. British Columbia is commonly considered the warmest province in Canada, but because of high altitude and heavy precipitation, it contains over three-fourths of all the permanent snow and ice in continental Canada. Nearly all the rest is in the high mountains of the territory, to the north, the Yukon. 5. A corollary of the idea that the north is covered with snow even in summer is the one that it is a region of heavy snowfall. This is far from being true. If you take a map of North America and place your pencil near the southwestern corner of Alaska on the coast of Bering Straits, you may draw a line east on the south on the south coast some 50 miles inland. When you come east to British Columbia, your line turns south, still keeping 50 or 100 miles inland.

when you come near the international boundary, your line would run east, following the boundary between the United States and Canada roughly. This is the line of heavier snowfall. South of that line, generally speaking, you have less and less snow, and north of it you also have less snow and less snow. By the figures of the United States weather bureau, snowfall in winter in Missouri or Virginia is heavier, then on the north coast of Alaska. Well, we believe that the snowfall in Virginia or the highlands of Scotland, is many times as great as on the north tip of Greenland, on the northerly islands discovered by my expedition of 1913-18.

In the north polar regions there is then, to begin with, very little snow on the ground, at the end of winter. We have already said that in some parts of the polar regions the temperature is 100 degrees in the shade in the summer. It would have to be a very peculiar kind of snow if a little of it, or less, covering the ground in winter, would last far into the spring. Of course it does not last long but disappears like magic.

For two or four or five months, according to just where you are, you have green prairies and flowery meadows that are delight to the eye and will be delightful to every sense, but for the unbelievable plague of insects, mosquitoes, sandflies, horseflies and the like. In the development of the country, these will prove at all back next in seriousness to the wall of ignorance that surrounds the northern lands. China's wall of masonry was never a very efficient barrier.

A wall of misinformation is more effective, more difficult to tear down. End of Section 2. Section 3 of the Northward Course of Empire by Fuliamer Stephenson. This is a Librivox according, or the Revox Accordings from the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 3. The Fruitful Arctic

Apparently on my mirror say so, the following chapter asserts about the north various things which are the opposite of common beliefs. Two years ago, this would have been embarrassing for me. Even those who might have admitted that 10 years beyond the polar circle, travelling on the average 2,000 miles per year on foot, had given me ample opportunity to study conditions up there, could still have questioned my veracity or my judgment, if not both. Now we can get in one place, and in a compact form, waiting if not conclusive support for enough of the more essential statements in this chapter, so that the reader will be inclined to say, since the points of the argument which I can check have full support, the rest of the argument, and the conclusions are probably all right. The authority in question is the report of the Royal Commission appointed at Atawa, by ordering counsel of date May 20, 1919, to investigate the possible. of the Reindeer and Musk-Ox industries in the Arctic and sub-arctic regions of Canada.

This report traces origin back to a series of letters and interviews I had with the Honourable Arthur Megan, then Minister of the Interior for Canada and late Prime Minister. After Mr. Megan had become, in general, convinced that his subject was important and deserved the intention of Parliament, he arranged that I should address a joint meeting of members of the Senate and the House of Commons. the presentation of the case for the great food producing resource of the north was satisfactory enough to parliament so that mr mcgin felt justified in appointing a royal commission to investigate the possibility of domestic hosemuskhocks and of introducing domestic reindeer both with a view of making the northern prairies commonly miscalled barren grounds producers of domestic mates on a commercial scale i was a member of this commission but being already prejudiced though having lived more than a decade in the north no real judicial function rested in me but in the other three commissioners only for this and other reasons i resigned from the commission in february nineteen twenty The commissioners could scarcely have been more happily chosen.

Dr. J. G. Rutherford, a veterinarian by profession, had become through a lifetime of study and practical work, nearly or quite the leading stockman of Canada. He was chairman. J.S. McLean is manager of the Harris Abattoir company, the leading meatpackers of Canada. J. B. Harkin is commissioner of Dominion Parks, and in that capacity he has charge of Canada's successful work

in preserving the American bison and as a leader in game conservation and kindred activities. The Commission, during a service of two years, examined 35 witnesses, missionaries, fur traders, explorers and others, men who had spent in the north anything from one to 30 or more years. According to their own testimony, these 35 witnesses had spent in the Arctic and sub-arctic regions of Canada, or in a few cases, Alaska or Siberia, a total of 289 years, or an average of more than 8 years each. This testimony is many hundreds of thousands of words. It has, however, been admirably epitomized by Dr. Wutherford in a 100-page report that has been submitted to the Canadian Parliament. This is now a public document open to war.

These are the findings which, supported by ample testimony, have given case. Canadian's assurance that the glamorous and romantic but eternally frozen and forever worthless north is a myth. In its place, Dr. Brotherford's report has given them a common place, but livable and valuable north. This report will support enough for the contentions of this chapter and this book, without contradicting any of them, to give it a general aspect of established truth. If you think some statement extravagant, compare it with the official report.

You may find the report more soberly worded as to conclusions and recommendations, for I know and love the North, then Dr. Rutherford judges it merely by testimony. But you will find the facts the same in this book and in the report, except that the book covers her greater variety of subjects than fell within the scope of the Commissioner's inquiry. It's difficult to see how any of the wrong ideas about the North obtains such wise circulation and such a firm hold. But it is especially difficult to see how the idea can ever have arisen at the far north is devoid of vegetation, or that if there is vegetation, it is only mosses and lichens.

An actual canvas of the school geographies and a reading of the encyclopedias would nevertheless leave you with that impression, and yet every botanist will tell you that the contrary is true. And mosses and lichens everywhere prevail in the schoolbook accounts to the far north, while in the north itself they are inconspicuous as compared with the flowering plants, would seem unbelievable if it were an isolated untruth. As a matter of fact, the school books are full of just that sort of misinformation. We, the common people, believe it, other specialists have always known better. There is perhaps no more striking instance of misknowledge than the classic of the ostrich

which hides his head in the sand when he is frightened. Some 2300 years ago, there was living in Greece, an interesting but not particularly reliable writer Herodotus. Apparently he first put in circulation in Europe the story that there is a bird in Africa, gigantic of body and conspicuous on the open plain. Yet so foolish that when he is frightened he hides his head in the sand and imagines that if he cannot see his enemy, his enemy cannot see him.

It interested the Greeks greatly that there There should be some animal, so much more foolish than humans, and they probably began at once to use this story as the basis of what with them corresponded to sermons and editorials. Children have found the idea interesting, and moralists useful ever since. The Romans copied it from the Greeks and the Renaissance writers from the Romans, and we have it in our school books, not as a Little Red Riding Hood story which we know to be fiction, not as an Alison Waterland story which nobody believes. but as a sober, supposedly scientific fact which we believe in our time and which children believe today. I believed it for about 35 years, until I became the housemate of Cole Ackley, who knows Africa at least as well by experiences I do the north.

One evening after dinner, we were talking about big-game hunting, and he remarked how the ostrich is nearly the caniest big-game animal of Africa, and one of the most difficult to approach. When I said I didn't see how it could be very difficult to approach an animal that stands in the open and hides his head in the sand, Ackley replied that he does that only in the books. I have since asked many African travellers who have all said that they never saw anything to lead them to believe that any ostrich ever hit his head in the sand when he was frightened. I asked Colonel Roosevelt about it once. He replied in substance that while in Africa he had been greatly interested in this, He had inquired from various white men who had never seen any evidence of it, and from various Negroes who had never heard of it.

His comment was, You see, those Negroes had not had the advantage of American education? Although I accepted for half a lifetime as a fact the story of the ostrich, I can now see that no testimonies required, but only a moment's serious thought to show that it could not be true. Just imagine what you would do if you would do, were a leopard or a lion or a hyena and were hungry in a country inhabited by foolish birds that stood around with their heads buried. I think if I were a leopard, I would go up and bite their

necks. Obviously every ostrich in Africa would be killed within a year if they did not know every trick of hiding and fleeing and fighting that is needed to get along in this difficult world. In spite of common sense and testimony, ostriches with their heads in the sand have prevailed in our literature for more than 2,000 years. So it is not particularly remarkable that the mosses and lichens of the north, without any reason in Censor in fact have prevailed in our books for a number of centuries.

My first year in the Arctic, I saw everything through a haze of romance, and did not for a while realize that it was a very commonplace country. But during the nine more years I spent there, the realization kept gradually growing on me that one of the chief problems of the world, and particularly one of the chief problems of Canada and Siberia, is to begin to make use for the vast quantities of grass that go to waste in the north every year.

The obvious thing is to find some domestic animal that will eat the grass. Then when the animal is big and fat, it should be butchered and shipped where the food is needed. On my last polar expedition, I sailed north, the spring of 1913. We did not hear about the war for more than a year after it started, and during the entire course of the war we were received fragmentary and had definite news of it only three times during the five years. We came south just in time for Armist's Day. While in the north I'd not realise clearly in their conditions, but on coming south I found that in our absence people in America had been on rations and in Europe they had been starving, not only our opponents, but even our allies. It became pressing then to do something to get either the Canadian government or some large corporation to begin the development of the meat-producing resources of the North. This led to my advocacy of those plans which have since been taken up in Canada, and which will be described in a future chapter on what Canada and Alaska are already doing in the way of commercial meat production.

I commenced the advocacy of government action in Canada by laying my ideas and tentative plans before Mr. Megan. It did not take me long to convince him that the matter was of great importance and that it demanded immediate investigation. If the investigation bore out more contentions, it would be of manifest importance as something should be done at once. The world and general needed more food to eat, and Canada needed, if not to eat, at least to sell. If she could produce food and harbour colonists in her northern, no less, than on her western prairies, she had before her, in terms of population of wealth, a national destiny hitheroe underment. She must investigate, and if the facts justified it, she must act.

It is said that with some truth that Americans are fond of bragging, and yet Page was able to write from London to Wilson with equal truth. We have the leadership of the world in our hands, and we are the only people who don't know it. The same mixture of self-clotification and over-modesty is found among Canadians to make vast but vague general prophecies about the great future of Canada, and the next breadth to deny them by underrating what must always be the foundation of power, the geographic extent of their habitable and productive lands.

Just what does it mean to say loudly, this is Canada's century, and then say, as one of their leading politicians is commonly quoted, as having said, Canada is a narrow strip along the northern frontier of the United States, varying in width from 50 to 150 miles and capable of supporting no more than 15 million people. To have any foundation for the idea that Canada will one day be a country, equalling even a third of the United States and population, you must recognise productivity and habitability of all her territories. Otherwise, she cannot have square millage of habitable land equal to or exceeding the United States.

And you can come to that belief, only after unlearning most of what Canadian think they know about most of Canada as to climate, soil, vegetation, accessibility and the like. Just now we shall proceed to lay one of the cornerstones upon which shall rest a new conception of the future of the North by considering its fitness to become the world's chief storehouse of domestic meats. In general we shall talk about Canada, but nearly every step will apply also to northern Siberia and will have there an even wider meaning, for as Asia is larger than America, so is Arctic Siberia, both an area and resources, even vaster country than Arctic Canada. The prairies of Arctic Alaska are only one-tenth as large as those of Arctic Canada, yet even Alaska are arguments applies to an area several times that of England and Scotland put together.

Arctic lands can produce as much meat per acre as those stocklands in the south that are too dry for cereals and can, therefore, equal them in the population that is directly fed from the land. But no stockland can equal in production a cereal land, for reasons discussed in another part of this book. So far as the argument applies, this presages a sparse population for the north. But great cities have arisen in deserts about mines and oil wells, and the northern lands will gain in population

according to the luck they have in minerals. In another chapter, we deal briefly with the prospects in that field. With respect to the grazing resources The Far North, we shall take the educated Canadian, American, or European as we find him, already misinformed. At first he considers it revolutionary and unbelievable that the northern half of Canada is a fast pasture, but it is true. The world's largest area of grasslands is undoubtedly in northern Eurasia, and to it only is Canada second. Northern Norway, northern Sweden, northern Finland, northern Finland, northern Russia, and northern Siberia are mountainous in some parts and forested and others, but in general they form together a great prairie land, variously estimated at from 4 million to 6 million square miles, or anything from the full size of the United States to one and one half times that area.

But in northern Canada we are the next largest grazing area in the world, one and a half or two million square miles of prairie land, equal to half the area of the United States. There are some mountains and some rocky hills. In some places there are Ocali flats without vegetation, and in some places there are forests. But in the main, it is a verdure-clad prairie. Whether in square miles or in tonnage of flowering plants, the grazing areas of the Argentine or of Texas are insignificant in comparison. These grasslands are not only the northern portion of the continent,

but also the islands that lie north of Canada, even to the north coast of the most northerly of them. The vegetation is only in part of a typically polar nature, strange to southerners. In part it consists of common plants such as various sledges, bluegrass, Timothy, goldenrod, dandelion, bluebell, poppy, primrose, and amone and the like. More than 115 species of flowering plants are known to exist in Ellesmere Island, the most northerly of the Canadian islands. Sir Clements Markham says that in his life of Sir Leopold McClintock,

there is a polar regions in general, there are 332 species of mosses, 250 lichens, 28 ferns and 762 species of flowering plants. In any such numerical summary, Marican would have been safe in saying, more than, for each of these numbers. New knowledge of the polar regions is continually adding to the number of species, no less to our estimates of the tonnage per square unit of area. The reponderance of flowering plants over non-flowering is conspicuous in the number of species,

but is more conspicuous in tonnage. I think there can be no doubt that every ton of mosses and lichens on the lands beyond the Arctic Soho, there are at least 10 tons of flowering plants. These are more conspicuous not only because they are more numerous, but also because they are less modest in their habits of growth. A further difference in that such plants as grasses and sedges grow fresh every year, while certain species of lichens cropped by her bevorous animals require many years to replace themselves, some species from five to ten years.

The United States government is just now making the first detailed studies of the grazing possibilities of that part of Alaska, which is Arctic, the northern third. These have confirmed the views which I had published some years earlier to the effect that the grazing in the north, as represented by grasses and other flowering plants, is far in excess of that represented by mosses and lichens. The stockmen who learns that vegetation abounds in the north will ask whether you can raise cattle or sheep up there. The answer is that you could, if you wanted to, but it would not pay. During the years, 1918 to 21, I have talked with many cattlemen in such places as Alberta, Montana and Arizona, and is clear that during at least the latter two of these, three years, cattle raising is not paid.

The chief trouble is that in most of these places you have to feed and shelter cattle for part of the year. By the time you have ploughed the land, planted alfalfa, bought all the required machinery, put the hay into stacks, erected barns and fed your cattle, though it be for only two or three months in the year, you have put more money into them than at present prices you can get out of them. If it does not pay to raise cattle in Idaho where you feed them for three months in the year, it would not pay to raise cattle in the polar regions where you would have to feed and shelter them at least six months in the year. But it would pay famously to raise cattle in Montana or Idaho if you did not have to feed them or stable them and did not have to worry about the possibility of a blizzard coming once every few years to kill a part of the herd.

Correspondingly, there should be a profit in raising any domestic animal. in the north is that animal required no shelter or feeding and produced meat that commanded a fair price. We have such an animal in the reindeer. The first objection commonly made to reindeer is that they are a wild animal. Apparently many people have the idea that about the only tame reindeer there are the half dozen that Santa Claus drives around about Christmas time. But reindeer were domestic before history began. They are as domestic as The records of China show that in the 5th century of our era, there were numerous domestic

reindeer in northern China, and King Alfred the Great tells us that when he was king of Britain, there were domestic reindeer in Norway that took there the place of the cattle of England. Should anyone desire evidence of the docility of the herbs of domestic reindeer today, you can find it in any library in chapter 18 of John Moor's delightful, The Cruise of the Corwin, a book mostly written in the early 80s of the last century, although not published until 1917. Muir is as good an example as boroughs to show that natural history can be fascinating without being faked. No one ever seriously questioned the accuracy of his observations.

In this chapter he tells us in substance that many reindeer in the herds which he visited in northern Siberia were as tame as Mary's lamb, and that in general the herds were as docile as the average flock of sheep. There has been a regularity of usage as to the words reindeer and carobo. The usage seems to be crystallizing now. We speak of reindeer when we mean domestic animals and caribou, when we refer to those that are wild. There are many kinds of reindeer and many kinds of carobo. In general, reindeer is smaller than caribou,

by their biological differences between the smallest reindeer and the largest caribou seem to be less than those between corresponding breeds of cattle, as for instance jerseys and guernices on one side and short horns and polled angus on the other. We may be able to tell the difference between jerseys and guernices, but it is doubtful if they themselves can or at least do. Similarly, the zoologists may distinguish lonely, between caribou and reindeer, but they themselves appear unaware of any strangeness. When a band of one meets a band of the other, they mix with perfect freedom.

This characteristic is of great value for the animal breeder. The domestic reindeer being smaller than the wild caribou, the United States biological survey looks forward to increasing by a third or a fourth the weight of carcass of the domestic reindeer of Alaska during the next 10 or 20 years by crossing them with a larger varieties of wild animals, such as yours-born caribou. Those who have no personal familiarity with the polar regions find it strange that these animals flourish there, but they are native animals. Each creature flourish is best in a peculiar environment of its own.

Cattle and giraffes can fend for themselves in the south, but would die in the north. Reindeer and carabell flourish in the north, but would probably not get along very well in the tropics. There are no more native shelter from a blizzard than a Texas deer needs shelter from the rain, Nor are they more likely to freeze to death than a giraffe is to die sunstroke. The reindeer is no more likely to starve death in the north because the ground is likely covered with snow part of the time than a fish is to die of thirst because the ocean is salty all the time. So far as I know, no man has ever seen any evidence of Garabur being cold in winter

or of their being seriously incommoded by blizzard. I used to be a cowboy in my early days in North Dakota. I know how cattle behave in a sheet storm, for I've more than once followed them as they drifted before the wind where no one would stop them. The behaviour of Kerabu is just the opposite. For more than ten years I have in winter made my living in the east-north by hunting them, and as a hunter I know their habits even better than I did those of the half-wild cattle as a cowboy. If I am hunting Kerrubil toward sundown of winter's day and see a band just before dark too far away to approach them while there still is shooting light and if that evening a storm blows up and a blizzard

ranges for two or three days as has often happened i look for that band of caribald to move about five miles in 24 hours directly against the wind if it is a three-day storm i would look for them at the end of it 15 miles to windward i would probably find them there if they had not been scared by a wolf meantime or inferior with by some special cause, such as open water or a precipitous cliff. We have here, therefore, animals that are in no need of shelter from storm or cold. The only time reindeer might conceivably need it would be the carving season in the spring. It is true that cars are sometimes frozen to death during the first five or ten hours after birth, but this happens so rarely that the death rate among reindeer cars at Alaska during the last 20 years has, according to the figures of the United States

Department of the Interior never been as high in even the worst years as the average death rate among range calves, cattle in Montana or Alberta. Next comes the quality of the meat. This question can be answered in many ways, although none is more conclusive than the evidence says to price. Stockholm, Sweden is one of the fine cities of Europe with a population of between 3,000 to 400,000 people. I wrote a letter to the Chamber of Commerce of Stockholm and received a long reply which may be summarized as follows. Reindeer meat has been on the market in Stockholm for several decades.

Apparently it was looked down upon, in the beginning, as an inferior meat, because produced by a people looked upon as inferior, the Leplanders. Gradually, however, the meat increased in favour, until something like ten years ago it came about to the level of various common domestic meats. It is now sold in the city by the hundreds of tons each year, and last winter the average price of reindeer, of meat ranged from equality up to 25%, higher than that of beef for corresponding cuts. Another answer as to the quality of reindeer meat is found in the American market.

The winter of 1920 to 21, the Alaska firm Lumen & Company of Nome, shipped to the United States' 1600 reindeer carcasses, which were sold to the best clubs in hotels for prices between three and four times as high as corresponding cuts of beef. At a time when the big meat packers were selling the best American beef in New York City wholesale at 11 cents a pound, reindeer meat was being sold wholesale for 35 or 40 cents a pound, depending on the quantity purchased. Several hundred typical Americans have now been living for many years on reindeer meat in Alaska. Once upon a time, the city of Norm imported large quantities of beef. The import of beef has lessened partly because the city gradually lost its population. but the beef importation decreased at a far more rapid ratio than the population because of gradual encroachment of reindeer meat.

Until now, the amount of beef imported into norm is nextable. It may be argued that the price had something to do with this change, for a known reindeer meat has been somewhat cheaper than beef, but anyone will find on inquiry that the people who live in norm do not consider the price to be the determining factor, but rather the quality of the meat. for every man there who says beef is better than reindeer you can now find another who says reindeer is better than beef not long ago I had a conversation with a man who had lived in Nome for 20 years

he told me that Norm the winter of 1920 to 21 was about the only place on the west coast of Alaska that had any ordinary domestic beef now and then during the winter visitors came in from outline districts where no meat was available except reindeer and my informant said he had noticed and had also heard it commented upon by others that the visitors when they went to hotels or restaurants seldom ordered domestic beef, as would have been the case had they been tired of the reindeer meat in the localities where they had been living.

Commonly the first meal of meat eaten after arrival in norm was reindeer meat. This informant said that something like three people out of four in Western Alaska are now the opinion that reindeer meat is better than beef. It must be said that this opinion has been gaining ground only slowly. When I first ate reindeer meat in norm restaurants 1912, I heard many comments

to the effect that it was not so nourishing nor as well liked on the average as beef. How the idea started that the meat is not nourishing is difficult to say. Somebody probably said it and others took it up. That the taste was considered inferior was

due to unfamiliarity. Through six or eight years of custom, the same people now of the opposite opinion. However, there will be no difficulty in introducing maintain to the United States or into any civilized country on the score of prejudice. The thing has already been tried out and has found that the demand is vastly greater than the supply. This will probably always remain the case. For great as are the ranges of the north, they will never supply as much meat as the world would like to have. Meat production and other lands will decrease so much more rapidly than the northern reindeer production can increase that the world's total mid supply in proportion to the

mouths there are to feed will probably never again be as high as it is this year. Here then we have the answer to the old question. What is the north good for? It is going to become the greatest meat-producing area of the world and eventually the only the area where meat is produced on a large scale. This will not be because the south could not compete with the north if it wanted to, but rather because the south is not going to want to compete. When I was a youngster, it was 12 or 15 miles from my brother's cattle ranch to the nearest ranch

to the east, though I never knew how far the nearest neighbor was to the west. It might have been a hundred miles. Now the farmhouses in that section are on the average, less than a mile apart, and they raised cereals where we raised cattle. The same story has been repeated everywhere. A good example is the Yakima County in Washington. When I first heard of it, it was a horse country. That memory is preserved by the name of a section out there,

which is the horse heaven to this day. A little later, Ikema became a sheep country, and then it became a country of orchards and market gardens. That is the course of events in Texas, and in the Argentine and most parts of the, tropical and temperate zones. The wild lands of yesterday are the vast cattle ranches of today and the cereal farms of tomorrow, while day after tomorrow they will be cut up into market gardens and dairy farms and chicken yards and towns and cities.

Up to the present, one of the main reasons for the cultivation of stock in such countries as Ohio or Ontario has been the value of manure as a fertilizer. But the rapidity of advancing chemistry and engineering is increasing almost in, in geometric progression. We are already taking nitrogen directly out of the air, and it will not be long till doing that will be cheaper and more convenient than the production of manure for our gardens and fields. Then we'll vanish one of the great reasons for the production of beef cattle in southerly climates. Undoubtedly, they will, for a long time, be cultivated as luxuries. There are various estimates to show the extravagance of a meat diet.

All agree that if you first feed corn to a hog and then eat the hog, you are losing the food value of a large part of the corn. Some say you are losing six-svenths of it, and others estimate the loss is as high as 13.4th. In any case, it is an extravagance, a consideration which will force the world gradually toward vegetarianism, as the increasing population begins to press hard and harder upon the sources of food. being fond of a simple diet and of single-course meals, I've overlooked one of the advantages of reindeer meat until this was called to my attention by a friend who happened upon a copy of a magazine devoted to the interests of cooks and chefs.

Here I found an enthusiastic article about reindeer meat is especially welcome because it introduces variety into the rather monotonous meat side of our menus. Though this idea struck me as novel and academic, it will doubtless appear all too many as practical and important. Indeed, I am probably one of a very few who never would have thought of this aspect of the case. When you come to think of it, there is an astounding variety to the cereal, fruit and vegetable side of our bills of fare as compared with a monotony on the meat side. We have developed elsewhere the principle that a man or dog, or indeed any animal that is used to a large variety of foods,

will take kindly to one more variety, but that a man or animal used to half a dozen of those varieties of food is very difficult to introduce even to sample a new variety. The extension of this principle would indicate that most of us look eagerly for new fruits because we are accustomed to many fruits, and are reluctant to try new meats because we are accustomed to very few. Personally, I think that this factor in the laws that determine human taste in food

will be important and will operate against the introduction of any new meat. It is through the good fortune that we are habituated to thinking of Venetian and through the accent that reindeer meat differs scarcely at all from beef, and ovibos differ not at all, that we shall have no difficulty in introducing these meats. While a few people will refrain from tasting them, the demand of the others who want them will always be in excess of the supply of either or both of these meats. but against the conservative Tennessee just mentioned will operate the factors that have caused such jubilation of a reindeer among the professional chefs. If you can once get people to assume the same attitude towards new meats that they do towards new vegetables and new fruits, there will be a continually increasing cry for variety in meats. Within the last few years, sweetbreads and guinea fowl and other new meat items have been introduced and have become very popular, although 25 or 50 years ago they aroused feelings of aversion and even horror.

It is possible that reindeer is coming upon the market just after the corner has been turned and that people who want variety in meats are already becoming more numerous, at least in our cities than those who are horrified by variety. From the point of view of these no less than the professional chefs, reindeer and ovibals, and indeed any other new fish, flesh or fowl, will be welcome. people who do not consult the census returns are in the habit of laughing at the mouththusian doctrine of the increase of the world's population by those who look at the census returns do not laugh his was not a prophecy but a mathematical calculation and is coming true as rapidly as he said and as inexorably as things do which go by mathematical law professor raymond pearl the chief statistician of the united states food said during the last year of the war that unless some new source of meat be found and if population increases the next half century at the same rate as at last half, stakes will be within fifty years as hard to get as caviarre is now.

He not thought of the possibility of large-scale meat production in the far north, but even now he has modified his conclusion in a slightly. The north will produce great quantities of meat, but never nearly enough. The most enthusiastic of us do not dream that the increase of the northern herds can keep pace with the increase of the world's human population and at the same time compensate for the decrease of cattle in the south as a ranch lands there are progressively converted into farms and gardens. The grazing experts of the United States government estimate that you can support permanently in certain parts of Alaska one reindeer for every 30 acres of land. This estimate will probably hold in general for about 2 million square miles of kill. Canada and Alaska, and for between 4 and 6 square miles in northern Eurasia. As an absolute quantity, this maids a large supply of meat, but relatively to the demands of the world,

as a world is today, it is not large. With reference to the world of a hundred years from now, if we avoid destructive wars and do not adopt birth control, this supply, fast in itself, will be insignificant. But such as it is, it will be the one main source of meat supplies 75 or 100 years from now. So far as I can see, the chief food output of the north will be meat until some new food plants are invented that can withstand summer frosts. My own family now has a farm so far north in Saskatchewan that we lose the wheat crops by frosts often after take up all the profit. It is foolish for us to continue raising wheat so far north, and eventually no one will try it. The cardinal mistake of the north of the United States in Canada

from an agricultural point of view is that they are trying to gather grapes from thorns and figs from thistles. He is almost as foolish to try to raise wheat on slave lake, although you can do it, as it would be to raise ostriches in Iowa, which you could also do. Eventually, the animals and plants of such northern districts as Middle Saskatchewan will not be the plants and animals

which the colonists are now cultivating. They cultivate them now, not primarily because land or climate are adopted to them, but primarily through their own conservatism and trying to do as they have always done, and through the conservatism of the world markets which demand in general the sort of food products they always have had. But unless the world begins to manufacture food directly out of the air

through chemical processes, it will soon have to reconcile itself to derive him from every district those foods which can be produced without getting into violent conflict with natural conditions. Now and then, the newspapers have headlines about somebody discovering a new kind of wheat that ripens in five or ten days less time than some other. These escurries are chiefly of academic interest. For the northward limit of wheat or various cereal is determined not by early autumn frosts, but by the sporadic midsummer frosts. There is no much point in breeding an earlier kind of wheat. There would be great point in doing what probably cannot be done.

the developing are a frost-resisting wheat. Until that is accomplished, the northern limit of profitable wheat cultivation will remain about where it is now, is more likely to move south than north. Rye and oats and other cereals can be cultivated a little farther north, but in the country to the north of the tree line, none of these can be reduced at profit now nor under any commercial conditions similar to the present. I do not profess to sea very far into the future, but so far as I can see the north will not produce any food on a commercial scale

except fish from its waters and meat from the grasses and other plants that grow native and without human encouragement. Because it can produce no other food, fish and meat will be the great food products in the north. And if these meat will for some time be the greater. I do not undervalue the resources of the ocean. I suppose that the time will come when men will begin to farm the sea somewhat as they now cultivate the land. that consideration I am leaving out for the present. But long before that time will come,

Northern Alaska will fulfill the prophecy of E.W. Nelson and the Chief of the United States Biological Survey, who is said and testimony before a congressional committee that within 20 years the annual reindeer output of Alaska will be 1,250,000 carcasses per year, equal, therefore, to about 3 million sheep, for a reindeer weighs more than two sheep. and if Alaska, with this estimated 200,000 square miles of grazing land,

can give us an annual turnover of one and a quarter millions of reindeer. Canada, with its 2 million square miles, will give us an annual turnover of 10 to 13 million carcasses, the equivalent of 25 million carcasses of shape, which is more than the total production of Canada today in all forms of domestic meats. Canada cannot do this within 50 years, for the industry there is just being started. It is, however, being started with the advantage of the Alaskan success before our eyes,

and progress will, therefore, be a great deal more rapid than it was in Alaska. Let it be thought that these prophecies are extraviant. We shall tell her the story of a prophecy now fulfilled. In 1903, there were approximately 6,000 reindeer in Alaska, the natural increase from 1,280 animals that had been imported from Siberia and small gibberts, between 1892 and 1902. In May of that year, Gilbert Rosner, the editor of the National Geographic magazine, wrote for that magazine an article in which he prophesised that within 15 years there would be more than

100,000 domestic reindeer in Alaska, the descendants of original 1,280 animals, and that within 25 years reindeer meat would appear on the American markets. The publication of this article was greeted with the storm of ridicule, and especially from Alaska. Grosvenor received one letter, for instance, from a member of the United States Geological Survey, who said in substance that he had practical knowledge of Alaska while Grosvenor was only a theorist, and they had seen the places which Grosvenor talked about and could assure him that no such thing was going to happen, and that Grosvenor was making himself and his magazine ridiculous for indulging any such daydreaming. When the 15 years were over, the 6,000 reindeer instead of having increased merely two ones,

100,000 had increased to more than 120,000, and now estimated at more than 200,000, for the hoods double in numbers every three years. The meat instead of appearing on American markets 10 years from now appeared five years ago. At least 10,000 radius steers are now in northwestern Alaska ready for butchering, but lack of cold storage facilities may prevent the shipping of more than 3,000 to 5,000 to Seattle in 1922. At 1920, prices the ten thousand are worth three hundred and seventy thousand dollars at norm alaska and will be worth six hundred thousand dollars when they get to chicago the increase in price covering both freight and the profits of middlemen thus that sask rossmann's ridiculed prophecy come more than true the herds are double what he estimated and the market value of the product is always measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year ten years before he thought the first marketing would begin But it is incorrect to speak of Grosmmer's prophecy.

It was really an estimate or future increased based on past records, and then divided by two for conservatism. Those that disagreed with Grosmmer were really denying his facts. For men of a certain temperament, it is always easy to do that, but the facts keep marching on. End of Section 3. Section 4 of The Northward Cause of Empire by Filiama Stevenson. This is a Librevox recording.

or Libravox Accordings from the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org, recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 4. The Livable North The First Chapter of this book was a brief summary of world history from the point of view of the northward march of civilization. This northward march has been continually retarded by two classes of obstacles, the rail and the imaginary. Of these, the imaginary have been by far the more formidable. The real but secondary difficulty has been that the problems of the north have been new problems and that a solution had to be found exactly as men had already found solutions for such southern problems as irrigation.

The main unreal difficulty has been the fear of imagined handicaps, that there has been serious work in solving real problems no one will wish to deny. This book was attempting to show that the solution has been made terribly difficult by mental attitudes for which nature should not be blamed. We are conquering the difficulties of the north faster as time goes on. It was more than a thousand years from the time when the Romans thought that no civilization could exist north the Alps until the civilization north of the Alps was really on par with that of Italy.

But it was only a century from the time when Benjamin Franklin thought that the little island of Godlop was worth more than all of Canada until second-rate cities in Canada they had become more important than the whole island of Cordelope. It was only a few decades from the time when even Suez's friends tacitly admitted that Suez's folly was a correct name for Alaska until the Republicans began to point with pride

to the purchase and to reckon among the glorious achievements of the party. By analogy, we may expect that it will require only a decade or two for the same progress in knowledge and revolution in sentiment with regard to the northern prairies they're still called barren grounds, and they're still supposed to be worthless. It may be said justly that argument from analogy is never safe, and for that reason the second and third chapters took up in detail and showed the falsity of all the main contentions upon which has been based,

the common view that the Norse is inhabitable and worthless. It was supposed to be worthless because of excessive winter cold, but we have shown that there are many prosperous districts now inhabited by Europeans and Americans of our average type of civilization that attain a minimum temperature in winter, equal to or colder than the minimum temperature recorded for the north coast of Siberia, Canada or Alaska. It has been commonly supposed that snowfall in the north is heavy, but we have shown that the snowfall of Virginia or Germany is heavier than that of northern Canada or of northern Alaska. We have pointed out that the growth of grass and other

plans is measured, not by the length of the summer in months. but by the number of hours of sunlight, and there are as many hours of sunlight in three months of Arctic summer as in five months of the tropical summer. Given the northern plants, therefore, in reality almost twice as long a growing time as a careless reasoner assumes them to have. It seems to be light rather than heat than makes a plant grow fast, but if it were heat, the polar plants would not be badly off. A fairly simple mathematical calculation shows that from the first week of June to the second week of July the Earth receives from the sun more heat per square mile per day in the North Polar regions than in the tropics. If these be startling truths to the layman, they are commonplaces to the advanced students of meteorology. In a short book, statements must be made pointed and brief.

Whoever wants a full grasp of the principle enunciated in the preceding paragraph, for instance, get it from page 12 of Professor R.D.C. Ward's Climate, a standard textbook on climatology. By the polar winter, at its course, is about as cold as the winter is Montana, Manitoba, or Russia, and is even longer. We are currently still have to deal with people who say that no ordinary Europeans or Americans will ever live in large numbers in a climate where the winter lasts through considerably more than half the year. Here, as in the rest of our discussion, we may well borrow light for the future from a consideration of the past. Some of that light we can get from a romantic but little-known story of the administration of President Grant.

The Republican Party had accepted the political burden of Sue its folly with not particularly good grace. At that time, in the unregarded country of Iceland, there were violent political agitations against the Danes, similar to the recent Irish agitations against Britain, and a young man by the name of John Orlefson had written such bitter denunciations of the ruling class of Danes that a warrant was drawn for his arrest, whereupon he fled the country, escaping to England, a letter coming to the United States. This was about the same time that many ordinary colonists left Iceland to settle in Manitoba. Most of the immigrants to Manitoba and other parts of America made a living from their farms or else by manual labor,

but the young political exile was a university man of the type who referred to live by his wits. He soon learned from the American newspapers that Lesker was a white elephant on the hands of President Grant's administration, and this gave him an idea in which, as he told me himself later,

he had from the start, complete confidence as a source of livelihood for himself a year or two, although he never took it seriously as a thing to be carried out. He went to Washington, and represented to President Grant that the Icelanders are highly civilized in many ways admirable people,

but that they are above all Europeans endured to the hardships and privations in the North and would therefore make the only people who could be expected to colonize Alaska satisfactorily. According to his presentation of the case, this was the one chance for the Republicans to make Alaska a protective country

and thus to justify the purchase. As said, O'Lafson himself knew the argument to be pure punk. For the climate of Iceland in winter, it is only about as rigorous as out of Scotland, as anyone can find out by consulting the Weather Bureau records. The average American included President Grant, was, however, of the opinion that Iceland was a dreadfully cold country,

and upon this ignorance, Ollafson based his scheme, securing a pleasant and profitable job. The idea struck the President and his advisers favourably, and they had a ship placed at the disposal of the young Icelander, enabling him to travel along the various coasts of Alaska. In that connection, he also made short journeys up some of the rivers and made reports that proved valuable with regard to the salmon fisheries. Among the varied publications of the government are a few more interesting than Oliveson's account of his summer outings in Alaska. They're especially interesting when one knows the romantic background. In the way of colonization, nothing ever came of these reports.

Icelanders no doubt can colonise Alaska, but they have no special fitness for doing so, and they have never done so. Even in the gold rush, there were probably not more than three or four of them among 100,000 people who sought Dawson and Norm, and the various northern cold fields. Alaska is, however, coming into her own through the efforts of other nationalities. When I was last on the north coast of Alaska, there were several people living there who had been born in Portugal, in the southern United States, and in the Hawaiian Islands. They were also Norwegians and Frenchmen and New Englanders. My father moved into Manitoba several years ahead of the railway and at a time when the government in England had about the opinion of Manitoba,

their grant's administration had of Alesca. The Canadian Pacific Railway was being planned, however, and the question arose in great Britain whether Manitoba might possibly prove a suitable country for British colonists. To determine the facts in the case, a commission of learned men was selected. It sat in England and had the power to summon witnesses from Manitoba and the Canadian West generally, to determine the climate and resources of those districts, and to decide the probability of their ever becoming the home of a considerable number of British colonists.

These witnesses were explorers, trappers, traders and missionaries, who had most of them spent several years in the Middle West of Canada and testified about the climate and resources truthfully from ample knowledge. To inquiries about the minimum temperature of winter, the committee received the answer that the thermometer drops to 50 and 55 degrees below zero occasionally. This, said the judges, is a typical polar temperature, and that is correct. 40 years of Government Weather Bureau observation on the north coasts of Alaska and Canada have confirmed this committee in their opinion that minimum winter temperatures there are similar to those of southern

Manitoba. With regard to the storminess of winter, the witnesses testified that now and then there are dreadful blizzards. At the beginning of the storm, the ground may be covered with a foot or two of feathery snow. In the violence of the gale, this snow fills the air so thickly that if you hold your hand before your face, you cannot count your fingers. Of course, you could count them if you had gobbles on. When anyone says you cannot count your fingers in a blizzard, it means that the instant

the eyes are opened, they are filled with the flying snow and have to be closed again. The testimony was correct. There are such storms in certain parts of the northwestern prairie states and of the Midwestern Canadian Prairie provinces, not every year but once or twice a decade. The committee was justified in concluding that the blizzards of Manitoba and Saskatchewan are typical polar blizzards. Many other have verified that I can add my testimony, but after spending 20 years in North Dakota, and 10, north of the Arctic Circle, is my best opinion that at least one blizzard which I remember from North Dakota was worse than any that I had yet seen in the far north. This is testimony amply confirmed by the men from Dakota, Montana, and Manitoba, who now live in northwestern Alaska or Northern Canada. On the basis of reliable testimony, which fills a huge volume, the British Committee concluded in substance that the climate of southern Manituba and the climate of southern Manituba and the United States.

a Saskatchewan is unsuitable for colonization by average Europeans, and that in such a country no people will live permanently except fur traders because they're eccentric, missionaries because they are self-sacrificing, and Indians because they do not know any better. But since then, there has grown up in the country, which was the very center of all the testimony, the city of Winnipeg, with its 300,000 inhabitants, the third-lifest city in Canada, the Chicago of the Canadian West, and the city of the Canadian West, and the city of the city of the United States, growing as rapidly as substantially as any city in Canada. Since the publication in a magazine of the above contrasting of Manitom's gloomy future

has seen in the past with its brilliant present as seen today, I've received many communications on the subject. The point of view is important and never seems to be too firmly established, so I quote two of these. Mr. Lonsdale Green of 5639 Canterwood Avenue, Chicago has written me in part as follows. Do you recall reading the two books by Sir William Butther, the Great Lowland and the Wild Northland? The first one was written in 1871 and the second in 1874. I want to quote from the second book written after the experiences of the first, written from the location of Prince

Albert, which was then a waste of space, he says, those who in summer or autumn visit the great prairie of the Saskatchewan can form but a faint idea of its winter fierceness and utter desolation. They are prone to paint the scene as wanting only at the setters hut, the oak of oxen, the wagon, to become at once the paradise of the husbandman. They know little of what they speak. Should they really wish to form a true conception of life in these solitudes, let them go out towards the close of November into the treeless waste, then, midst fierce storms and biting cold

and snow drifts so dense that earth and heaven seemed wrapped together in indistinguishable chaos. They will witness a sight as different from the summer ideal as a mid-Atlantic mid-winter storm varies from a tranquil moonlight on the Aegean Sea. Butler was a good writer

and the above is a good description but there is quite a large city right of the place where the above was written and as Sir William died only 11 years ago he lived to see it. My friend Hamlin Garland has just called to my attention the following passage from pages 110 to 111 of his A Sun of the Middle Border, New York, 1920. One such storm which leaped upon us at the close of a warm and beautiful day in February lasted for two days and three nights, making life for the open prairie impossible even to the strongest man. The thermometer fell to 30 degrees blue

and the snow-laden air moved at a rate of 80 miles an hour pressed upon the walls of our house with giant power. The sky of noon was darkened so that we moved in a pallid half-light, and the windows thick with frost shut us in as if with grey shrouds. Hour after hour, those winds and snows in furious battle howled and whirled around our frail shelter, slashing at the windows and piping on the chimney, till it seemed as if the Lord's son had been wholly blotted out, and that the world would never again be warm. Twice each day my father made a desperate selly toward the stable to feed the imprisoned cows and horses or to replenish our fuel. For the remainder of the long pallid day, he sat beside the fire with gloomy face. Even his indomitable spirit was awed by the fury of that storm. We met our schoolmates that day, like survivors of shipwreck, and for many days we listened to gruesome stories of disaster, tales of stages frozen deep in snow with all their passengers sitting in their seats, and of herders with their silent flocks around them, lying stark as granite among the hazel bushes in which they had sought shelter.

It was long before we shook off the awe with which this tempest filled our hearts. While the above quotation from Garland is as truthful in fact as it is for bidding in tone, it is not the whole picture. The book from which the quotation is taken does give the whole picture, but it will suffice to note here that the very farms of which this particular buzzard swept were bought and sold 50 years later prices ranged from 200 to 500 dollars per acre. For Garland wrote about Iowa. The truth to be deduced from all this is that people will live in any place.

if the financial returns are adequate. If I could promise the readers of this book a 25% increase in their wages or a 25% increase in the profits of their business, a considerable proportion of them, by no means all, of course, would move to Iowa, Prince Albert or Winnipeg.

There are many who through long custom have grown to that like the climate of Winnipeg, but many live there disliking the climate, just as many feeling similarly live in London and New York, Montreal and New Orleans. Calcutta and Petrograd. It seems reasonable that even a commission of wise men in Britain would be more easily deceived about the true future of Manituba than the government of Canada itself at Ottawa. But Eastern Canadian opinion, even in 1922, is being swayed by great newspapers, the editors of which some cases have never been West of Lake Superior and other cases had never been there except in summer.

It is not in reality remarkable, therefore, that the government at Ottawa, in the 70s was misinformed. In order to realize that some of the speeches made in the Ottawa Parliament against the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway were at the time seriously intended and generally believed to be sound, one has to appreciate the fact that there are between the east and midwest of Canada climatic differences corresponding to south and north, and must remember the principle that the south has always been misinformed about the north

and fearful of it. Unless we understand how firmly grounded at the time, with the misbeliefs about the winter cold or the prairie provinces, and it's affected upon vegetable and animal life. We cannot get a true view of the history of that time, nor can we honour as they deserve the pioneers of the Lord Strathcona Group, who had the vision to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. The speeches in Parliament of Sir Edward Blake and others against the building of the Transcontinental Railway are now classics in Canada, and are there the best-known examples of unconscious humour. The English language was taxed to his capacity in showing the absurdity of the project.

The argument said in substance that the expense of building the road would be so great that even were we to accept the most optimistic view of what resources the prairie provinces might develop. A reasonable freight tariff to the Atlantic would never pay for the axle grease of the freight cars. Our parents of the road were willing to concede that if anybody had the incredible folly to squander, that much money the road could be built. They had admitted further that it could undoubtedly be operated in summer, but it was preposterous to suppose that it could be operated winter. There followed the self-evident conclusion,

and the railway could never be profitable, for no enterprise can be profitable if it is operated only half the year. It is hard to realize that this argument was once supplied in good faith to what is now with some justice called the breadbasket of the world, and to a railway which is commonly conceded to be one of the greatest of all railway systems. Few investors in railway securities are more fortunate than those who own Canadian Pacific shares. The enterprise made many of its builders fabulously rich, laid the basis of a prosperity, on the average high, for tens of thousands of homes in the desolate wilderness,

through which it passes, and maintains passenger and freight schedules as reliable, and a service in every respect as good as any of the great railway systems of the world. About the most fundamental proposition in aesthetics is that we like what we are used to. People of a southern origin on the average prefer warm climates, and most European and Americans live in countries where there is summer more than half of the year. There is also in such places as Italy and Florida a carefully planned campaign to sell climate to the rest of us. It is therefore not strange to the words, a good climate should be synonymous with a warm climate in the public mind but when one stops to think about it doubts at once appear by the fruits shall you know them

is a principle on which to judge climates no less than cabbages and kings in the early part of the seventeenth century there were in england people now known as puritans or pilgrims who were not locally popular and were forced to emigrate some of them went to the west indies and some to massachusetts If you had inquired at that time for the man in the street in London, he would have said that the Barbados have a good and Massachusetts a bad climate. But whatever we now think of the comparative goodness of these climates, the average reader will readily admit that he knows little about the subsequent history of the colonists who went to the West Indies, and that probably most of their descendants would now fall under the classification of poor white trash, while the descendants of the Plymouth colony are commonly considered to have been the back-bushed. owned to the American nation that are supposed to have finished a high percentage of the men who made up present-day Western civilization. In the war of 1776 to 83, the American colonists were not a unit in their opposition to Great Britain. Those of them who in that struggle were known as loyalists or Tories found their situation unpleasant after the war, and many of them emigrated,

some to the maritime provinces of Canada and under to the West Indies. The man of the street would again have said that those who, who went to Canada went to the worst climate. But the descendants of those who moved to the West Indies have made but slight impression on history and are now in the main lost of view, while those who went north have furnished one of the most important elements that went to building the Canadian nation. Today their descendants are in positions of power and prominence and are developing a civilisation and a government that the world has to reckon with. When we stop to analyse the expression, a good climate, we find that what we really mean

is a good climate for loafing. Secondarily, we may mean a climate where all sorts of vegetation flourish frankly. Without denying the value of the world of coffee and cotton and sugar, we are constrained to admit that the most important crop of any country is the people. No climate can rightly be considered good, though bananas and yams may flourish if may decay. Human energy, mental and physical, is developed to the highest degree in the northern climates, It may also in some cases be developed to a high degree in southern climates, notably on plateaus and where the sea breezes blow freshly. We need not go to such elaborate arguments as those of Ellsworth-Huddington's book, Climate and Civilization, to prove to any thoughtful man that so long as we have a competitive civilization and so long as public opinion continues to allow the energetic and the powerful to take whatever they wish for the lethargic and the weak.

So long will the north continue to dominate the same. itself, as it is doing today, for it produces the one crop that matters, men of unsleeping energy and restless ambition. On the principle of aesthetics referred to above, that, generally speaking, we like what we are used to, we would expect to find a substantial majority of the population preferring summer to winter in any country where we have summer more than half the year, and a substantial majority preferring winter to summer in any country where we have winter more than half the year. If you make due allowance for the powerful effect of the organized advertising of the South through commercial mediums and the unintended

glorification of the South through the fact that the literature we have inherited are product in the past or the future, was mostly composed in southern countries, when you have made these and some other just allowances for forces that influence opinion, you will see in a canvas of any country that summer or winter are preferred by the popular roughly according to this principle. Not the burden, the argument with too much proof. We shall consider merely the two typical northern communities information about which is most readily accessible

to the readers of this volume. We shall take one community from the northern prairie and another from the northern forest. Judge G.J. Lumen has recently been appointed by present Harding Judge for the Second Judicial Division of Alaska. He is a typical American, born in the Middle West. educated at the State University of Iowa and was for some time a resident of Minnesota

and a member of the legislature of that state. But he had the pioneer spirit and the fever of the 1900 gold rush got into his blood so he moved to Norm, Alaska and has lived there for 20 years. A year ago I had a conversation with him from which I gained the information about to be given. For fear my memory might not be quite correct.

I have checked it by submitting the draft with the present statement to his son, Carl Che Loman, who has also lived in Nome for 20 years, but who happens to be now on a visit to New York. At the peak of the gold rush, Norm was a city of 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants. Later, when substantially normal conditions prevailed, it was a city of 10,000 or more.

Property passed gradually into the hands of larger and larger corporations, and machinery began more and more to take the place of hand labour, reducing the population of the community correspondingly. Then came the war with this rise in prices of goods, which really means a drop in the value of gold, and there had to follow an exodus from the gold country. When Norm had dropped to a town of about 2,000 inhabitants, he was so well known to Judge Lohmann that his conversations and inquiries practically amounted to a taking of a vote to the whole population as to whether they prefer to winter or summer.

And he assures me that while no actual account was made, the opinions expressed to him indicated that with men, women and children all voting, at least three out of fall, would have cast a ballot in favour of the winter climate of the north as compared with the summer climate. It must be remembered that in point of birth and ancestry of its citizens, Norm is a typical American town. There's people born in the United States, Canada and the various European countries. There are also few Negroes in Asiatics.

There are many who have business in Alaska, but who lived in San Francisco or other. the southerly places. It is common to hear these people say that the summer climate of norm is delightful, but that they would not live there in winter for any money. They have either never tried it, or have wintered there only once. Few were like a northern climate the first year who are brought up in a southerly one, and it is merely in accord with our principle that these people would not like their northern winter. That they do consider the summer climate pleasant is a significant thing. For the people who lived in Norm

for 15 or 20 years and who know the winter as well as they do this summer are 75% in favour of winter. If you admit the testimony of those who have been in Norm only in summer to prove that the summer climate is pleasant, you will have to allow the testimony of those

who have lived there many years to prove not only that the winter is to them pleasanter than summer, but also that the winter is entitled to be considered from an absolute point of view, a pleasant season. Nome has in summer a climate strongly affected by the ocean. In winter, Bering Sea is in the main frozen over,

and at that time, the climate is that of a northern prairie, or substantially that of Dakota. The winter temperature is in fact nearer to that at South Dakota, than of North Dakota. For 50 below zero, it's rarely recorded, and there are few winters that go lower than 45 degrees below zero. But the city of Dawson in the Yukon is in the mountains and in a forest. The temperature there in winter drops about 15 degrees lower than it does at norm, and lower than

any inhabited part of the United States except certain cities and towns in Montana. In talking with the sourdows of the Yukon, you may get the impression that 70 and even 80 degrees below zero have been recorded. By the Canadian Weather Bureau, which has maintained observation stations there for more than 20 years, we'll vouch for nothing lower than 68 below, which is the same figure as that given by the American Weather Bureau for the village of Glitstone near Havera, Montana. Dawson then has the continental type of winter climate, and it also has that type of summer climate, for the thermometer goes to the vicinity of 100 in the shade. This is the time when flowers and vegetables grow so rapidly

at Dawson that the development seems magical even to those who know the tropics. The Weather Bureau records of Dawson are not significant from our present point of view, for they are in stark figures, and these have no direct bearing on the question of whether people do or do not like the weather. To find out about that, he must ask people who have been there, rather than meteorologists or statisticans. I have talked with hundreds of men who have lived there, but shall quote only the typical opinions of Mr. D. A. Cameron, today the manager of the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Toronto. but formerly for many years manager of that branch of that bank in Dawson. Being a great city, Toronto has a climate that is well known. He is generally said to be similar to that of Cleveland, which many consider better than Chicago, for instance.

At dinner in Mr Cameron's home, I once inquired whether he preferred the winter climate of Toronto to that at Dawson and receive the reply. There are no two opinions in this family. My wife and daughter agree with me, we will prefer the winter climate of Dawson. Mr. Cameron went on to say that that was the general opinion

of those whom he knew who had lived in Dawson two or more years. Or in other words, had lived there long enough to get over the predisposition in favour of a temperate climate. They had brought with them from a country where summer is longer than winter. The popular explanation

of why the people of Dawson complain less of their severe winters than understood of weather-level cold, said there is a fundamental difference between cold as registered by thermometer and as registered by your skin. We discuss sensible cold and utter much bromidic wisdom about it's not seeming cold because it is so dry. Admitting all that may be said about seasonal cold, there remains the fact that most healthy persons who live mainly outdoors in such a climate as Dorsen get to light cold as cold. Well, we have a Dorson no systematic inquiry.

like that of Judge Lohmann-Fernom, upon which we can face a statement of probable percentage of a vote as between the climates of summer and winter, we evaluate evidence to show that not only do the residents of Dawson refer the polar winter to winter on the Great Lakes, in such places at Toronto and Chicago, but they also, as a matter of personal comfort, prefer the extreme cold of the Yukon winter to the extreme heat of the Yukon summer. Obviously, the reason why those who are used to both prefer extreme cold to extreme heat is not that cold is in itself pleasanter. The reason is rather that we have made nearly perfect a series of inventions which protect us against the cold.

Within doors and even without, we can neutralize the cold by lighting a fire, we can shut it out by building houses and by putting on clothes, and we can keep warm by eating suitable food for internal fuel, and by taking exercise to spade up the bodily functions. But what can we do against the heat? We may wear a helmet or carry a parasol. We may dress in palm-baked suits and live mainly on tomatoes and lettuce. And even at that, there are few who bear the heat of midsummer without a complaint,

whether it be in Texas or Iowa. Winnipeg, Edmonton or Dawson. The poorest hovel has a suitable means of dealing with winter cold, but there are not half a dozen of the most luxurious hotels in the Western Hemisphere that have an adequate equivalent equivalent equivalent equivalent

cooling system to meet the distress of July. Even the poor can fight the cold successfully it is only the rich whose circumstances allow them to filly aid. It is my experience that when I tell a man

that 2,000 people in non prefer winter to summer I thereby do not succeed in providing to him that winter is pleasant but only that there are 2,000 exceedingly eccentric people living at norm.

We are scarcely laboring the point then by citing more testimony. Dr. E.W. Nelson is chief of the United States Biological Survey, and by profession a naturalist and a student of climate, and of its effect upon plants and animals and man. Dr. Nelson now lives the larger part of the year in Washington, but he has experienced the winter climates of Florida and other parts of the southern United States and owns a farm in California.

Many years ago, he spent four winters near the northwest corner of Alaska. In the Cosmos Club in Washington, I asked him a year ago whether he preferred the climate of Washington or of California to the climate of Alaska. He paused before answering, If I were to speak offhand, and as I feel, I would say that I preferred the Alaska climate to any in which I have lived. But it may be that what I am thinking of is not really the climate itself, but rather how I felt while up there.

I have never my life either before or since been so exuberantly healthy And you like it anywhere if you are an exuberant health Accordingly I will not say that I prefer the climate of Alaska to the climate of Washington or California For I probably should not if I went there at a low stage of vitality But I will say that I spend much of my time outdoors both winter and summer while there And that I have never enjoyed myself so much year in and year out as I did the four years in Alaska Dr Nelson said, in other words, what may be stated as follows, The northern winter is not pleasanter for lying around outdoors and idleness.

It's a climate for activity, not only because you enjoy that sort of climate if you are active, but also because activity becomes second nature and a joy when you live in that sort of climate. A quotation from a friend of mind enters another way of saying the same thing. When I am spending January at Miami, I want a cocktail before dinner, for an effort to at Lake Placid or in Algonquin Park. That the opinions of men who live in the north differ inevitably from those of explorers and tourists is seen today whenever we come in contact with employees of the Hudson's Bay Company or trappers who have resided in the polar regions.

It happens occasionally that the opinions have experienced whalers and of officers of the Royal Canadian Mountain Police agree with those of the tourists and explorer. but in such cases it will be found that the tourist point of view appears only among officers who spent their Arctic winters in what they considered the comfort of their ships or barracks. Those whalers and policemen who have hunted extensively or made outdoor journeys agree generally in my experience with the fur traders and trappers. That this is not a peculiarity of the 20th century is shown interestingly by a manuscript of the 13th. The King's Mirror, Speculum regale, was written by a scholar who may not have visited Greenland, but who, or critics agree, was familiar with Greenland through conversations with men who had lived there, and probably also men born there.

So far as I know, this document is not available in English. I have accordingly myself translated from the 13th century Old Norse sections of chapters 19 and 21 to indicate what men, who had lived in Greenland's, thought of it, no less than to show what scholars of eight centuries ago thought of the habitability of the polar regions and of the tropics. I've based this on the AM Codex 243 FOIAB as published at Munich in 1881 by Dr. Oscar Brenner. Chapter 19 But those who have written about the nature of the world in the manner of Isidore and other learned men have said that in the heavens there are certain zones under which the earth is uninhabitable.

One of those is so hot that no one can live there because of heat and scorching, for whatever there under is will burn. Men have also said that there are two zones in the heavens and lands under which are so cold that because the cold is no easier to dwell under them, and is to dwell under the other because of the heat. In these zones, the cold has so much power that the water renounces its ordinary nature and turns into ice, and all the lands cover themselves of glacier.

the like is true of any seas that may lie under this belt it would seem from this theory that there are five zones in the heavens the land under two of them habitable and of the three of them uninhabitable or the lands are habitable that lie between these zones of freezing and burning it seems reasonable that if these lands some are warmer than others and these lie nearer to the zone of burning but those lands which are cold lie nearer the zones that are cold for there are frosts can exert its power. It is considered certain that Greenland lies on the outer margin of the world to the north, and I do not believe that there is any land beyond it, but only the great ocean which encircles the world. But as you, my son, inquired whether the sun shines in Greenland, and if the weather is fire, as in other lands,

I want you to understand for certain that the sun shines there gloriously and the country is considered in general to have a good climate. But there is a great difference between day and night, for when it is winter, nearly the whole of it is one night, and when it is summer, nearly all of it seems as if it were one day. When the sun is highest in the sky, it gives much light and cheer, but no extreme heat. Still it has enough power, so that where the ground is thawed, i.e., where there aren't her glaciers, she warms up everything so that the earth produces valuable and fragrant plants. people may therefore well inhabit that land. Chapter 21 As you have said that it seemed to you strange that the land,

Greenland, should have weather that could be called good. I will tell you how this is. When evil weather happens, you may take on more violence than common in other lands by reason of strong wind, cane frost and quantity of snow. But usually this bad weather is in short spells and there are long periods between when the weather is good although the climate is cold.

This cold is due to the nature of the inland ice. Anyone who is a specialist is continually astounded by the colossal ignorance of the whole world upon his speciality, be it epidemiology, electricity, or polar research. On railway trains I ride in drawing rooms, which I cannot afford, and at hotels I shut myself up in my room to avoid answering, everlastingly the same series of questions, one of the most obnoxious of which is whether I do not suppose that I like the North chiefly because I am of Norse descent.

For one thing, my descent is partially Irish, and that much, at least, of my blood is not particularly northerly. For another thing, there is no real reason to suppose that Norwegian or Swedes or any other northern nationality get long better in the north than those from southern countries, except in so far as they are less obsessed by a fear of the North and are in in the beginning a little more familiar with the technique of how to remain comfortable in that sort of climate. And still it cannot be supposed that people brought up in Norway or Iceland would know how

to deport themselves in really cold weather, for they do not meet cold weather in their own countries, except perhaps a few who live in the higher mountains. If you want any evidence to show how little Norwegians understand about being comfortable in a polar climate, take the narratives of their polar expeditions. The best example in Nansen's farthest north, a delightful book full of adventure and illuminated by literary charm. By his own telling, Nansen must have been extremely uncomfortable in the north, and if that is clear, it is no less clear that his discomforts lose nothing in the telling. Then turn to Piri of American-French descent,

whose immediate preparation for his northern work was surveying the Nicaragua. Peary did have hard times at first, but he got through. the stage of his work more quickly than his Norwegian competitors. But perhaps that may not seem quite so striking as a fact which ought to be well known that the Duke of the Abruzzi, with an expedition largely Italian, followed in the footsteps of the Norwegians and had a short voyage which did not give them time enough to acquire in the north much knowledge of the technique of northern work. Nevertheless, exceed the best Norwegian records. The scientists tell us that life first had its beginnings in the seas and morasses.

Land or covered who was sponge soaked in water had no plant or animal upon it. Then, perhaps the ocean was crowded, some of the seaweeds learned to become land weeds. Sea animals began to make furtive excursions ashore, and thus snails and amphibians were developed. Doubtless these early land pioneers were then looked upon as unfortunate if they had been crowded out of the water, or foolish if they had left it voluntarily. Possibly those opinions may still be held among the plants and animals of the sea. Though the scientists agree that life had its first birth in the water, they are not in one as to where on this earth it happened.

Commonly we assume it was in the tropics. Others say that tropics were then too hot for life and that must have originated near the poles. But they are rash you speak confidently about the temperature limits between which life may exist. little as we know about the fundamental nature of life we do know that living things grow and perpetuate their kind in the hot springs of the yellow stone at a temperature near boiling and in snow on the floating ice of the polar ocean at fifty degrees below freezing while we may hazard a guess that life probably started at a warmth half-way between the known extremes of life temperatures it would be rash to say it cannot have started at the equator or the pole because of the heat of the one or the chill of the other but our sciences are in hazy agreement that in known times terrestrial life forms are traceable farthest back in tropical regions there live with a few exceptions our most ancient and aristocratic families of worms and birds and beasts among mammals at least we have only comparative newcomers in the polar lands the polar ocean contains many forms that are considered among the most ancient of water dwellers

whether some fundamental urge some inheritancy of the common life stuff drove plants and animals from the sea to the land possibly because they were capable of a high development on land as so far as i know remained this day an uninvestigated problem but the other question of why and how plants and animals move from a warmer to a colder region but seldom will never back has been studied if not solved for the present we have little light on the why several schemes The students have discussed for us the particular animals that have moved from the steaming lowlands to the cool mountains, probably as the mountains were developing, and from the tropics to temperate and frigid lands. The most readily accessible writings on this subject are those of Dr. Frank Chapman, whose style is as lucid as his facts are definite. He shows in particular how birds will, through centuries, force their way higher and higher upper mountain, adapting their bodies to the cooler weather as they climb, but have never been known to a world. want to take a similar flight or force the way down a slope or into a swelter in jungle. It's being shown that cold blooded animals, such as reptiles, will stand a falling much better than a rising temperature. If the normal heat of the environment is, say, 90 degrees

Fahrenheit, the animal will probably become sluggish without dying if the temperature drops to 40 degrees Fahrenheit and remains there for a considerable period, but will die if it rises to 18040 degrees Fahrenheit and stays there. the power of the human body to adapt itself to change conditions is similar to that of the birds studied by chapman it is a common place in england that the sons are the princes of india acquire not only european culture but stronger bodies at oxford while the studious english stock decays on the plains of india Gandhi and Tagore may blossom their genius and may live to an old age, for they are of the stock that had not fought its way north. But Kipling was sent to England for his schooling, and he would have sent his children to grow up in England had he remained in India. There are, of course, social and other reasons why Englishmen in India send their children to England. But over and above these is the climate to which few Europeans have been long exposed, without at least a taint of physical and men.

degeneracy. The Englishmen in New Zealand has their native climate with them and are bringing up and educating their families that very sturdy mental and physical virtue are the full equals of any of their neighbor's children that for social or family reasons may have been sent home to the old country. We may argue, although scarcely successfully, that is for social reasons rather than climatic that there has grown up in the Indian civil service the uniform custom of sending children back to England. So let us rest no conclusion on the India-England case, since one authority in 10 may dispute, and turned to a situation, not one in a hunter will dispute, that tropical

people are usually healthy in temperate regions, while Arctic people are not usually healthy in the tropics or even in the temperate zones. The Negroes who now live in the United States are as healthy and energetic as those who live in the tropical Africa or in the Central America. The Negroes who live in Michigan are on the average as healthy and active as those that live in Louisiana or Nicaragua. But although not one in a hundred would dispute this, there is a still less debatable case. In the Arctic whaling fleet that used to sail from New Bedford to San Francisco, there was always a considerable percentage of colored men of the following classes. Negroes from the southern states, from the Cape Verde Islands and the Canaries,

and South Sea Islanders from Fiji, Guam, Samoa and the Hawaiians. Many of these found their first winter in the Arctic disagreeable because they did not know how to dress and take care of themselves, but they got to like the Arctic, which is shown by most of them reshipping on whaling voyages. However, their liking or disliking the Arctic is beside the point. The point is that by the uniform testimony of the whaling captains, confirmed by Peary and other explorers who had Negroes in their crews, these tropical people were as healthy on the average as were the sailors of European ancestry,

and both were as healthy in the Arctic, usually more so as at New Bedford or San Francisco. Now compare to this were the Cases of Eskimos, both south. This has seldom been tried, for the results have been so disastrous. An attempt made by Peary is typical. We quote a Dr. Ellis Frotlinka, Anthropological Papers American Museum of Natural History, following five part two. In 1896, Lieutenant Perrier brought six of the Smith-South-Sound natives to New York, and they were housed in the museum.

However scarcely had they arrived, when the majority of them began to cough and became infected with the bacillus of tuberculosis. Within less than nine months, four of them died from acute physysis. One had to be sent back. The same fate threatened in, and won a boy of about eight at the time, after having been adopted and brought up in New York, and after having passed through the initial status of lung, as well as light grades of gland and skin tuberculosis,

was at his demand also sent back to his native country. It is not simple to explain why plants or animals may migrate north and north-south. But we can easily explain in the scientific petois of today, where the Negroes can move north, why the Eskos cannot move south, and why the English can more easily move north than south. The keys to the problem are those magic words of our 20th century scientific jargon, microorganisms and immunity.

In the north, the uncivilized Eskimo lives this life of exuberant good health in a comparatively germ-free atmosphere. He is not frequently attacked by germs, and so neither he nor his ancestry have developed immunity against them. When you bring himself, he is attacked by hosts of strange germs and his sturdy good health either crumbles before their first charge or succumbs to their persistent siege. In the south, the Negro fights from infancy are raised of the deadliest germs

and so have his ancestors before him. There have been developed both an individual and a racial immunity. When the Negro or South Sea Islander moves to, the north coast of Alaska or Siberia, he leaves behind his enemies of the microbe class, and meets instead, for a part of the year at least, the strange new enemies of snow and cold. We understand little as yet how to protect an individual or race against germs. Our immunology and preventive medicine are still in their infancy, and so we cannot guarantee the South-going Eskimo against germ attack.

But we can guarantee the Negro against his new enemies of the frost, for we have fought cold and stormed successfully for thousands of years and can show him how to protect himself. We do show him. We teach him to dress in willens and furs to make fires for warmth and to build houses that store up for comfort and safety the warmth the fire is made.

These and other tricks the South Sea Islander acquires in his first year on a polar coast and has begun to feel himself at home there by the beginning of the second. By that time the South Sea Islander acquires outgoing Eskimo has died of some germ disease in New York. The human body has a normal temperature, not far from 98 degrees Fahrenheit, it must be kept about that level, but the weather is sometimes warmer and sometimes cooler.

With that situation, man deals artificially by having fires and clothes and houses for warmth, breezes and baths and awnings for coolness. Of the artificial temperature controllers, those for heating have been found much the more efficient. If the temperature is 30 degrees below that of our blood, we find little difficulty keeping warm inside our houses and inside our clothes. But at 30 degrees above, blood heat, we find it difficult to keep cool. If our artificial heating devices are better than those for cooling, the same is even more true of our natural heating and cooling systems.

The principles are the same. We keep our house warm or an engine going by burning fuel. Similarly, we utilize food as fuel in our natural heat and power plants to keep our bodies warm. Our commercial refrigerating plants evaporate liquids for their purpose, and similarly, we perspire to keep our bodies cool. A simple experiment will show the comparative efficiency of our heating and cooling systems. Take a square meal for your stomach's sake and a drink of water to supply your sweat glands. Wear no clothes and sit still in a room at 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

20 degrees below body heat, and you will be comfortable if you are a normal healthy person. Then raise the temperature to 118 Fahrenheit, 20 degrees above body heat, and see how you like it. If you drop the temperature to 58 degrees Fahrenheit, you may have to move about, thus speeding up your heating apparatus to keep warm. If you raise the thermometer to 138 degrees Fahrenheit, it will not be many hours till you begin to feel warm as if your life might be in danger. In animal experiments of this type, it is generally found that if one set are exposed to heat which eventually causes death, other animals have the same sort exposed to a corresponding lowering of temperature, suffer no permanent harm in the same period, both sets being supplied with food and with water to drink.

These considerations throw further light upon the facts stated above, that tropical peoples get along with the Arctic winter better than Arctic people do with the perpetual summer of the tropics. The Arctic summers, even on lowlands far from the sea, are unpleasantly hot for a few weeks only. In a workday world, our natural heating and cooling processes conflict seriously with each other. Activity promotes oxidation. Oxidation means heat, and the production of heat in the body means a cancellation of part of the efficiency of the cooling system. This is all very well in a cool climate, even advantageous, where the weather allows sweat glands to take temporarily a complete rest. But in weather above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and especially above 90 degrees

Fahrenheit, the production of eternal heat is a serious matter, for the body will burn itself out if its internal temperature rises above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, no long-continued strenuous activity can fail to ensure the health of tropical peoples, except in very dry climates where the perspiration is quickly evaporated from the skin, giving efficient natural coolant. This explains, I think, why the high civilizations of the tropics have generally been connected with semi-arid or arid countries, but an arid country cannot produce much food except where irrigation is possible or where floods take place as in Egypt. The tropical lands that have the needed human energy seldom have the natural resources upon

which that energy can be profitably expended. The tropics are, therefore, at a fundamental disadvantage at any stage of the U.S. history, when there are people of more energizing climes to compete with them we have here an explanation of the ineffitable backwardness of the humid tropics because of their vegetable and other riches we shall continue to seek them eagerly but will it not be their destiny to be exploited by outsiders rather than to be developed by their own populations many say the mind does not function properly in a warm humid climate others insist and with much to fortify their arguments that some of our own highest thinking has been done in the tropics, but then Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Peru, are semi-desert. In the humid tropics, Seas and saints may flourish, and of much thought and little action. With abnormal or thyroid development, the saint might even have the energy to become a prophet. But armies of disciples do translate the thought of the prophet into action are not likely to come

out of the tropics, unless from deserts like Arabia. There have been high civilizations in humid countries, such as Yucatan, but these civilizations are not known to have had the energy to a stand outside a competition. They seem generally to have depended for their material achievements, such as the building of public works, upon slave or the forced labour. If they have not yet decayed from within, they have been overthrown by more energetic people who came from the north of cool winters, from the mountains of cool night. or from the deserts where the body's calling system works well.

From my own experience, I could tell many stories of the adaptability of southerners to the north, a thing that is well known, also from the writings of other northern travellers. Piri tells us again and again in his books, and he emphasised it to me personally, and the best travelling companion he ever had was Matt Henson, a typical American Negro. Nearly every whaling ship in Arctic waters, whether on the Atlantic or the Pacific side, has carried in its crews one or more of one or another kind of southerner. These men have usually averaged, as high as North Europeans in their ability to stand cold and in their enjoyment of the northern climate.

But none of these stories is more striking than that of my old friend Jim Fiji, whom I first met on the North Coast of Canada in 1906 when he had already, been there for many years. When the World's Fair was held in 1893, one of the exhibits was a young man who had grown to maturity in the Samoan Islands and had been brought to Chicago as a part of the exhibit of native races. This young man was James Sassia. When the fair was over, he drifted to San Francisco with an idea of getting back to the Samoas.

He could not speak much English, so he went down to the waterfront to see if you could find a ship they looked as it would take him home. He saw a small sailing ship that had several Kanakas aboard, natives of the Hawaiian Islands. He could not speak to these Hawaiians, but he knew what people in a country they belonged to, so he went to the officers of this ship and asked for a job, for he thought they were sailing for the Hawaiian Islands.

Two or three months later, he found himself in the Arctic. Jim Fiji, from the tropics, now had to spend the winter with the whaler and Herschel Island, 200 miles north the Arctic Soho on the north coast of Canada. He found it hard, for he did not know how to take care of himself in the cold. He froze his face and his fingers and shivered and was miserable. And he has told me that he would have given anything to be out of it and home. But it was a three years voyage, and during the next two years he learned how to clothe himself properly

and how to protect himself from frost. And he liked the last year so well that when the vessel got down to San Francisco, he immediately shipped on another whaler to go north again. And at the end of this three-year voyage, he liked the north so well that when the ship turned home, he asked permission of the captain to remain behind. Jim Fiji has lived in their country ever since, trapping and occasionally working for whalos or traders,

and he worked three years for us on our expedition of 1913 to 18. I have known him since 1906 as one of the finest men in the north, and consider him one of my good friends. He has been industrious and frugal, has caught many foxes, has sold his furs at federal prices, and now he has money in the bank. The amount is a subject on which he is reticent, for he has, in that respect, the instincts of the Missouri. He will give you any food or clothing or other articles he has, but when anything has once been turned into money, it never gets away from him. Some say he is worth $10,000, others say $40,000. In 1917, his hair had turned nearly white, and he was getting to be an old man.

Though I am a great believer in the north, it struck me one day that it might be no bad speculation for Jim V.G. To go back with some of his riches to the Samoan Islands and settle down. I suggested to him that a good thing to do would be to go south with us to San Francisco, put most of his money into liberty bonds, take a few thousand dollars to the Samoas, and buy an estate on which you could live. This idea struck him very favorably, and thereafter we had many talks about what he was going to do. He told me how you could get a man down there to work for you all day for five cents, and he had great visions of what he was going to do with this plantation.

Among other things, I was to come to visit him some time down there. He knew how fauna was of the Eskimo foods, and he described in detail the peculiar similar foods which he was going to give me, to see how I liked them. At the end of my 1913-18 expedition, I came east to Ottawa and New York and Jim Fiji went to San Francisco. Some months later I went out to San Francisco and the day after I got there, Jim Fiji called on me. I was surprised to find him still there, but he explained that when he got there, he heard that one of his cousins was on the way from the Samoa's,

and so he thought he would await his arrival before starting for home. When this cousin arrived, he told him, among other things, that wages had gone up and that you no longer were able to hire a man for five cents per day. Various other things had changed for the worst, but the main thing that worried Jim was that he found he did not like the winterlessness of San Francisco, and as the Samoas were in that respect even worse, he had decided that he did not care to go back after all, and his intentions now were to buy another trapping outfit and go back to the Arctic.

This is what he has done. In the spring of 1919, he was taken north by Captain Peter, of the Herman, and Captain Peterson tells me he landed Jim on Cape Bathurst, the second most northerly point on the Canadian mainland. He expects to live there the rest of his life. It seems to me impossible to deny that in such countries as Missouri or Scotland, winter is unpleasant, and that, in such countries as Northern Canada or Alaska, summer is unpleasant. I've often argued with Southerners, who know only the unpleasant southern winter and have

occasionally succeeded in making them understand that winter may be pleasant though they haven't ever found it so. I've often argued with Eskimos, you know only the unpleasant northern summer, and I've never succeeded in proving to them that any reasonable person called like Florida or Italy, for Eskimos are narrow-minded, lacking education and a liberalising experience. I do expect to have better luck with the readers of this book in trying to prove to them than many reasonable persons like winter better than summer, for their minds have had more opportunities for broadening, but I don't expect much better luck.

If stories of that number and with the same moral as the foregoing still leaves some unconvinced that you can ever get any large numbers of southerners to become fond of winter and to colonize the far north. These are only the intellectual children and grandchildren of those who said there never would be anything but a fur trader's village where now stands a great city of Winnipeg. All we can do with such is to urge them to take good care of their health so they may live to see history once more repeating itself. Having gained from this experience the idea that a wise man may learn from the experience of others, though a fool learns only from his own. I have long ceased trying to explain to Eskimos, then winter being essentially pleasanter than some of the wise.

summer is only a matter of opinion, but I still keep urging on my more cultured and broader-minded southern friends, in connection with my ideas and plans of northern commercial development, general principles and specific evidence showing that a man or woman may be perfectly normal and still delight in a climate that is winter more than half the year. The general principles do not need to be reiterated. They are few and simple, but they need to be enforced by much testimony to show they really work, So we keep on telling story after story of the type of Judge Lomans, Dr. Nelson's, Cameron, the bankers, and Jim, the Samoans. End of Section 4.

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This is at the Bibrivox According or Libravox Accordings from the public domain. For more information or a volunteer, please visit the provox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 5 The Established Arctic Industries Writing a Pioneer book We concern ourselves little with matters that are commonly known or with such detail of exposition as falls legitimately within the domain of chambers of commerce or the immigration departments of the country's concerned. The agricultural possibilities and the demonstrated agricultural achievements of the McKenzie Valley,

the Yukon, Alaska or Siberia will receive a less space here because they are continually getting wide publicity elsewhere. When I made my first journey down the Mackenzie in 1906, I saw strawberries and other fruit being already successfully cultivated in the gardens of the Roman Catholic Mission at Fort Providence, 2,200

miles north of New York, 1,000 miles north of Winnipeg, and 500 miles north of Edmonton. Then, the northern railway terminus. From the mission of Fort Good Hope, we purchased potatoes that had been raised about 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle. I have talked with traders who hold the northerly record for raising carrots

and cabbages in the Mackenzie Delta more than a hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. Wheat and other cereals are grown at Fort Providence and Fort Simpson, and it may be said in general, that the ordinary cereals such as rye and barley and most garden vegetables, though probably not tomatoes, can be grown on the Arctic Circle in the McKenzie Valley and near Great Bear Lake. The Department of Agriculture at Washington and the Chamber of Commerce of Seattle will furnish detailed information with figures as to hay and wheat, garden produce and derrying as far north in Alaska as 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle and even to the circle itself. While it is true, then most of the common garden vegetables can be cultivated

almost anywhere in about half of Alaska, and while it is true that wheat and strawberries have been successfully cultivated north of a slave lake on the Mackenzie River, and while similar success in Arctic Europe and Asia has been even more notable, I saw thinking a mistake to pride ourselves in those endeavors. They're rather symptoms of one of our most serious economic ills. They are but another series of attempts to gather

grapes from thorns and figs from thistles. Our true domestic animals and nearly all of our food plants are tropical or subtropical in their origin. With regard to the plants, this may be considered inevitable. For in our present state of knowledge, we are aware of no important plants, either growing wild or cultivated in a northern climate which can furnish any large amount of food for direct human consumption. Her remote ancestors of diverse domesticated animals lived in the south with tropical animals and neighbours. These have retained under domestication their tropical or subtropical natures,

in some cases even accentuated by coddling, and they are congenially, unable to fend for themselves in an arctic environment. It is a poor business to try to raise ostriches in Minnesota or in Germany. It can be done, but it would not pay. It is scarcely less unwise to try to raise cattle in Montana and Obuda. It can be done, and has paid under the economic conditions of say 10 years ago. It is not paying very well now. My own family have tried it for years to make a living by raising both wheat and cattle in middle Saskatchewan.

Chetuan, under difficulties which are inherit, not in the country, but in the system we have employed. Not until the world is much more crowded than is today, and not until food prices rise far above those which the farmer can secure at present, will it pay to shoulder the difficulties and hazard the risks of wheat and cattle cultivation in lands where wheat and cattle are not native. In a sense, it is possible to gather grapes from thorns and figs from thistles, for the wheat and cattle farmers of the northern countries are doing it continually. It seems to me that one of the greatest industrial reforms of our time will come when the food producers of the world take to heart this biblical text,

cease their profitless endeavors to force the hand of nature, and begin to adapt themselves to conditions by producing in each locality that food product which experiments shall show to be of those available the most newly native. Generalizing, we may say that it is sensible to produce. cattle in such climates as those of Texas and the Argentine. In climates like those in Manitoba or of Russia, we should use the yak or the American bison or some animal developed by careful breeding upon the basis of hardy native stocks. Farther north, as this book specially argues, it is insanity to try to raise cattle, it would be folly to try to

raise bison or yak, and sensible only to cultivate the reindeer and ovibos and whatever other animal can be found or bred that are equally or better suited to the local conditions. If the farming and garden possibilities of the sub-arctic are already well known, other enterprises in those regions are better known. Once upon a time, fur was considered the only thing of value to come out of the north. There is still fur, and the rise in prices has nearly kept a step with a decrease in quantity, so that even now the fur output is to be reckoned with. Moreover, it has already been demonstrated that foxes and other animals can be raised with profit under conditions of semi-domestication and fur farming is an established

and promising industry. In certain districts sealing and whaling have been carried on for centuries and are as well known as the fur trade. Gold mining through the various stampede and through the agency of our novelists is equally in the public mind when one thinks of the north. With regard to Alaska it is of special interest that among the many puzzled historians who have tried to decipher of the middle of Seward's purchase, there are several who think he did to improve the credit of the United States by showing the country was not broke. His method of showing it was to hand out $7,200,000 in gold, and these historians say that

the full value of that gold was present received by the country through the improved credit abroad secured by this display of hard cash. Sue does not appear to have expected repayment from Alaska and kind, but the accepted climate of the gold production there between 1867 and 1920 is $319.9,665,000. Although gold is by no means a major source of Alaskan wealth, Seward's venture has already been repaid in gold alone, 44 times over. It is a commonplace now that in Alaska, both copper and coal, is sure to prove of more importance, and the British metals, and the same will probably apply to both iron and oil. The Canadian Yukon, as well as Alaska, has been productive of gold, and there are a few thoughtful people who would not readily agree that, square mile for square mile, Arctic Canada

promises as well in minerals as does Alaska. Oil has been struck in both countries, but, so far as the Arctic developments are concerned, the leading ones are in the Mackenzie Basin, where there are actual flowing wells, just a little south the Arctic Circle, with indicate of oil for a thousand miles along the Mackenzie, both north and south of the present main prospect. We do not emphasize the fur and minerals of Arctic and sub-arctic lands and the agriculture of the sub-arctic section, because doing so is no novelty. Neither shall we say much of the fisheries, in spite of their great money importance. For salmon and cod and herring, no less than gold and fur have long been associated in the public mind with the northern countries. It is worth pointing out

However, that one of the important conclusions of oceanography is that the amount of animal life per cubic mile of ocean volume is probably less at the equator, and in a general way, increases going away from the equator either north or south, until reaching such northern waters as those of Alaska and Norway, and the northerly waters of Canada, where, in salmon and herring and cod, in whale and seal and walrus, and in a great variety of other life forms, we have one of our chief resources against the time when, as many think, the whole world shall be short of food. Some of these foods are already popular on our tables, others will readily become so with use. Even should they never become favourites in the United States or France,

they might still be of no less value to the world as a whole as of favourite foods of some other country. The Japanese now hunt whales for food. If they like to live on whale meat or on rice, it would be foolish for us to quarrel with their taste just because we do not agree with it, for it leaves that much more wheat and beef for the rest of us. Although well established in several countries, the reindeer industry is to most of us more novel than fur trading, whaling or gold mining, or almost any of the major northern industries. The origin of reindeer domestication is an unsolved problem.

Archaeologically, ethnologically and historically, it is unsolved both as to time and place. The common belief is that the reindeer bones found with those of our European ancestors of the Ice Age are those of wild animals, though some have thought that they were even then domestic. Opinions differ here with regard to reindeer somewhat as they differ with regard to the horse, which was one of the favorite foods of Europe from the remotest times down to the Middle Ages, when the church at length through heretic burning and other devices, compelled our ancestors to curb their appetites for the flesh of animals that do not split the hoof.

But though authorities are as to the extreme antiquity of domesticated reindeer, there are none who dispute the Chinese historical records which show them to have been at least fairly common in northern China, or to the north of China in the 5th century of our era. Neither is there any doubt of the historical validity of the reference to the domestic reindeer of Norway made by King Alfred of England in the latter part of the 9th century. It does not necessarily follow over that the early historical proof for reindeer in China shows that they are any more ancient there than in Europe. Many have argued for an origin in some intermediate part of northern Asia.

Not only are the local origin and antiquity of the reindeer industry unknown, but its present volume in Asia is little understood. Komodo Berthoff told me that when a 1901, he was sent by the United States government to purchase on behalf of Alaska some hundreds of Tunguiz deer. He went to Petrograd to secure official permission, both for his own overland travel north-westward through Siberia and for the purchase of the reindeer. He was astound to find that the officials with whom he dealt in Petrograd did not even know that there were domestic reindeer in northern Siberia. This was a curious ignorance for scholars both in Russia and other lands had known of the industry for centuries.

but it shows at any rate that no official statistics were then available. Neither do any statistics seem to be now available either for the industry of today or for its standing at, say, the beginning of the World War. We know in general that from the west coast of Norway to the east coast of Siberia on Bering Straits, their stretch is a probably unbroken chain of nomad herds. It's been reported that it points thousands of miles apart in this vast area that single families considered only moderately well-to-do own 5,000 to 12,000 reindeer. The reindeer of Siberia, then, are to be estimated by the million and 10 million.

It is only in the limited area joint in Norway, Sweden and Finland, that the meat of domestic reindeer is a factor in commerce. In Helsingfors, Stockholm and Christiania, reindeer is a standard meat, sold by the 100 tons in the same markets with beef and mutton napole. prices ranging from equality with beef to 20 or 25% above, as for instance in Stockholm, the winter, 1918-19. In the north of Siberia, both in the interior and along the coast, export of meat is unknown and the export of skins so difficult that, practically speaking, the

people live upon the reindeer herds direct. They eat the meat, dress in the skins, ride the animals in some places and drive them in others, and employ the milk in one district more. In another less, and in some apparently not at all, in some places houses, tents and boats for river or ocean travel are also made of reindeer hides. In the past and even recently, reindeer have been so common and cheap, for instance, near the shores of the Carra Sea, that among the chief articles of export have been the skins of grown animals, and particularly those of unborn and newborn calves which command to market in Europe as a fur for women's wear. In certain districts, at certain times at least, great numbers of reindeer have been butchered for the hides alone, or the hides in tallow, allowing the flesh to go to waste. Although the daily papers tell us that thousands of people are dying in Russia from hunger, we can reliably infer, from knowledge dating back only a few years, that the northerly parts of that country are now so abundantly supplied with food, that, where a trader to penetrate those regions, he could secure for a nominal price, almost any number of reindeer hides, from animals that would be butchered for the purpose.

The flesh rotting or been eaten by dogs or wolves. The World War did something towards bringing Western Europe to realize the accessibility of northwestern Siberia by a sea road around the north tip of Norway. Companies have already been formed to take up, as soon as economic conditions become stable, the erection of packing plants and the installment of refrigerators steamers to bring this cheap, delicious and already popular meat to London and Paris. The difficulty of bringing the meat to the world markets increases, of course, as one goes east

beyond the Karasi, but the recent journeys of captains further up and others are convincing us rapidly that the handicaps are not serious. The route is not as long as that which brings Argentine pave to England, only half as long as that which brings Australian mutton. Furthermore, the problems of refrigeration are much simpler in the northern than in the tropical oceans, an advantage which to a degree compensates for whatever difficulty there may be in meeting with occasional ice. Should the Japanese and Chinese or the people of Hawaii and San Francisco develop a taste for reindeer meat, the herds in northeastern Siberia are readily available to ships

plying to the North Pacific and the northeast Arctic portion of Alaska. A glance at any map of the Trans-Siberian Railway shows that the reindeer mate of North Siberian prairies can be bought by River Strait. streamer up the great north flowing rivers, either to the railways that have already been built, or to the ends of spur lines that can be run north from the present trunk line to the head of navigation of such rivers as the Lena. He has not suggested that these spurs will be built for a single purpose of bringing reindeer itself. That industry is merely one of many potentialities that make the railway development of Siberia as inevitable as was a railway development of the prairies of Central North America.

Whether we estimate the domestic reindeer of North Siberia in tens or in hundreds of millions, we know at any rate that those vast prairies are capable of supporting a great many more than they do now. That growth will inevitably follow the coming development of a European market by ships plying from France and England around Norway to the north coast of Siberia, but the industry awaits a new type of development in Canada, and it's already receiving it in Alaska. Few of any white men have lived with the Eskimos on such terms, terms of intimacy as I. Through ten years of residence, they have become as my own people, whose

language I speak fluently, if not quite correctly, and whose thoughts and needs I understand, perhaps not correctly, but least as correctly as they do themselves. Most observers look upon the Eskimos from what the observers consider a superior point of view. They have ideas about their needs, both spiritual and maternal, which the Eskimos either never had, or have only recently learned with difficulty from their preceptors. When I first lived among the Eskimos or the Coronation Gulf District who had never seen a white man, I found them more nearly satisfied with their condition than any people I have lived with of any social class in any part of the world. Their average of bodily health was at that time so high than when my immediate successor among them, Mr. Janese,

referred to them as people without any serious elements. I thought the expression no more of an overstatement than is just aifiable for emphasis. Certainly I can imagine no healthier people on the average. These uncontaminated Eskimos considered fat meat and lean meat ideal foods, and they had plenty of both. They considered Verclothes entirely satisfactory, and nearly everyone had at least one complete new suit that had never been worn. They were satisfied with the climate of the country and with its resources. They had no desire to travel and idea that any condition could be better than their own. When we came among them with firearms, steel butcher knives, and steel sewing needles,

they envied greatly the needles which were vastly superior to their copper ones, and envied only secondarily, or butcher knives, which were indisputedly better than their copper knives. The rivals they did not covert, until we and traders, who came a few months afterwards, had been among them several months. It is the common view of white men that even these Eskimos are badly off, though they do not know it.

They are some who consider the inability to appreciate their own wretchedness as one of the evils that most needs to be alleviated by our civilisers. In that effort, we eventually succeed completely. Ennisco may be considered to have emerged from his savage state when he has become thoroughly dissatisfied with his country and conditioned, and has learned to complain to us in broken English about his inability to buy canned goods and ready-made shoddy clothing in the quantity he desires. Had I been in Alaska in the early eight years of last century, I should not have sympathised with the Reverend Sheldon Jackson, who saw the destitution of the Eskimos from the ordinary white man's philanthropic point of view, and who concede the idea of turning them from huntsmen to monomatic huntsmen, to provide food and clothing for themselves and their descendants.

I should have given grudging asset, saying that if we would only leave the people alone, they would be perfectly all right, but that the possibility of there being left alone, been only an academic question, or was perhaps a good thing to introduce reindeer. I should probably have been blind, as Sheldon Jackson himself seems to have been, to the fact that this enterprise which he conceived as a philanthropy and carry through with philanthropic motives, always as a driving force, was going to attain not only the ends which he had in view, but also the totally different result of becoming one of the chief industries of Alaska. Sheldon Jackson has attained his object fully, for the reindeer and making the other

Eskimos economically independent. More than that, the astounding success of the reindeer industry, which has been far beyond the predictions and hopes of its early advocates, is pointing the way to the ultimate colonization of all the Arctic prairies, both of Alaska and Canada, by ranchmen of the type of Texas and Montana and Alberto cattlemen 50 and 75 years ago, the reindeer taking the place of the Longhorn. It is commonly enough to suppose by these partially familiar, with the reindeer industry in Alaska that has started with breeding stock from Norway.

This impression arose in the fact that in 1897, Congress was stampeded with stories of imminent starvation in the gold mining camps and was induced to appropriate money for rescue purposes. A considerable part of this money was used to purchase something like 500 Norwegian reindeer steers, which were bought with a loss of less than 1% from Norway to New York, and thence to settle to the south coast of Alaska. But when the attempt was made to drive the animals into the interior, it turned out, as any thoughtful persons could foresee, that they were unable to find food in the forest, exactly as cattle would have been, and for the same reason. The meadow and prairie and not the deep wood is always the logical habitat of grazing animals. Many of the reindeer starved to death.

Few of any were of value in preventing the starvation of any minor, and, as said, the whole enterprise had to be able to starve. no bearing on the establishment of any industry in Alaska. Through the efforts of Sheldon Jackson, the American government imported from Siberia, 171 reindeer into Alaska in 1892. Between that period in 1902, a total of 1,22-2-2-270 Siberian reindeer were imported. From this small beginning have developed a hundred or more herds scattered over northern and western Alaska that are now estimated with a total of over 200,000 animals, although 100,000 or more have been butchered for meat and skins.

75 years ago you could buy a steer in Texas of 75 cents, and a sense it paid to raise them at that price. To speak of cattle raising in Texas at that time was almost a contradiction in terms, for the animals took care of themselves. The climate and country were such that no barns were needed for shelter, no hay for feed, and a half a dozen men could look after a great many thousand head. The work was little beyond branding,

and rounding up when the time came to sell. Similar conditions obtained in Alaska now. The reindeer are as well adapted to the north coast of Alaska as cattle ever were to the most favoured part of Texas. And if we place the cost of raising reindeer in Alaska today at $2 per head rather than $0.75, it is not because the labour required in raising them now is proportionally greater than with Texas cattle 75 years ago, but merely because wages and all other things have gone up. The reindeer needs no bar to shelter it, no hate to feed it, and little care beyond branding and protection from wolves. How simple the wolf problem is may be seen from the statement to me of Mr. Charles W. Hawksworth,

who on behalf the United States government superintended about 20,000 reindeer for five years in North Alaska, with a lost by wolf killing, so far as he knew, of three animals. The experience of Luman and Company, who are present the largest private owners in Alaska, is that it is advisable to keep reindeer in standard herds of about 10,000 head. Each herd is satisfactorily looked after by a half-dozen of so Eskimos. That a white manager is employed for each herd is partially because the Eskimos, although by nature reliable, have not as yet really evolved from the hunting into the pastoral stage. It is difficult for them to take seriously the continuous care of property, although they do

the work efficiently under even a casual superintendence. As mentioned elsewhere in this book, there is no problem nor the semblance of a mystery connected with the adaptability of reindeer to an arctic climate. The arctic animal just as the fish is a sea animal and the crocodile a swamp animal and one mystery is no greater than the others. We have pointed out elsewhere that the summer is adequately long and hot for the growth of a rich vegetation. The winter cold as such is not known ever to have interfered with the happiness of reindeer. The snowfall in northern Alaska is much lighter than in the

such well-known cattle countries as Montana were cattle forage all winter. Furthermore, were the snowfall five times even ten times as heavy as it really is, this would of itself be no problem either to the reindeer or to their owners. The only condition under which snow could be dangerous to reindeer is that actually found in certain parts of northern Norway, where there are narrow grassy valleys separated by barren rocky ridges and where there is a heavy snowfall with an occasional strong wind. And as such conditions the snow-es-and-a-snowed may be swept off the ridges into the deep grassy hollows, accumulating there to a depth of five and ten or twenty feet.

Through five feet of snow, reindeer will dig their way, but not through ten or twenty feet. Because of a topographical peculiarity, northern Norway is, therefore, especially ill adapted to reindeer. That it is nevertheless, a great reindeer country indicates that the industry must flourish well in northern Siberia, northern Canada and northern Alaska. All of them better grazing countries than Norway because they are prevailingly vast prairies without the deep narrow valleys where excessive snow can accumulate. There is only one climatic condition that is seriously detrimental to reindeer.

This is what is known as a Fon in Norway and a Chinook in the rocky mountain district of Western Canada, a winter thaw. This may produce a coating of ice over hundreds and even thousands of square miles of grassland, making it difficult or impossible for grazing animals to feed. In northern Norway, this occurs rather frequently, causing difficulty in loss. In Northern Canada and Northern Alaska, it is nearly unknown. In western and southern Alaska and in Labrador, another part, southern Canada, it may occur, although apparently not with a frequency and severity common in Norway.

Fortunately, there is usually in winter a marked difference in temperature between the immediate coast and the country inland, and also between the lowlands and the highlands. There are a few places, therefore, where hers cannot be driven out of the ice-covered area by heading them inland or towards mountains. Again, there should be a heavy ice coating in the interior or up to the mountains. It will be found that, in the lowland, and down to the coast, the Thor has been so great that all snow has disappeared and most of the water has run off without forming ice. The chino gives, therefore, a menace that can be met successfully by quick and intelligent action

on the part of those who control the herds. The same mobility which makes it easy to drive reindeer away from an ice-covered area is important quality they have in relation to the marking problem. In the old days, Texas cattle used to be driven 5 and 600 miles to market at St. Louis and Kansas City. Driving reindeer equally far would be easier, for they are the most mobile of domestic animals, even more so than horses. In an actual trial, several hundred reindeer stews in Alaska were driven in midwinter, 1920, 500 miles at an average rate of 10 miles per day,

and arrived to that destination almost as fat as when they started, and with ample fat for immediate butchering. Cattle driven the same distance, even through good grazing territory at the most favorable time of year, could not equal this record, and the reindeer were driven at the least favorable time of the year. In beginning the colonization of any country, the ocean and the rivers furnish highways and give location to trading centers. Alaska is one-fifth the size of the United States, but there is no point in it 500 miles from either the coast or the Yukon River. In some places, drives could not be made because of intervening forests. But wherever grasslands are, there is usually found a continuation of them down to the coast in some direction.

railways will Dallas eventually play their part in the development of Alaska, but from the point of view of the reindeer industry, they will be for a long time a convenience rather than a necessity. Two things led me to undertake in Canada, in 1919, a campaign for the introduction of domestic reindeer. The success of the enterprise in Alaska in my realization that the climate of all northern Canada is not only substantially the same as that of Alaska, there the reindeer are developing so, but also about the same as that of Manitoba, where great cities and widespread rural communities now flourish. After spending more than 20 years in the climate of North Dakota and Manitoba and more than 10 in the polar regions, I knew that you cannot like the one and dislike the other. The whole problem of colonizing northern Canada resolves itself then in finding a means of livelihood for people of the type that are now willing to live in Manitoba and Dakota.

There are mines. oil, there are many other resources in the far north. But local food production is fundamental in every permanently occupied land. It furnishes a basis for a stable population, it makes easy, the development of industries, which are though based on minerals, cannot well flourish when all the food needed has to be brought from a great distance. The development of food production in the north is, therefore, the logical, first step in the development of its mines and oil fields. In 1919, I laid formally before the Canadian government, and a special before the Honourable Arthur Megan, then Minister of the Interior, my ideas with regard

to the colonisation of the Northern mainland of Canada and the islands to the north of Canada. These plans were based mainly on the introduction of domestic reindeer and the domestication of the ovibos. As pointed out in a previous chapter, they resulted the appointment through an order in Council of a Royal Commission to investigate the resources of Northern Canada. In the voluminous and excellent report, there were at least one cap. I tried to get the Commission to ask each of the witnesses how he personally liked the climate of the North, and whether he believed that the climate, through its mere disagreeableness,

would be a serious deterrent to colonisation. The Chairman of the Commission, however, ruled that it was not within our province to investigate the allurements of the North as a winter resort. My original idea was that the development of the reindeer industry in the Canadian North should be undertaken as a government enterprise. I said to Mr. Meecon that it was a project comparable in its political and commercial significance to the construction of the Panama Canal

and should be carried out rapidly with the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars. His feeling in that of his colleagues was that beyond whatever doubts there might be of the feasibility of the undertaking, there was also grave doubt whether a government should encroach upon the legitimate domain of private enterprise. Furthermore, the people were tax-ridden

and were already clamoring for economy. It was decided, therefore, that rather than ask Parliament for vast sums of money, they would give me a long lease of a large tract of Arctic land, and have me seek out some capitalists sufficiently broad-minded and far-sighted to undertake for the public good, as well as his own, an enterprise, which could not be expected to yield dividends for 15 or 20 years. I soon learned that capitalists willing to look 20 years ahead of their dividends are not easy to find.

After a year of unsuccessful effort, first in Canada and then in the United States, I finally went to England and to the Hudson's Bay Company. Their board of governors said at once that they were willing to undertake the enterprise and for two reasons. They believed in its ultimate business success, and they had for some time been looking around for a constructive enterprise of the patitude which they might develop in Canada. For 250 years in their dealings with the Arctic and subarctic lands, they had been engaged almost entirely in trading with the natives of furs. This is a non-productive enterprise in the sense that they were merely taking out of the country its indigenous natural wealth. In that sense, fur trapping resembles mining as a plundering of nature's storehouse, and is the antithesis of the reindeer industry. In that the reindeer have to be imported into Canada and kept there for years and decades before any profit can be made from their increase.

It is worth saying parenthetically that while the landlinks given us by the Canadian government is the largest in modern times, it is hedged about with nearly every conceivable restriction. One is that not a single share of the new reindeer company must ever be put on the market, and every penny spent must come directly out of the funds of the old Hudson's Bay Company. Of course, shares in the old company can be purchased by shares in its subsidiary, the Hudson's Bay Rindoo Company are not for sale. If any were sold, proof of that fact would constitute a valid reason for the cancellation of the company's chartered by the government. The Hudson's Bay Rindu Company, with head offices in Winnipeg, has a lease of about 113,000 square miles,

which is the southern half of Baffin Island. This is about one in one-third times the area of England and Scotland and Wales, or about two and one-half times the area of New York State. at least is for 50 years. The breeding stock will be purchased in Norway. The first consignment of 550 head was landed in October 1921. It is a plan that if these animals do well, similar shipments from Norway will follow year by year. Naturally, it accompanied plans to land several thousand animals eventually, because otherwise they would not be making suitable use of the land allotted them.

Indeed, the charter has a provision for cancellation, if the rate of increase of the animals proves to be substantial. less than that laid down in the company's prospectus. It is certain that long before the success of the enterprise in Baffin Island is actually demonstrated, the more striking demonstration of Alaskan success will induce many companies and private individuals to enter into inter-reindeer breeding in Canada. However, the difficulties there will, in some parts at least, be a little more serious than Alaska for two reasons.

Walls are more numerous, and while Karibu are more numerous, the greatest danger will be from the unbelievably large herds of caribou. It is said by some authorities that you can incorporate into your reindeer herds about 10% of their number per year of carnival. This will be to the advantage of the domestic birds in increasing the size of the animals, for the caribou are larger. Every caribou incorporated will mean also the much clear neural gain. It is generally agreed, however, that if a large number of wild animals, say 20 or 50% were to get into the animal, to a herd, it would become unmanageable. It follows for an added reason that a herd of a few thousand domestic animals that

comes in contact with a herd of many thousand wild animals will be lost. If you want to know what the great caribou herds are like, read Thompson's narrative of his Explorations in Western America, 1784 to 1812 by David Thompson, page 100 to 1801, across the subarctic of Canada by J.W. Tyrell, page 77, or my own account in my life with the Eskimo, page 224-226. David Thompson estimates a single herd at 3.5 million.

Tyrell says the numbers could only be reckoned in acres or square miles, and I have said the numbers are beyond comprehension. A reindeer herd of almost any size that happens to be in the way of such a Caribbean migration would be swallowed up without leaving a trace. There are some who say that this is not the time to consider the development of new meat-producing areas, for beef and mutton of doubt in price. Such a view does not go beyond the next 10 or 20 years. His advocates are men who consider that nothing is worth doing unless it promises dividends within a reasonable time. Those who know the inexorable forward march of the population of the world and his minds are of the type of him who plants an oak to shade a

coming generation are the ones to whom must be addressed the arguments for the development of the north. The experience of a year of continuous activity showed me that I could not find the United States or Canada any businessman who would invest millions in the Canadian reindeer industry, even after he was convinced that 20 years from now he would receive large dividends and had to go to the oldest commercial company of the old world before I found men of sufficiently long vision. If most capitalists cannot look 20 years ahead for their profits, neither it seems to me need the average farmer worry because the supply of reindeer meat from the north 20 years from now will hold down the price of his southern beef animals.

The prices of beef from Dadley will be higher 20 years hence than they are now that reindeer meat may prevent them from soaring as they otherwise would. Anyway, we hope that the same people who cannot visualize dividends two decades ahead will not worry about a drop in prices that is equally distant. According to the accepted vital statistics, the world population of the year 1800 was not doubled until about 1915 or 1920. With a lessened infant mortality, with greater longevity, with presumably fewer famines and epidemics, the population of the world should double again within the next hundred years. By that time, the average world population will be as dense as it now is in Belgium.

Here is again that time we must plan in developing and conserving our food and our fuel resources. sources. There are some who say that long before the year 2000 we shall have released the energy of the atom and shall stop using petroleum, and that long before then we shall learn to make food directly out of the air, thus doing away with pig's ties and wheat fields. That may prove so, but as well to have two strings to our bow and to plan to conserve fuel and produce food, so we shall have something to fall back on in case the dreams of our chemists are not realized fast enough to keep step with the increase of population.

End of Section 5 Section 6 of the North World Course of Empire By Viljama Stephenson This is a Librivox according or Librevox Accordings in the public domain For more information to the volunteer Please visit Librovox.org

Recorded by Leon Harvey Chapter 6 The Domestication of Op evolves Every domestic beast and bird Is a heritage from our prehistoric ancestors Not only that, but Britain history shows no intelligent and persistent effort to domesticate a new animal. Even the ones that came into European civilization as recently as did tobacco and the potato were borrowed by us from the Aborigines of America or some other savage land.

The turkey, which is still found wild in some parts of North America, is only a cousin of the domestic turkey which we inherited, ready domesticated from the Mexicans. In another book, I have made a study of the food prejudices of men and dogs, showing the boys brought up in a primitive way and used to living year after year, or in half a dozen articles of food, are commonly difficult to induce to eat a new food unless it has been skillfully advertised to them. It advanced especially delicious or particularly popular among some class to whom they look up. As, for instance, the rich now cities.

On the other hand, boys brought up in cosmopolitan surroundings, who either travel much while they are young, and thus become familiar with many foods, or who live in homes or hotels where domestic and imported foods are available in large variety, take readily to new foods. This is another application of the principal. Well known to all keepers of hotels or boarding schools are the boarders who come from the poorest homes complain most about the food.

That this is not primarily because they are trying to show off and pretend they are used to the best, has been shown by strictly a nautilus experiment with animals which cannot be supposed to have a desire for ostentation, at least in this sense. It's been brought out that dogs reared among the northern Indians or Eskimos, which leave their entire lives on only two or three articles of food, such as rabbits, cataboo and fish, will it first refuse to eat any new food, such as mutton, wild goose, or seal, while dogs brought up in a southern household or on a whaling ship, and used to all sorts of flavors through foraging in garbage pails or receiving the amendments of the family's dinner will take readily to these or almost any other new foods. If you have an Eskimo dog that never has eaten anything but seal and fish

and a white man's dog that has in his lifetime eaten 100 different foods, it would be at least a 10 to one bet that were both offered a new kind of meat, such as bison or hippopotamus. The civilized dog would fill his belly with it properly while the Eskimo dog would refuse. Another application in this general principle is found in our civilized dietary. We have hundreds of varieties of fruits, vegetables and cereals, but only a dozen so varieties of meat. The result is that we seek eagerly for additions to the variety of our vegetable foods, while new meats are difficult to introduce. It happens fortunately that the two most important new meats about to appear on our tables are easy to introduce.

One because the name reindeer suggests venison, which is already popular, popular, not that because the meat of musk oxen, if only the name can be changed into something more attractive, can be differentiated from domestic beef through texture, colour or odor only by experts and then only have cooked in the simplest ways, as for instance a roast or broiled chop. Bringing the reindeer to our tables is an accomplished fact, with which we have dealt in another chapter. None but epicurus are likely to taste musk ox during the next ten or fifteen years.

although its domestication is about to be taken in hand. Although Musk was a delicate and expensive perfume as recently as a time of our grandmothers, the fashion has also changed since then that the odour is now known by name only and the impression has begun to spread that it is a stink rather than a perfume. This impression, however, is not shared by those

who have among their family heirlooms the beautiful silver perfume in cases of our ancestors. Our first problem in domesticating the Musk, ox is, accordingly, choosing for the beast a new name. Musk-Mellon has become popular as cantaloupe, and we expect Musk-Ox beef to become a stable under some name derived from other boars. That name may not be a happy choice, and has been settled on only because this is the scientific term which has already been in use for generations, and furnishes us something to start with

in the campaign of popularization. Now that we have introduced the animal under its old name, we shall continue the discussion of it under the new. Without being accurately descriptive, the Latin ovibos, or sheep cow, does give some idea the general appearance and other characteristics of this candidate for the first light-scale ever of civilized pan to reach the world with a new domestic animal. Essentially, we have a cow with a coat of wool. A man concerned with them is, as cattle, for the world stands in even more need of food than of clothing, but the wool would be a valuable by-product. My idea of Overebos as a domestic animal was developed through intimate association.

With a party of 16 people and about 50 dogs, we were spending a year in Millfield Island, living entirely by hunting. We killed a few polar bears, a few seals and a few caribou, but in the main we lived on Overeaux. 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle we dwelt in houses made of their hides, use the tally over candlelight and the meat and fat for 90% of our food, the other 10% being the flesh of the other animals mentioned. We estimated that in the island there were about 4,000 of the bowls, roughly 400 of which we had to kill to support our party through the year.

This left numerous herds still peacefully grazing about our camp. We saw them at a distance nearly every day and came in close contact with them frequently. I think it was in January, 1916. that my ideas of how the other bowls could be domesticated and made an important item or the world's food supply has taken clear enough formally presented to a few people who, I hoped, would become sponsors of the movement. I had with me a typewriter and some carbon paper, so I wrote a letter in quadruplicate, addressing it to Colonel Roosevelt. But sending carbons to three other men, Sir Robert Borden, then Prime Minister of Canada, Sir Richard McBride, then High Commissioner for Canada, Sir Richard McBride, then High Commissioner for Canada, in London, and to Sir Edmund Walker, the president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce at Toronto. The letter was addressed to Roosevelt, because, above all others, he had the imagination and the pioneer

type of mind for this sort of enterprise. Typicals were sent to Canadians, however then Americans or Europeans, because it is in Canada, next to Siberia, with the government of which I did not know how to get in touch, that overbows is destined to have its greatest future as a domestic animal. Another reason why Canadians are most intimately concerned is that, apart from a few in Greenland, the only survivors of the falling widespread over both species are now found in Canadian territories. Rather than quote my lengthy letter to Colonel Roosevelt, I shall summarize it here. I use a summary of the letter rather than a new statement as I want the popularity of presenting Roosevelt's reply because of the pertinence of his comment and the weight of his endorsement.

The size of ovibos is about that of highlanded cattle, although the proportions of the body are different. A bull, if especially big and especially fat, will weigh over 700 pounds, which perhaps 100 pounds would be fat. The percentage of waste in butchering is somewhat higher than that with domestic cattle, because the massive head and big horns, an especially large paunch and the jelly heavy character of the skeleton. Ovibos is, therefore, several times as large as the domestic sheep. remember what animal husbandry is done to increase the weight of cattle within our time, it will be seen that under domestication, the size can be further increased by a few generations of careful breeding. In a newspaper interview given out at the time when my proposal to

domesticate the offerbo's first attracted newspaper notice, Admiral Peary said that their flesh is better eating than our domestic beef, equal and tenderness, similar in color, and superior in flavor. As to the flavor, I could never agree with the Admiral, for at least a dozen of my American and European companions and given it as their verdict that the meat is indistinguishable from domestic beef through flavour or odor. However, the meat might differ a little from beef

and still be a good meat in the opinion of those who prefer beef to all other meats. Guinea fowl does not necessarily have to be exactly like chicken to be a good meat, any more than turkey has to be exactly like the ordinary European goose to be at least equally popular. How other bowers got the name or idea of masquer, associated with it is, so far as I know, an insoluble historical mystery. Should any reader of this chapter know the answer, I should be delighted to employ it in a future

edition if there is one. Two possible explanations have occurred to me. In the time of early American exploration, the motives of its patrons were frequently commercial. At that time, spices and perfumes were more important in commerce than they are today, and and many adventurers fared forth in search of either or both. A prized perfume of that time was Musk, derived principally from the Musk deer of Asia. Conceivably some navigator returning to Europe reported to his patron that, while he had failed to find a short route to the Indies or to discover pressure stones or gold by the bucketful,

he had seen great herds of musk deer from which perfume in large quantities could be secured. It is even possible, though difficult to understand that some of the early navigators may really have been ignorant enough to mistake ovibals for musk deer. One might almost as readily confuse turkeys with doves. It is well known that every animal has its own peculiar odor. In the case of some, notably the skunk, the odor is frequently very strong when associated with the living animal, and entirely absent from meat that has been properly butchered. At certain seasons there is a pungent odor about the

elderly ovibals, but is not as strong as in the case the domestic sheep or the wild caribou. If one is sufficiently adowed with imagination, especially if one is little enough acquainted with real musk, one may speak of this as a musk odor. To you this statement, the additional weight of corroboration by several observers, I quote, Svendrup, who sums up as follows the experience of himself and a ship's company of Europeans through four years of intimate contact with overbows in Edelis Mir Island. Having shot many of these animals and drunk the milk of the cows, without ever detecting the flavour of musk from which they are supposed to derive their name,

I have decided to call them in this book Polar Oxen. If there is any musk odor about the ovipose, it pertains to the living beast, and possibly to certain parts are dead one, and not to the meat as it would appear on the market. If there were the order of musk, it should not be considered unpleasant, for the opinion of many it is a delicate perfume, Our ancestors who knew the perfume intimately would have been as likely to object to the fragrance of violets as to that of musk, or the which is academic discussion for, as said, the odor of ovibose beef is but that of our domestic beef. In colour and flavour, the fat of the ovobose is in general similar to that of beef, though not identical as is the case with the lean. All of my companions said that they preferred the ovibose fat to beef fat, and they further agree that there is more range,

of variety and flavours as between fats from different parts of the body. The largest accumulation is on the neck, and that is especially delicious. No wild animal gives a large amount of milk. Domestic cattle, when allowed to run wild in the range, give only from three to five pints of milk, where the same cow would give four times that much under daring conditions. It is not surprising, therefore, that ovibos gives little milk. They give a good deal more.

reindeer, however, and reindeer are used as milk animals in various parts of the world, and also for butter and cheese making. My men agreed that in flavour the milk volubles seemed to be about like that of the Jersey cow, but naturally we had to rely on our memories of Jersey milk in making that comparison. In richness it excels the Jersey, for the whole milk is of about the consistency of the cream ordinarily for sale in our cities. Probably a percentage of fat in the undiluted of a bowl's milk is not as high as an acidity cream, but the consistency of the milk gives a cream-like impression. It's doubt for whether it would ever be found desirable to develop

the milk qualities of oviboles, but should that occasion rise, the end can be attained up to a certain limit. Anyone who has heard of cattle knows that they have an adventurous disposition which is annoying to their caretakers. They tend to rove in search of pasture, and their quality is shared by most grassy-died domestic animals. Here the ovibals differ fundamentally. They fill their porches with the vegetation nearest to them, and when satiated they lie down. After two or three hours of rest, they get up again,

commence feeding in the immediate vicinity, and lie down a second time when their porches are filled. Melville Island is in the main rocky, compared with other Arctic lands known to me, and is especially infertile. Even so, the other bows under our observation to not move on the average more than two or three miles a month. In their march, they cropped the grass down fairly close

and browsed on low willows, moving mainly in one direction until they came to a rocky ridge devoid of vegetation. They were then marched over the ridge until they came to the nearest minnow. This might be a few hundred yards, even a mile or two. Whenever they found a grassy spot, they stopped and resumed their systematic slow progress at the rate of a few rods per day.

David Hanbury and others have quoted the Northern Indian as saying that offerballs move so slowly that if you find them here one year you will find them here the next this is overstating their case but it emphasizes the point we are making in which all observers have made these animals are as little mobile as any grazing animal can be there are three main systems of controlling grazing animals under domestication fencing herding and the round-up system Fencing is suitable for any of them and is to be used when it is less expensive or more convenient than herding. The round-up system has been used with even the most mobile animals, such as horses and cattle. It is far better suited to oviboles, for where horses and cattle might wander 200 miles and half a year, oviboles would probably not move more than 20. With a mobile reindeer, herding is now practiced and perhaps it will always be.

But with oviboles, I am inclined to think the round-up system may prove, cheaper and more convenient. Most grazing animals have many natural enemies, but so far as I know, ovibos has only one, man. In ancient times, when they ranged far south, the panthers of other large varieties of the cat family may possibly have preyed upon them. In Alaska, brown bears are known to kill Bander occasionally, and it seems not impossible that they may, in remote times, have killed ovibals.

I cannot say that polar bears never killed them, but must confess. find myself to the statement that my personal experience and my inquiries from Eskimos have both failed to reveal a single instance of there being killed or even attacked or pursued by polar bears. On the mainland of North America, their range and that of the barren ground grizzly overlap, but here also my inquiries have been negative, failing to show any killing of one animal by the other. The possibility must, however, be acknowledged. With many northern travellers, a theory strongly held has often led to definite statements that seem entirely reasonable and are borne out by the general high character of the men who made them. Some of these statements have, nevertheless, no real foundation.

Who would doubt the general truthfulness of Sir Edmund Perry? He is clearly shown in all his narratives. Even so, it does not occur to us to believe what he states for a positive fact, that all the ovables leave male-fellers. island in the fall, migrating south and returning to that island in the spring. It is a commonplace of our knowledge now that no such migration occurs. Basing their statements similarly on what seemed to them reasonable, many northern travellers have said that wolves prey upon ovibos. In this connection, it is not commonly noted that there are only two groups of northern

explorers who have ever been in really intimate continuous contact with the ovibos. The 40-year Norwegian expedition of Otto Sirdrup, 1898 to 2002, and the five-year Canadian-Octic expedition under my command 1913-18. In his extensive residence in the north, Admiral Peary commonly used Eskimo hunters, and, although a large amount of Ovibor's beef, was eaten by his expeditions. Nearly all their contact with the living animals was either by Eskimos or by sailors sent up by Peary to kill herds and bring home the meat. Macmillan's expedition was in the same general situation. Both Peerie and Macmillan were themselves occasionally present at the killing of Fovobos and killed some themselves, but they never had the herds before their eyes continually month after month as we did, for instance, in Melville Island.

Instead of describing our experience, I shall, however, merely cite to endorse Svendrop's statement. On arriving at the camp, we had noticed two polar herds up a little valley. They appeared to consist of four cows, each with a calf. The seven unwounded wolves having to leave us with stomachs as empty as when they came, now weren't inland, taking line northwards towards the plains, and came across these animals. The meeting was evidently quite unexpected on both sides, for there was so still that they could highly have got wind of each other, and we could see that the wolves actually started when they caught sight of the oxen. They stopped short and stood still a while, probably making out their plan of attack.

Finally, they formed a ring round the nearer of the animals, but not one of them would approach, closer than two or three hundred yards. There they took up their stand, and as long as we were about, and that was for seven hours, they kept their music without let or hindrance. Such music too, along drawn weird howling, as if a knife were being driven into them every time they uttered the sound. We were most curious to see what would happen. We thought that the four cows, with their small cows, must be a splendid opportunity

for the wolves, but the cows did not seem to be at all impressed by them, and as a matter of fact, were so indifferent that they did not even take the trouble to get up. When later on, the wolves appeared to think of approaching the other herd, which was somewhat scattered, the animals drew nearer together, but did not form a square. It would appear from this scene that the polar ox stands in no great awe of the wolf. It seems entirely reasonable to suppose that now and then a newborn calf may go to sleep in the tall grass and be temporarily forgotten by its mother. At such a moment a wolf could doubtless dash in and kill the calf before the mother could interfere. I have inquired from Eskimos whether they ever knew this to occur, and my observation agrees with their statement that,

while this seems a reasonable possibility, it has not been observed to happen. it is further said and i do not doubt it that when an animal is sick or has become weak with old age it loses the herd instinct and wanders off by itself such single animals could doubtless be surrounded by wolves and killed that this happens now and then is not to be doubted although again i have neither hearsay nor visual evidence in support however the killing of an animal that is about to die is of little significance in a life history of a herd or of species It is commonly said that in defending themselves from walls, ovibos form a hollow square or a circle with the big animals on the outside and the calves in the centre. I believe I have said this myself. What I have really meant, when I have said it, has been that this is the way a herd behaves when dogs are sicked upon them, and that I have inferred that would be the manner of their defence have attacked by a band of wolves. The fact remains, however, that I have never heard of a band being attacked by wolves,

nor have seen any evidence leading me to think that it could occur even under the most extraordinary circumstances. In my observation, the attitudes of ovibose towards wolves is that of a cow towards a cat in a barnyard. There is no doubt that a cow could defend herself successfully against the attacks of a cat, but is equally certain that no cow has ever been forced to do it. So far as I know, there is only a slight overstatement of the situation as between the otherboes and the wolf. But although wolves do not attack ovibos, men do, and so do dogs that are in the service of men. When so attacked, ovibos form in squares or circles, as they are said to do in a discussion of the hypothetical defense against wolves. According to our usual reasoning based upon the theory of evolution, we are bound to suppose that this method of defense has been developed originally by ovibos as a protection against carnivoria of the wolf type.

It is a perfect defence against wolves, but is the opposite of a defence against men, armed with spears, or with bows and arrows. The Eskimos will run up to shoot a band and shoot them all down with their bows. If they do not happen to have bows with them, they will lash their hunting eyes to the walking sticks and stab the animals behind their shoulder until the last one has fallen. It seldom happens that a single animal of any band escapes from hunters, whether white or Eskimo, who know their nature it does occur as ascribed by pike whitey and others that some members of a band and even whole bands sometimes escape from such novices as a dog-ribb and yellow-knife indians when they make their fearsome forays and of what is to them the dreadful barren ground it has been commonly assumed by zoologists that ovibos which once inhabited kentucky and france became extinct there because the warming of the climate after the ice age brought to the

bacteria or influences even more directly climatic to which these animals had to succumb. It seems to be a mistake to go so far afield for one's explanation. It is commonly said that men as hunters spread over Europe and America following the ice northward in its retreat. Our experience shows today that ovibos and human hunters will never for many years inhabit the same district. Their ranges are mutually exclusive. It could not have failed to be the case in those prehistoric days as it is the case now that these animals are exterminated from every district that is inhabited by hundreds. Not a single animal is likely to escape from any band that is seen by Eskimos, or the tracks of which are once discovered. We have no reason to suppose that it would have been otherwise

20 or 100,000 years ago, for we think that those early men were armed with spears and bows and weapons pointed with stone and copper, just as the Eskimos have been armed, who, during the last half-century, have killed down to the last animal the oboebles of Banks Island, which were reported as everywhere numerous when McClure was there with the investigator. In any contrast with men, the defense of Othiobos, perfect against ordinary carnivora, is a method of suicide, but under domestication, the one potential enemy becomes their protector, and they are themselves capable of defense against any other. Bulls are a menace to every other domestic animal, but not to these except possibly to the newborn carves.

So far as wolves are concerned, the herdsmen would not have to worry, unless for a month or two at the carving season. This is an important advantage of ovipause for the immediate future, although later the wolf will become so nearly extinct on the plains of the north that this merit will cease to be important. For half a century now, the Darwinian theory of evolution is still unshaken, and apparently unshaken, although there have been additions and modifications about as forecast by its greater founder. One of these modifications is that, while Darwin believed acquired characters to be transmissible, it is now commonly believed that they are not transmitted. From the biological point of view, nothing can be more foolish than the often quote a remark of one of the leading literary delights of New England, that their time to begin educating the child is with its grandfather.

education is transmitted by social rather than biological inheritance and from the social point of view you may have whatever opinion you please about the wisdom of educating grandfathers so that they may transmit culture by association with their grandchildren after these are born similarly a grandfather of a boss if thoroughly tame will transmit it by association his tameness to his remote progeny but he will transmit none of it biologically this explains such fact that he will transmit of it biologically This explains such facts as are commonly reported from the reindeer districts in northern Asia. On the same prairies, there, we have wild caribou and herds of domestic reindeer. The domestic herds we can trace back historically only to about 400 AD, although we have other reasons to believe that their domestic ancestry really extends millenniums beyond. Presumably the wild herds have a wild ancestry dating back hundreds of thousands of years. If domesticity could be transmitted by blood, you would expect the progeny of the domestic animals to be, by nature, tame within the progeny of the wild.

It is a matter of common knowledge in those countries, however, that if you bring up in the domestic herds, caribble calves, their back of them unbroken wild ancestry, they will grow up as tame as the reindeer. Similarly, reindeer that escape into the wild herds presently become as wild as caribble. In Alaska, it happens occasionally that a few caribou join the reindeer herd. When these are males, they are preferable as work animals because of their greater size and strength. Mr. Carl Lohmann, the president of Lohman and Kopperty, at present the largest owners of Alaskan reindeer, tells me that he has personal knowledge of two caribou that joined a reindeer herd and were taken a train to slid deer by the Eskimo herders. These caribou became more traceable when handling and easier to catch than ever. of the slid deer which had domestic ancestry, and the European has grown up in Alaska that

caribou are by their nature, tamer and gentler than reindeer. It is probable, however, that the natural tameness is the same, and that the apparently greater tameness of these two was due to the fact that they were the favourites of their owners and were more handled and caressed than the others, from which they got their docility rather them from the blood. It would seem to prove too much and would be inexplicable biologically to say that the calves of animals which have always been wild are tamer than the cars of animals that have been tamed for hundreds of generations. Evidence of similar meaning is furnished by horses. Not that E.W. Nelson, chief of the United States Biological Survey, told me the other

day that within his own observation, the tame horses that escaped and joined wild bands in California took on their weeks to become, to all appearances, equally wild. For a greater reason, it is true that the progeny of these tame horses, if born among wild ponds, will be exactly as wild as those horses that have been wild, perhaps since the time of the early Spaniards. Applying this principle to the problem of domesticating the operables, we see that the animals should become as tame in one generation, as in ten or a hundred. Of course, in the bruning of any animals, a degree of gentleness can be secure. by systematically killing off the specie vizis, allowing only the milder ones to breed.

In that sense only can the domesticity of ovibos be increased beyond what is attainable in one or two generations. When a mother of a boers is killed, the little calf will frequently follow the hunters, showing no sign of fear. There are many authorities to share with me the responsibility of this statement. I shall select Admiral Peerie, who says, Our sombrus were undisturbed except by Sambo, a little cold black musk cough. His mother was the last cow killed by Matt, and he the smallest of the cars. After we had skinned the cow, the little fellow persisted in placing himself between my legs, and this position accompanied us to the sledge, and after the clamp was made, seems to want

to come to bed with us. I curled him up and covered him with a corner of the skin, once or twice, but this did not seem to suit. though i pitied the little fellow and was considerably annoyed by his performances i could not help laughing at him he persisted in nibbling at my hair licking my nose and pouring my face with his hoofs which though small were by no means soft though he was undoubtedly hungry i cannot detect either the hunger note or that of fear in any of his four or five distinct baby cries i have personally always worked under such circumstances that a caping of a bows and captive even temporarily was not feasible. Several of my Eskimos had, however, kept calves for varying periods. They all agreed on their docility. One of the Eskimos, Ilan, captured two, which had the following history. He kept the minnie's camp for about half a year until all the dogs of the neighbourhood recognised and became friendly with the two calves.

He then sold them to a whaling captain, who had them tethered on shore, unprotected while the sailors went aboard ship. ship. While so tied, the cows were attacked by strange dogs and one of them was killed. The other was taken to San Francisco and later I believe sent New York where it became one of the animals observed by Dr. W. T. Hornaday. In Bronx Park, New York, some other boys have lived as long as seven years. Dr. Horner Day says that certain of them have become extremely vicious. When one remembers that in Thurological Gardens, animals are kept in little stock-hated enclosures, viciousness does not seem a strange result for almost any animal. It is my opinion that it reared and treated its barn-owned cattle, of boars would be as gentle as

gentle as chival as sheep. It is well known, however, that neither the Jersey bull nor the domestic ram is an animal of a particularly gentle disposition, and we may suppose for argument's sake that ofy-boats would become equally untractable with age. Texas longhorn bulls and various other varieties of cattle, even including Jersey pools, are agile animals, aren't with sharp horns and therefore extremely dangerous when vicious. Other balls, if equally vicious, would not be nearly so dangerous. Through their clumsy inanity they cannot run so fast, nor are their horns as well shaped

for inflicting deadly injury. we remember that hundreds of thousands of wild cattle have been handled in various countries every year with few casualties, it is easy to see that even should the adult operables prove to have the vilest of temperers, the problem of handling will not be as serious as similar problems that are being solved day by day with range cattle. As stated above, terrible calves born in captivity and brought up with reindeer become as tame as reindeer, which means that they are as tame as sheep. It is therefore probable that oviboules born in captivity will be as tame as sheep. It is certain that no matter how vicious they may be, they can be handled easily.

Avivables will be domesticated whenever a well-considered attempt to do so is made. A difficulty that is merely apparent is a question of whether they will breed in captivity. There will be no captivity in the ordinary sense of that word. Alibovables have not the intelligence to realize that they are the property of men, nor will they themselves know whether they are wild or domestic if they are feeding upon rangers where human beings rarely seen. To keep them extremely docile, it will doubtless be necessary to associate with them every day. But if it were found that such continuous association interfered at all with their breeding habits, they could be left alone as our range cattle commonly used to be for months at a time, at even half a year.

In Melville Island we associated with the wild herds so intimately they might as well have been our property. To you for instance the case of a herd observed in the autumn of 1916 near our winter camp at Lidon Gulf. My chief assistant, Stokrizen, said to me one morning that he thought the supply of meat for winter was not adequate and suggested that we butcher herd of about 40 ovibals which we could see feeding some seven or eight miles away. I approved for this and he took several of the men with him. They killed the herd and spent that day and the next morning in skinning the animals and getting the meat ready. On their way home, from the kill, they ran into a smaller herd which was about halfway.

Had we seen them sooner, they would probably have been the herd killed, but now we had no use for them. The men were passing with several dog teams and the dogs commenced barking and struggling to get at the other balls but were restrained. This noise and confusion alarmed the animals enough, so they took a defensive formation and remained in their position for a little while or until the men and dogs had disappeared beyond their sight and hearing. They then resumed their feeding on the identical spot.

During the following several days, the men engaged in fretting home the meat frequently passed this band, which on some occasions was only 50 or 100 yards away from the sled trail, and on others perhaps three or four hundred yards. On the first few occasions they took defensive formations and stood still while the cavalcade of men and dogs was passing. Later the dogs got so used to them that they ceased barking and struggling and pulled quietly on their loads. There was a corresponding quietness in the Overbos herd due partially to their getting used to

us and partially to their being no longer a great row made when we were in their vicinity. Eventually they ceased entirely to pay attention. I doubt that they even glanced at us as we passed. They kept feeding in that locality for several weeks, until their slow progress brought them to a rocky and barren ridge, whereupon they made a march across it one day, and the next morning were not in sight. When animals called wild behaved so, it is absurd to suppose they're being owned on private or government ranges

would interfere seriously with that rate of multiplying. I do not know how fast they breed. It seems likely that the first calf is born when the mother is two or three years old and that she has a calf a year for about the same number of years as to our cattle. This is merely an inference from the fact that it takes them about as long to grow to maturity as it does our domestic cattle. The strangest thing about the ovibals, and one difficult to reconcile with our theories,

is that the period at which the calves are born does not correspond with the seasons in Melville Island. We cannot speak very differently, but there appear to be six or eight weeks in the spring between the birth of the earliest and the latest calves. The earliest calves are born while the weather is extremely cold. We have observed many cows that obviously have had cars no longer have them by midsummer. It is possible that some of these calves have been killed by wolves, but I think more likely that they have been frozen to death within a few hours of birth because they've been born too early in the season, and that the calves that do survive are those of late birth.

There is considerable difference in the size of the surviving calves, so that a few of the early ones appear to live through. They are so well-ferred when born and they are naturally safe from freezing, and they live long enough for their hair to become dry. Under domestication, this irregularity in the breeding habits of ovables can be easily controlled and will be a source and no difficulty, although it now appears to be the main cause that keeps down their numbers in districts where they are not hunted by man.

In the letter to Colonel Roosevelt, I enclosed a sample of Overepaw's wool with the information then available, which was to this effect. Most of the animal's body is covered with long, straggling hairs which should not appear to shed any more than a horse shed its mane or tail. In the roots of this strangling hair grows the wool. This is not conspicuous on commercial skins, but as we occasionally find as lepropes or ruse, because the furrier prefers skins that have been cured in early autumn before the wool develops.

Any that come on the market with large quantities of wool are curried, and where little remains is hidden in the roots of the hair. In life, the wool is inconspicuous until early autumn. During the winter it gradually develops, until towards spring, overbows resembles as sheep, and especially when viewed from above. In April and May, this wool loosens in its shed, and the animals are frequently seen in the animals. are frequently seen dragging along so much wall that appears like a curtain on either side of them, hiding the legs in a side view, and trails behind them for a yard or two as they walk. Under domestication it would appear simple to pluck or curry this wool somewhat, as it used to be the custom in Iceland to curry instead of shearing sheep.

In the cutting process, a few of the long hairs will come out with a wall and be mixed with it, which will be a disadvantage for some uses, although a possible to advantage of the for others. Shearing over bowls has two principal difficulties, the seriousness of neither of which can as yet be properly estimated. One is that the hair will all be removed no less than the wall, which may interfere with the quality of the wall, and may also, for we know, be a disadvantage with relation to the next-use crop of wool, for the hair probably does not grow as fast as the wall. Secondly, it appears possible that clothes shearing may be failed to the animals if a period of severe weather follows while they are as yet insufficiently protected

by the new coat. It occurs to one to consider whether ovibos would thrive in southern latitudes. This is an interesting problem, but the interest is in the main academic. We already have such domestic animals as sheep and cattle that are very well suited to our needs and to cultivation in southern lands. The great importance of the ovibos is that they are northerly animals, capable of converting into meat and more the unbelievable quantities of grass that grow in Arctic and subarctic lands. Cattle and sheep could be raised in the Arctic, but it would not pay because the season when stabling is necessary would be long. In other bowls we have, however, an animal which, like the reindeer, needs no barn to shelter it, no hay to feed it, and which is as native to the most northerly lands as any animal can be to any climate.

Summing up their characteristics further, our bulls are better than cattle because in addition to meat, they supply wool. They are better than sheep because in addition to supplying wool, they are several times as large. They have the advantage over any of our grazing domestic animals in that they defend themselves against wolves, are naturally disinclient to roam, a probably docile in disposition, and even vicious are too clumsy to be as dangerous as a bull or a stallion. On the basis of an outline such as the above, I appeal to co-reesome. Colonel Roosevelt and to the other eminent men to whom I sent duplicates of the letter for assistance in a movement which I thought would be of great importance to the world as a whole and of special importance to those countries that have northerly possessions. United States, Alaska, Canada, Denmark, Greenland, and Russia, Siberia.

I received the following characteristic reply. New York, March 23, 1918. My dear Mr. Stevenson, today I received your letter of a letter of, of May 17th, 1916 and February 9th, 1917. I haven't the faintest idea of whether this letter would reach you or not, but I must like to tell you how greatly I appreciate hearing from you, and I'll hardly admire the wonderful work you have done. Now, as regards the muscocks, I most empathetically wish your approach it well,

not merely as regards this war, but as regards to the future of the country. Our domestic animals are merely those of Asia, because it was in Asia that civilization first arose, and in consequence, as it penetrated in other continents, men found it either to use the animals already tamed, then to tame new ones. The llama of the Andes is almost the only exception. It is a capital misfortune that the African land has not been tamed. It is a capital misfortune that the muscocks has not been tamed. To tame it would mean possibilities of civilization in northmost America, which are now utterly lacking.

With hearty good wishes, faithfully yours, signed, Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Viljama Stevenson, Haravard Club, New York City. With regard to bringing the ovibals as a domestic animal to the attention of the Danes, I took advantage in the fall of 1918 of the visit to the United States of Prince Axel of Denmark. I placed the case before him with reference to Greenland on a day's outing when I was his fellow guest on a fishing trip, not being intimately acquainted with royalty, and supposing the case. that they may have many distractions. I thought the prince might possibly forget. I learned from him that he expected to see Colonel Roosevelt on his way to Europe, so I wrote the Colonel asking him to remind the Prince upon occasion, whereupon he wrote to me as follows. New York, October 28th,

1918. My dear Mr. Stevenson, I do not know that I shall see Prince Axel, but I shall certainly do all I can to back up the Muskox project. do see him. If I can't do anything with the Canadian government or with our own, please command me. Faithfully yours, side, Theodore Roosevelt. I had only one conversation with Colonel Roosevelt on the subject of the domestication of Overebos, and that amounted to little beyond his saying that he was anxious to discuss the matter fully and make plans for action as soon as the political campaign was over. Before it was over, he died. Since the proposal to domesticate Overeaux was originally made there, come to hand no considerable amount of valuable information with regard to anything except

the wall. From overwall skins which were brought south by expedition, Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-18, and from others belonging to Captain Henry Tocumann, who has a trading station in northern Baffin Island. We were able to get together 50 or 60 pounds of wall. Some was worked by hand into socks and mittens in the ordinary old-fashioned way, but this yielded little definite information from the commercial point of view. Secretaries Lane and Redfield, then members of President Wilson's cabinet, became interested and a small sample was submitted through them to the United States Bureau of Standards, but their report was inconclusive.

Certain Canadian manufacturers of woolen clothes undertook to have the wool tested and received considerable quantities of it, but apparently we're not really interested, or else did not have the proper facilities for so far, as I know, this has not as yet come to anything. The wool secured from Captain Martin, about £40, was handed over to Professor Alfred F. Barker, head of the Textiles Department of Leeds University. Through a period of months, he has conducted experiments of all sorts. The full report is not as yet available, but we are already able to say that the heat-retaining qualities of overall's wool seem to be at least as good as the best domestic-shaped product.

The will will take dye readily. Its soft, native brown, is at present very fashionable color and seems therefore suitable, but it can be bleached to pure white inexpensively by processes already in use. The clothing can be woven by machinery used for ordinary wool. No special machinery or invention is necessary for separating the long hairs from the wall when such separation is desired. For certain purposes it is an advantage to have the hair mixed with the wool. The hair separated from the wool would be, of some value as a byproduct. The pure wool fabric will have approximately the softness of cashmere and what many will consider important, but cloth will not shrink, even when washed in hot water and rubbed. Professor Barker once said understood that these statements are, for the present, tentative, and may have to be modified to some slight extent. On the other hand, it may also occur that some of the favorable statements can be made more empathetic when

the full information is available. With regard to the quantity of wool, No information is available beyond the observation of Dr. W.T. Hornaday, who has had several oviboles under his care in the New York zoological garden at various times. Apparently the wool was never weighed, animal by animal, but it seems safe to say that the quantity per animal is greater than that of the domestic sheep, taken by the weight of the cleaned product. But although, as said above, we have no important new information about the ovaboles since I wrote my letter to Colonel Roosevelt, we have at least accumulated abundant evidence to confirm

all the main points there set down. This is chiefly the result of official investigation by the Canadian government as to the north as a suitable place for herds of domestic ofoboes and of them as animals suitable for domestication as explained elsewhere in this book. End of Section 6 Section 7 Of the Northward Course of Empire By Bivliama Stephenson

This is a Libravox according or Librevox according to the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit Librevox.org Recorded by Leon Harvey Chapter 7 Transpolar commerce by air A glance at a map of the northern hemisphere

shows that the Arctic Ocean Is in effect a huge Mediterranean It lies between its surrender mountain continents somewhat as the Mediterranean lies between Europe and Africa. It has in the past been looked upon as an impassable Mediterranean. In the near future it will not only become passable but will become a favoured route, at least at certain times of year, safer, more comfortable and much shorter than any other air route that lies over the oceans that separate the present-day centres of population.

We shall soon be booking our passage from New York to Liverpool by Dutjavall or Plain, plane or some other form of aircraft in as matter of course away as we now book our passage by steamer. Our estimates differ as to how far in the future that period lies, according to our temperaments. When Tennyson spoke of aerial navies grappling in the central blue, it was a poet and a prophet, for no inventions were then available, the mere development of which could make such dreams a reality. When we now speak of the coming trans-oceanic commerce, we are no longer profits, how we are merely considering the daily and yearly increase in efficiency of inventions which we already have.

The thought is, however, in the back of our minds, that in addition to such increasing perfection of known instruments, we shall eventually have also entirely new devices that are at present as much in the future, as were even the crudest approaches to an aerial navy in the time of Tennyson. Although our estimates of when trans-oceanic passenger and mail service by air shall no longer be a novelty differ according to our temperaments, they vary only between years in the vision of the optimist and decades in the gloomy review of the pessimist. In five months, say the enthusiastic commentators on the news dispatchers of the day, the Zeppelin Company will have a regular service during Spain and South America. In five years, such things will come, say,

those who occupy what is not far from the middle road. In 50 years, said Mr. Balfour, the other day at Washington, but whenever that time comes there will be in England, not only those who desire to book passage by air for New York, but also others who have pressing affairs awaiting them in Tokyo. Then will arise a choice of routes, and there is no doubt that in the summer season, at least it will be thought an absurdity for those in a hurry to go from England to Japan by way of either New York or Montreal. They will fly over the North Polar Ocean. There are a few nowadays who do not agree that the world is round,

but there are almost equally few who apply their principle of the world's rounds consistently when they think about going from place to place. The polar ocean has so long been a barrier than when we consider transport from Europe to America, for America to Asia, we think only in terms of eastern west. indeed we speak of the near and the far east. Since the days of McGillan, it has been a commonplace that you can go east by sailing west.

It is about to become an equal commonplace that you can go east by flying north. In Europe, the days of Columbus and McGillan were days of intellectual renaissance. People are not generally known even that the world was around, but when the not of view was present to them, they drew it wrong at all its proper conclusions. One of the most fruitful of these was that you could reach China not only by sailing west, but also by sailing north, and it was soon realized that their shortest road from Europe to China was a northerly one. In navigation we call this the principle of Great Circle sailing, but in certain places lands barred the way of the navigator, and everywhere, the frozen ocean

was barred as ships of that day, which were not only imperfect from our modern point of view, but also manned by sailors who inspired about courage and resource were products of the South and novices in the strange seas around the pole. There was failure after failure of great expeditions until finally it was agreed

that although a northwest passage was possible as shown 75 years ago by the work of the series of expeditions known as the Franklin's search it was not a practical route and that neither time nor expense could be saved by using it. Even before the days of the sewers in the Panama Canals, it was cheaper and safer to sail round the Horn or the Cape of Good Home than to navigate the Northwest Passage around America or the northeast passage around Asia.

Although the difficulty of making these northerly voyages is, in the public mind, grossly exaggerated, the fact remains that for surface craft, they really are not practical routes from the commercial point of view. The thing that makes either the northwest passage or the northeast passage impractical is the ice floating upon an ocean. It is not a continuous layer of ice. There are instead almost infinite numbers of cakes varying as to surface area and thickness and continually drifting about before the wind and current. Even in midwinter, the greatest size of these flows is not over 50 miles in diameter,

or an average thickness of more than 4 to 6 feet. Admiral Piri made the estimate, with which most observers have agreed, that even in the period of the intensest winter, cold about 25% of the surface of the polar ocean is either open water or ice so thin than a man could not walk on it. Plumbing through such thin ice, a powerful ship would lose only from 10 to 25% of its speed. As weather becomes warmer towards spring, the percentage of open water in the polar ocean increases,

and it is probable that at midsummer, considerably more than half the surface area, is free from ice. At that period also, the biggest ice cakes are far smaller than in midwinter. It may be considered certainty that in July no ice field in the Arctic is 50 miles in its least diameter. I doubt that even the greatest diagonal of any cake would be that much. Although realizing the applicability of both aircraft and submarines to commerce and warfare in our own latitudes, We have not adequately realised their significance in solving after 400 years the problem of the Northwest Passage and giving us at least a short route from Europe to the Far East. Whether it be in five years or in 50 years, that a real trans-oceanic commerce in tropical and temperate latitudes becomes a commonplace, transpolar commerce, will then be equally common for at least the summer months. At present, passenger liners crossing the Atlantic have winter routes that differ sometimes

by several hundred miles from their summer routes. Aircraft will doubtless be even more free in their variations of route according to season. Indeed, it is probable that the weather bureaus, which will then have multiplied by at least ten, their present great importance to commerce, will publish daily or several times a day maps of the air routes, the information of which will be conveyed by wireless messages to the commanders of aircraft, enabling them to vary from hour to hour the courses they steer as to latitude and longitude and altitude. With the sailor on the ocean it is, outside of the trade wind belt, almost a matter of accident, whether the winds blow him fair or foul. In the air there may be a fair wind, a certain distance up, and a headwind either higher or lower, and the airman may change his wind from fair to foul by raising or lowering his craft.

his craft. It is therefore impossible to say now just where the trans-polar air routes will lie, and indeed they will probably always vary from day-to-day. But wherever they lie, they are sure to be advantageous commercially unpopular with passengers, at least during the season corresponding to that in which the tourist of today sails to Alaska or Norway or Spitzbergen to see the midnight sun. For the coming popularity of the trans-polar air routes, there are at least five main reasons. We shall in the first instance consider these in their relation to the needs of a passenger who wants to go from England to Japan. Advantage 1

The most practical route of the recent past between England and Japan has led by way of ocean steamers to Montreal, the Canadian Railways to Vancouver, and then by the Northly route along the Aleutian Islands to Japan. The length of this route is given by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, which covers it all either by steamer or rail, at 9000. 9,928.8 miles from Liverpool to Yokohama. For the distance from a railway terminus at the north of Great Britain to the north end of Japan proper, where a railway travel could be again resumed by its air route only 6,500 miles. To a man in a hurry, whether for personal transportation or the transportation of urgent dispatchers, a saving of half the distance, meaning also a saving of half the time, will in some cases be extremely in

But the route has other advantages, which in some cases may be even more attractive than saving a distance in time. Advantage 2. It is said that helium is for dutables a gas much preferable to hydrogen, not only because it will not explode, but also because it does not expand rapidly with heat. However, helium is at present exceedingly rare, so rare indeed that even were the costiness of it no consideration. We are at a lost sea how any considerable number

of diribles could be operated with that gas. Furthermore, there are many countries which are not known to contain any sources of helium, and while the United States and Canada are considered to be fortunate in possessing helium resources, other countries have by that much a great reason to fill themselves handicapped by certain undesirable qualities of the hydrogen. They must perforce use for digitables. Hydrogen expands or contracts not so much under the influence of heat as registered by thermometers at the earth's servants, as through the direct production of heat within the gas bag itself, when the rays of the morning sun strike it. Paint the bag's silver or any colour you will. The amount of heat locally generated by the sun's rays

is very great. The hydrogen expands, and you can avoid a bursting in the bag only by allowing it to escape. This is the chief factor which limits the length of balloon voyages. A certain amount of gas must be allowed to escape each day and reciprocably a certain amount of ballast has to be thrown out each night to prevent the balloon or durable from settling to earth. But this alteration of day and night which seems a necessary evil to those habituated to southern latitudes is not a factor in the polar regions, whether in midwinter or midsummer. We shall not, for the present, consider winter voyages. With relation to summer journeys, the speed of the dirigible that has all done.

already crossed the Atlantic, was great enough so that, had it started north from Scotland with a full supply of hydrogen just after a spring or summer sunrise, it could have reached the area of perpetual daylight near Iceland in 15 or 20 hours. This means that such a durable would not be overtaken by darkness at all in the beginning of its drip, and would meet the darkness only after crossing the polar area and penetrating well into Asia. On the major portion of the voyage from England to Japan, there would, according to the be no great expansion or contraction of hydrogen, no considerable loss of buoyancy or necessity

of for throwing out ballast, giving not only an increased cruising odious to the dutable, but also an increased freight carrying capacity. Advantage 3. In air voyages, no less than sea voyages, things would doubtless occasionally go wrong. This brings us to another great advantage of the northern route. If you get into trouble, you would rather that had happened in daylight than in darkness. and whatever difficulties you might encounter you could more readily meet through this reason on the northern route than on any other. In stories of sea tragedies that have overtaken passenger liners a night,

the stoppage of the engines, the failure of the light plants, and the plunging of the whole ship into inky darkness is often the most terrifying feature. Just when a crisis brings the need of swift and potent action, every effort is thwarted because no man can see what you do or what others are doing. Under the perpetual sun of the polar summer, we shall always be free from at least this attribute of southern tragedy.

Advantage four. If the accident that befalls the dutable is an explosion of gas, the case is well-nigh hopeless whatever the location, as has recently been only too clearly shown by the dreadful wreck of the CR2 over a populous city in England. But where the difficulty is a minor one, SOS signals can be sent out while the gas bag is gradually descending. On the polar route, although the surface of the sea may not be more than half covered by substantial cakes of ice,

there would be a reasonable certainty of landing on one of them. Where there are forced landing in open water, it would presumably not be more than a few miles to the nearest ice-floo, which could be reached by such life rafts or other devices as a dutable would naturally carry on trans-oceanic voye. in all latitudes. It may be said that it would not be any fun to be forced to land on an ice island, but it would be a great deal more fun than having to land among tumbling and breaking seas in the mid-Atlantic. One effect of the presence of ice upon the ocean in the vicinity is that even in a gale there are no heavy seas. Indeed, if the ice is abundant, no swell as noseful in the heaviest gale,

and the waves and the patches of open water only such as one may find on the sea on the sea. may find on a pond or a small lake. If SOS cores containing, as they always do, position as to latitude and longitude, are sent out while the dutribal is descending to the ice sway immediately after the landing, the party would have days or weeks through even months for opportunities of rescue. It is said by some of the enthusiastic advocates of transatlantic air travel that we shall eventually have in mid-Atlantic huge rafts, floating islands in effect, there will be rescue stations for aircraft in distress.

While that idea may not be impractical, it will at least be difficult and expensive. On the polar route, nature has already provided a sprinkling of these rafts far greater in number and far more stable than any such artificial rafts can ever be expected to be. Advantage 5 The last to be enumerated of the advantages of the trans-polar summer air road may be spoken of as the tourist value of the perpetual daylight. The midnight sun now draws people every summer to the north in ships. When air travel becomes popular, the midnight sun will still have its attraction for that sort of person and will be one of the talking points in selling transportation over the

northern route. The trans-polar route will soon become more important decade by decade. In Siberia, practically speaking, we have as yet only one great trunk railway. It does, however, tap and make accessible many of the huge rivers that flow north and there are great steamers on these rivers that make the Arctic locally accessible. The Trans-Siberian Railway runs in large path through the Wheat Belt of Asia, and the potential serial belt extends far north of it. We shall accordingly have eventually the development of other great east and west railways,

and many spurs running north and south. Tomask, Yakutsk, and the rest of the cities we have heard of, and many of which we have never heard, will be growing into Chicago's, and Winnipegs and Calgary's. The centres of civilised population in Siberia, and in Canada alike will be continually moving north, and there will be more and more occasion for the use of the polar route, a route that will never be directly of great importance to Rome or Buenos Aires or Hong Kong,

but a vast consequence to England and Japan, Norway and Russia, Siberia and Canada, and through them of indirect consequence, even to the tropical lands. To people little acquainted with the Arctic, as most of us are, and misinformed as nearly all of us are, there appear to be many difficulties to the polar route. Most of these do not exist. Indeed, where we imagine positive difficulties, there may in reality be positive advantages. Take, for instance, the matter of summer temperature.

We have all of us learned in school, the truth that per square mile per hour, there is more heat, received from the Sun at the Earth's equator than anywhere else. But in the minds of most of us the truth is only a half-truth and therefore the most dangerous sort of error. For we have commonly failed to grasp its interperative corollary that while each hour brings most heat to the equator, the hour is a summer sunshine increasing number as we go away from the equator. This would give a perfect balance if the hour is a sunlight per day increased proportionally as the heat per hour decreases. This is not the case. In midsummer, as you go north, the length of day increases more rapidly than the amount of heat per hour decreases.

So that although the heat per hour received at Winnipeg is less than it is in New Orleans, the amount of heat received per day is greater. But the difference between New Orleans and Winnipeg is not as great as that between Winnipeg and a place as far north of it as New Orleans is south. And no one will assert that New Orleans or Winnipeg is anywhere near the limit of human. of human habitability. For something like five weeks every summer, there is more heat per day received from the sun on a square mile at the top of the atmosphere at the North Pole than at the equator. There is, however, in many places in the remote north, a local refrigeration that tempers what otherwise would be unbearable heat.

The winters there are long, and under certain conditions a great deal of cold may be stored up. In the polar basin, we have an ocean thousands of miles across and thousands of features. deep and all the water during the long winter months is chilled to the vicinity of 30 degrees Fahrenheit above zero. There is also a certain amount of ice floating around on the surface and this size is approximately the same temperature as the water. This furniture is a huge store of cold to neutralize it, terrific downpour the summer's sun heat and it's probable that the air ten feet above the middle

of the polar ocean is seldom warmer even in July than 50 degrees or 55 degrees Fahrenheit above zero. Higher up it would be somewhat warmer and general flying conditions would be about the same over the polar regions in July as in France or England in late winter and early spring. But the conditions in the polar lands differ entirely from those of the polar seas. Furthermore, they may vary extremely for one land to another, whereas the polar seas in general have a uniform condition. Greenland is one extreme among the lands. A large part of it is kind of covered with ice, and you have, as in the ocean, a huge quantity of stored up cold to neutralize

the great heat of the summer sun. Still, it is a testimony of those who have travelled over the ice-capped in the Greenlanded midsummer, as it is the testimony of those who have spent the midsummer among the floating ice to the polar ocean, and the weather seems at times extremely hot. In the case, for instance, of Storkinson's party of my own expedition, who spent the summer of 1918 drifting on the sea ice between two and and 300 miles north of Alaska, and therefore 5 or 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the men frequently sit around outdoors, dressed only in cotton undershirts. The reason for not stripping to the skin was the fear of getting sunburnt,

or which there is even more danger on a snow surface than on the shimmering waters of lakes or oceans. But Greenland is a peculiar island, in that its great altitude enables it to store up a large amount of cold. In a few other northerly islands, there are glaciers of moderate size, France-Juos of Island, Spitzbergen, North Devon, and glaciers of intermediate size, such as there was mere island and Hayberg Island. But there are vast areas of polar lowlands where the little snow that falls in winter disappears like magic in the early spring, and where the sun beats down for month after month upon a soil clad with vegetation.

The Encyclopedia Britannicus says Patches of perpetual snow occur in eastern Siberia only on the mountains of the far north. If there are any patches of permanent snow places used on the lowlands of Arctic Siberia, they have not yet been discovered. It is certain that if any are discovered they will prove exceedingly small.

In other words, we can take it for certain that there is far less permanent ice and snow in the lowland of North Siberia than there is in the mountains of Mexico. In Arctic Canada, we have lowland everywhere, except in the Yukon, and on Arctic lowlands there are no glaciers. In the mountains of the Yukon, there are small glaciers, but by no means as large as those of Switzerland or of the state of Washington. In Siberia and Canada, there are, therefore, millions of square miles. Indeed, aggregate much larger than the whole United States, where there is no stored of cold to moderate the heat of the Arctic daylight, except the slight chill of the,

the frozen subsoil and is kept from having much effect on the air by insulation of writ of the cloak of vegetation. Accordingly, as explained more fully in Chapter 2, we find temperatures of 95 degrees in the shade more frequently on the Arctic prairies than in New York, although deaths from hate prostration are in that city not unknown. No thoughtful person will therefore suppose that transpolar air journeys will in summer be interfered with by low temperatures. From the principle that the sun pours down each summer day, more heat upon the polar regions than upon the equator, you deduce that summer travel will not be uncomfortable because of extreme cold. Neither will it be uncomfortable because of extreme heat, for that can always be regulated by rising into higher and cooler airstrata.

We further deduce that a downpour of heat upon the northern soil, when accompanied by sufficient rain, as it is, will cover the earth with a carpet of vegetation. This is true except when mountains are snow covered because of their altitude or where the ground is nearly solid rock, both of which conditions are rare. A landing on the polar prairie cannot therefore be supposed to be less pleasant than a landing in any other land except for two reasons, one of which is merely temporary, but the other which may prove to be permanent. The temporary difficulty will be that summer hotels and way stations, although we already find them in such islands as Switzerland and, far north the Arctic Circle, will nevertheless be more scattered than in other parts of the world. The permanent difficulty is the swarms of insect life that are bred in the swelter of the polar summer. A striking feature of northern topography is the great number of lakes of all sizes.

These are beautiful from a distance and will have their value in airplane travel, for upon them flying boats can land in summer, and on their smooth ice, airplanes equipped with skids can land in winter. But in the summer these lakes and their surrounding marshes breed denser swarms of insects, notably mosquitoes, they are found at any other part of the world. This condition is about at the worst on the Arctic Circle. As you go north from it, the fly pests are less and less obnoxious. In the polar islands, mosquitoes are not bad except on the larger ones, such as Victoria or Baffin, where the sun can generate extreme heat in districts remote

from the immediate influence of the ocean. The smaller islands are so called by the sea breezes that, in most of them, the insect life is a minor annoyance or absent. It is true that certain parts of the polar regions are given to summer fogs, but fogs lie low over the ocean, and presumably the duchables and airplanes would navigate in the clear sunlight above them. In our consideration of transpolar commerce, we come naturally to the matter of base stations where petroleum and food

and rescue aircraft corresponding to the coast-caught vessels of today will be kept in constant readiness. Many of these base stations may be supplied and will be supplied by railways by ocean steamers or by river steamers. A glance of the map of the polar air route from England to Japan shows that it requires no long jumps between places that are now reached with fair regularity by ocean ships or by river steamers. I am accessible in many of the seemingly remote fur trading outposts of Arctic Canada and Siberia, many of us failed to realize. The other day I was talking with an exceptionally well-informed man who had himself spent several years in polar regions in the northwest of Alaska. I was astounded to find that he supposed it would take a year to make a trip from New York to the mouth of the Mackenzie River by way of Winnie Peck at Edmonton, using no air vehicles but only railways and river steamers. As a matter of fact, it would take about 25 days from New York to the mouth of the Mackenzie and regular railway and steamboat tickets could be bought if not in New York, at least in Winnipeg.

Under normal peacetime conditions, a similar surprise would await those who desire to reach the north coast of Siberia by a journey from the Trans-Siberian Railway down one or another of the great north flowing Asiatic rivers. It goes about saying that when the airbag touches the north of Norway, or the North Pacific coast of Asia, the problem of supply is even simpler. The islands that dot the polar ocean will obviously become important relay stations on the various trans-polar routes. Of these, Spitzbergen is reachable by steamer at least six months every year, and in some

seasons it is reachable the whole year. Ice conditions can be reported day by day by wireless, and freighting steamers will always know whether they can reach Spitzbergen at any given time. Reaching France-Josef land is practical for a somewhat shorter period each year, and the navigation as far as Novoya Zimlia does not now look nearly as difficult as it used to, for the sailors of the allied of countries learned a great deal about these routes during the latter half of the World War, and its imagined difficulties at least no longer restrain us. On the American side of the polar ocean, Greenland and the Canadian islands are also far more reachable by ordinary steamer than is commonly imagined. The Gulf Stream makes the coasts of Iceland ice-free at all times, gives the island a winter climate which for all purposes of navigation may be considered to be the same as that of Scotland or New England. In rare seasons, the harbours of Portland, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts are frozen over and the same thing has occurred in certain harbours in northern Iceland, although both the north and Icelandic harbours and those of Maine are fairly enough considered as ice-free. But the Gulf stream that makes Iceland warm

As an almost opposite effect upon Greenland For it is responsible there for a heavy snowfall Along the east coast of Greenland There is commonly sweeping of southward current Bring sea ice from the north and icebergs That have been born in the great glaciers of eastern Greenland itself There is considerable uncertainty Therefore about ships reaching east Greenland ports

Even in midsummer But these difficulties will eventually be greatly lessened by a chain of wireless stations to give daily information for each harbor. It could seldom happen that all harbors are a long coast would be simultaneously jammed with moving ice. A few decades from now we shall probably have daily wireless bulletins showing that while such and such harbors are temporarily blocked, others are on those days open and accessible. This general removal of the element of chance, from ice navigation, by the work of the more perfect weather bureaus, will be next to the removal of fear based on ignorance the greatest single force in opening

up the polar regions to more and more extensive navigation by ordinary tramp steamers. The West Coast of Greenland is now considered to be, and probably really is more accessible than the East Coast. And vessels of the Royal Danish Trading Company go every year from station to station supplying the trading posts and reaching even places such as North Starr Bay and Cape York, which to reformally the northerly base stations of polar explorers. Baffin Island has for many decades been visited yearly by the trading ships of the Hudson Bay Company.

Captain Henry Tockeman has a trading station now near the north end of the island and reaches it whenever he likes with little difficulty. Ellesmere Island to the north would soon be the base of similar trading stations, entirely apart from any aircraft development. On the map, Melville Island looks exceedingly inaccessible, but the fact that of the many vessels that have tried to rigid, nearly every one has succeeded, although they were chiefly sailing vessels of the days antedating steam. In more recent years, steamers such as the Arctic of the Canadian AOL service have had

even less difficulty. Banks Island can be reached at least 19 years out of 20 by the ordinary whaling and trading vessels that for the last 40 years have been in the habit of going north from Burring streets and east past the northquess of Alaska to Herschel Island and Cape Bathersd. Another way of reaching Banks Island is by River Steamerestown, the Mackenzie, and local ships ploughing north-eastward from the Mackenzie's mouth. Herschel Island itself, at the northwestern corner of Canada, can always be relied on as a base station for airship supplies, as it has already been relied upon for four decades by the American whaler.

and the British trading companies. In Alaska, Point Barrow at the North tip has been reached by supply vessels every year during the last 40. Point Hope, on the northwest corner of Alaska is even more accessible, or regular ocean-going passenger steamers, of the type that crossed the Pacific by the more southerly routes, have the 20 years being plying between Seattle and Nome-Burring Sea. In northeastern Siberia, the conditions of accessibility are similar. Petrop Pavlovsk is a common rendezvous of traders, bearing straits are navigable every year, and ships are able, except occasionally under extraordinary conditions, to pass a will up the north coast,

as far at least as a mouth of the Collinia. 100 years ago, Baron Rangel, in Russian service as a polar explorer, passed down this river and found at its mouth an already ancient trading rendezvous, By spur railways from the Trans-Siberian trunk line, and then down the Columia, Lina, Yonesi, and Obie, supplies can be sent by river steamer to be trans-ship to the New Siberia Islands, where for a long time the Russians have maintained settlements dealing in the furs of animals now living and the ivory of the extinct elephants' mammoths. Thus we see that most the islands that now dot the polar maps can, with fair ease be reached by surface-going ships

wanting to deposit their petroleum and other supplies needed for the maintenance of way stations for aerial traffic. The newly discovered Emperor Nicholas II land north of the North Tipper, Siberia, and the islands discovered by the Canadian expedition under my command during the years 1913 to 1918, a more difficult of access by ordinary ships. It appears to me a fair presumption that Nicholas II land could be reached by ocean freighters only every other year on the average, and I doubt that the islands we discovered can be reached more than one year in ten by surface craft.

There will also be exceptional seasons where such islands as Renegal cannot be reached at all by tramp steamers, and many the Arctic islands are unreachable by surface ships during at least the winter and spring months. It is here that the coming era development will find an important adjunct in the submarine. It has commonly been said that the submarine will be a commercial carrier only in time of war because the expense of underwater

freighting is so much greater than that of freighting on the surface. Under conditions of peace it cannot compete with surface ships in ordinary waters, but it will have its usefulness when and where ice makes surface navigation uncertain, difficult or impossible. Those who have considered the submarine only from the point of view of a layman and even submarine experts who are unfamiliar with ice conditions, commonly assumed that ice on the ocean surface would be a menace and even a bar to submarine navigation. In the opinion of those who understand both ice conditions and the qualities of the submarine, this is so far from being the truth that some have gone

to the extreme of saying that the presence of ice is to the submarine actually an advantage. This means that had the Germans in the late war had the same motive for sending a commercial submarine to Japan, that they had for sending one to the United States, They could have done so easily and by a route recognized to be in length well within the cruising radius of a submarine. Of the two best-known American submarine inventors, Holladon Lake, Lake has devoted himself especially to the under ice type. Before the World War, the Tsar's government had paid some attention to his activities and extensive trials had been made, which are fully recorded in Lake's writings on the commercial submarine. Those who suppose that the summer rate would find great difficulty in polar waters

are often led to that belief by direct misinformation as to conditions there. It is commonly supposed, for instance, that icebergs are found in the polar ocean. This is not a fact. In night winters spent north of the Arctic Circle travelling much of the time over sea ice, Admiral Perry saw no icebergs. In the ten years of similar northern travel, I have seen none. Nansen reports none from his extensive journeys to the north of Spitsbergen and France-Joseph land. Indeed we are reasonably certain that there are no icebergs anywhere in the ocean between France-Joseph land and Spitzbergen on the European side and the mainland of Siberia, on the opposite side of the great northern Mediterranean.

If there are dangers connected with icebergs, such dangers will be met in the North Atlantic during the part of the transpolar voyage, when the submarine is streaming along the sea. the surface as like any ocean-going ship. These would then be only the identical dangers which the Scotch and Norwegian whalers had been meeting successfully and without concern for centuries, at which the tourist ships are now meeting every summer on the Spigsburgan route. In that part of the polar ocean, which is supposed to be difficult, the iceberg part of the difficulty is purely imaginary.

Another worry of those who have not looked closely into polar conditions is that even the regular sea ice may project so deep into the water that it will be amiss to submarines. Here again my own experience agrees exactly with that of Admiral Peary, who said that he had never seen a cake of ice aground in more than 20 fathoms. In other words, the most massive piling up of ice when it has been broken by pressure will never create a ridge that projects more than 120 feet below the surface of the water. It is true from the point of view of physicists, that the earth, ice cake of symmetrical shape floats in fresh water something like six-seven submerged.

From this people have only estimated that an ice pressure ridge which has its highest pinnacles, say 80 feet above the water, will have its lowest projections four or 500 feet below the surface. This is not the case because these ridges are pyramid-shaped, the massive base of the pyramid being underwater and the comparatively slender apex above it. today navigate comfortably between 180 and 200 feet below the surface which gives a safety zone of 60 to 80 feet between them and the ice above. Half this margin would be ample.

The submarines are not going to collide with ice while submerged. Through my knowledge of polar conditions I have long known that the danger of this is negligible, but it was only in some recent discussions with summary friends that I learned they did not worry at all about underwater conditions with ice. I was told that the submarines, now in actual use by the British Navy, do not fear colliding at a speed of, say, 4 miles an hour with sunken wrecks of ships. Obviously, there would be no greater danger in colliding with submerged ice. Furthermore, Simon Lake has invented a shock absorber for head-on contact and has also developed a device that makes the submarine almost inevitably strike a glancing blow at any obstruction of mates, and rise or dive rather than come to an abrupt standstill with a shock.

Popularly, the frozen ocean is opposed to be more frozen than it really is. The observations of Nansen and others have shown that, by actual freezing, sea ice never becomes more than seven feet thick. This means that the average thickness in water is much less than seven feet, and in summer less again. We have already said that ice flows are probably never in summer. never in summer as much as 50 miles in diameter. Underwater a submarine can for a limited time maintain a good speed of say 10 knots, but at the much more economical speed of 5 knots, a submerged journey of 50 miles is ordinarily and one of 200 miles not impossible even at the present day stage of construction. This gives ample leeway for diving and passing entirely

under the biggest piece of ice coming up in free water and not. the other side. It may be objected that from below is difficult to tell before rising whether you are going to rise in free water or under an ice cake. This is true, but the consequences are not serious. There is no danger of injuring the boat by rising against ice that is above it. The rise can be made very slowly and naturally under ice boats will have no coning tower or other upward projection subject to inquiry. Indeed certain boats designed by Simon Lake carrier sorted to bobbin on their backs, so that when they rise against the ice they can steam ahead, siding along its under surface somewhat as a fly crawls on a ceiling,

until finally the margin of the flows shall be reached when the boat will bob up into the open. Even apart from this, the boat can rise and dive. Rise and dive as a whale does, going down each time it fails and trying again a few hundred yards ahead. Furthermore, there are at least three ways of coming to the surface through ice. One would be to leave behind a depth bomb, go off to a safe distance, exploded and come back to the place where the ice had been all broken up. A second way, for which there is a painted intervention, is to rise against the ice and drill a hole upward for men to step out.

This has been actually done through river ice in winter. A third and simpler way is to carry on the deck of the submarine and electric coil When the boat rests against the ice, a current could be passed with a coil heating it as bread, toasters are heated on our breakfast tables, melting away upward for the boat. This principle has for decades been in actual use in gold mining in such countries as Alaska, where the mines thaw their way down, as here we would thaw our way up. The miners have to deal with frozen mud, which is much more difficult to thaw than plain ice, and the problem of the submarine would therefore be comparatively simple. It is to be remembered that by sliding along the under surface for half a mile or so, the submarine would almost certainly find a place where the ice would be less than three feet thick, for in summer three feet will be more than its average thickness. Although I have been considering the possibility of polar exploration by submarines for the last four years, as mentioned by Admiral Piri in his speech when he discussed my work before the National Geographic Society on January 10, 1919, C. National Geographic magazine for April 1920, I was surprised to learn the other day

that the submarines of the Allies had actually been using against ice, the devices which, during the war, they had on their bells for cutting through steel nets laid by the Germans. It appears that in effect this is a solid steel bow, corresponding to the steel bows carried by whaling and other ice-fighting ships. With it, they have already had experienced through north of Archangel in charging a full speed into ice and they have found not only that the vessel can cut the ice and steam through it if it is not more than a foot in thickness but also that neither of the bow nor any part undergoes injury through this buffeting. When we recall that these submarines were not

made for dealing with ice and are nevertheless adequate for doing so it becomes evident that others designed for polar voyages would be even more competent if made for that purpose now, and still more competent in the future when experience shall have shown us what modifications to the present type of advantageous. The most experienced submarine man, with whom I have so far taught, was one who operated at times among ice to the north of Archangel during the war. He proposed a method of rising up through ice more spectacular than any that I conceived, but which he considered safe. The submarine he commanded, had a bow fortified with a regular steel net cutter.

His suggestion was that the boat should seek its greatest practical death, say 200 feet below the surface. He should then assume an angle of 30 or 45 degrees and charge upward with a double-speed attaining by combining the forward thrust of the propeller with the acceleration obtainable by rapidly increasing the buoyancy of the boat, so that it should fly upward, somewhat as a cork does, when released in water. The boat would then reach the surface with a velocity of perhaps 15 or 20 miles per hour, which would give a sufficient blow to break ice of more than average thickness, especially in summer when it's moderately rotten.

Many have noted as Shakespeare did, the fact that we dread unusual dangers and except with equanimity, those to which we are accustomed. Because each one of us dies but once, it would seem as so that we could get used to dying, Still, that is what it amounts to. Millions are dying around us from tuberculosis, tens of thousands by cancer,

and thousands by being run over by motor vehicles. We are so used to having people die from these and other well-known causes that the danger of our also dying in that way doesn't bother us much. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the greater the danger of our dying in a certain way that lets we worry over that cause of death. An instance in that direction is that we worry more about lightning which kills dozens than we do

about tuberculosis which kills millions We are nowadays getting so used to airmen dashing themselves to pulp against the ground And we are still so strange to death By submarine accident that we can count On almost anyone saying They would a good deal rather Cross the Polar Ocean by air than underwater

The facts show That the danger in the air is greater but still we shall accept as a rapidly approaching condition trans-oceanic air travel, be the ocean, the Atlantic, Indian Pacific, or, now that we understand it, the Arctic. Our unaccustomed minds shrink from the far safer and easier submarine transverse. So as to want to state the case greatly, we shall say that the danger of polar voyages in ships, such as those of Peri or Nansen, is still greater than that of polar voyages by submarine, Still further understating the case, we can say that the voyages of Columbus and

inland were made in ships which did not meet the dangers of the ocean's surface nearly so well as a submarine now meets the underwater dangers. If we then think back to the voyages by the Phoenicians north on the coast of Europe and to the voyages of the Norsemen across the Atlantic a thousand years ago, we shall see that the first transpolar voyage by submarine would be a far-saver undertaking, then hundreds of thousands of surface voyages across various seas have been during the last 3,000 years. The present point in discussing the adaptability of the submarine to underrise voyaging is that whenever the air routes

become of wide importance, the submarine will be an auxiliary, or more particularly, a factor of safety in supplying the various polar islands with petroleum and whatever goods are needed from year to year. Suppose, for instance, that in a certain year, wrangor island could not be reached by ordinary sea-going ships. The distance from norm to Rangel Island would be at least half of its surface journey. It would require only one dive of about 250 miles or several shorter dives through each depot at Rogers Harbour. In summer, that harbour will naturally be open,

in which it could be kept open artificially, exactly as such harbours in northern countries, now kept open for the use of ferry boats and other craft. Even where there are a continuous layer of ice for 200 miles around Rangel Island, as it never would be, The submarine could dive at the other margin of the ice and come up in the harbour thus artificially kept open. Freighting by submarine is far more expensive than that by service ships,

and as we have said above, it has been assumed, therefore, that they would be used as freighters only in time of war. But if any islands such as Wrangell, as ice-bound and yet has to be reached, there are only two routes open, the air above the ice and the water under it. Yet the submarine is a more expensive freighter than the surface ship, it is at least far more economical than the swift airplane or dutraple. Hence its coming value as an adjutant to them, not only in the actual polar regions, but also in districts such as Hudson Bay or the currency, where surface freighters can travel only half the year. The question of navigation as applied as a submarine may seem difficult, but really is not. As Eeyara constituted at present, submarines that have to travel underwater would rise that be 50 or 70 miles to charge their batteries afresh.

At these risings, they would take the ordinary astronomical observations that guide ships at sea. The practical sailor knows that the sounding lead is, in the vicinity of land, an even more valuable instrument than the sixthant. Sailors go not only by the depth, but also by the sandy or other character of the bottom sample as brought up by the sounding machine. Right now submarines take soundings as they travel with the same ease as to surface ships. They carry also gyroscopic and other compasses and their officers have the same training in making dead reckoning that do those of service craft.

For the vicinity of the vicinity they would naturally carry charts showing very carefully the contours of the ocean bottom. In most places there would be channels and ridges by which the sun raids could locate themselves to grope into port under water, just as service ships are now every day groping their way into port under blankets of fog. As said, we may estimate of five years or at fifty years the time when trans-oceanic commerce shall be in everyday matter. There are few who think that time will never come.

Accordingly, most of us will get a wider view of the commercial political and military future of the world when we realize that the airplane. and the submarine are about to turn the polar ocean into the Mediterranean, and about to make England and Japan, Norway and Alaska, neighbors across the northern sea. Notes on Transpolar routes. As already mentioned in this book, the population centers of today are not as northerly as they will be within a few decades. The transpolar routes will therefore be of continually increasing importance.

As the serial belts of Middle Canada and Middle Siberia are an increased cultivated, great cities will grow up. We have their beginning already. 30 years ago, Edmonton, for instance, was a village. Today it is a city of 60,000 inhabitants. The oil fields of the Lower McKenzie, where the Standard Oil Company already has extensive operations, and the Copper District north of Great Bear Lake hold a definite promise of commercial centres. It may be of little beyond academic interest this year that the air route from the Northern Railway Terminus on the Athabasca River north Edmondon to Archangel in northern Russia is only 3,300 miles, but over 7,000 by any route now available. But as the railway continues to push its way northward

through Canada, this wealth will rapidly gain in importance. With the idea in mind that conditions for summer flying are more favorable over the polar regions than at most other parts of the world. The reader will see from the polar map at the back of this volume, at the routes indicated thereon are but a few, and perhaps not in the most promising, off the airways of the future. A disadvantage of the shortest possible route from England to Tokyo is that it is not sufficiently northy to give the maximum amount of daylight, for it is only about half the journey that lies north of the Arctic Circle. To get a greater benefit from the perpetual daylight of the Arctic summer, a route might be laid from Scotland to the east tip of Iceland, thence by way of Jan Mayan Island.

next the summer hotel already established in Spitsbergen, then France Joseph Land, Emperor Nicholas the Second Land, or Cape Chiluskin, and thence overland to Japan. This route is only slightly longer than the shortest possible route, but is 3,500 miles shorter than the route to Japan from England by way of Montreal, and 2,000 miles shorter than the route from England to Japan by way of the new Siberian Railway. The simplicity of the polar-air journey from England, to Japan appears most strikingly when we compare this route for the future with the routes of the past. It goes without saying that all appliances will be better than they have been and that there will be increasing perfection and technique. It is generally considered that when

a long journey is from land to land over various expenses of sea, the length of hop is the chief difficulty. Then take the flight to Valcock and Brown from Newfavland to Ireland, a single hop of about 1,800 miles, or that of reed from newfound land to the Azores. So far as length of journey is concerned, the flight of the Smith brothers from England to Australia far exceeds the London-Tokio journey. Those who think a large population is required before a railway can be built into a new country, will do well to consider the Australian railway between Brisbane and Perth. From its eastern terminus in thickly settled New South Wales, it leaves the populace lands behind at Port Augusta, and for a thousand miles thence, to Calgary passes through country which

nowhere has a population as high as one person in 16 square miles, according to a graph for the 1911 Australian census published in the official yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia for 1920. Its terminus of Perth is a town of 8,000 inhabitants. If you compare the known prospects of development of that Australian semi-arid region with the known prospect of, say, the McKenzie Basin, you will see that men of enterprise, similar to the Australians, would not balk at building a railway the shorter distance from the present railroad at McMurray to the oil district near Norman. Dawson, almost on the Arctic Circle, had a population in its heyday that exceeded Perth 5 to 1. Such another city may spring up any day in Arctic Canada or Siberia

to give new importance to the transpolar air routes. has any grasp at all the great natural resources of the polar regions and of the conditions under which they are about to be developed, will have fascinating dreams about any number of other trans-polar ruts, destined to come into common use. Whenever air travel itself becomes a commonplace in the more dangerous but already speculatively accepted routes between Liverpool and New York, San Francisco and Hawaii and Japan. End of Section 7. Section 8 of the Northwood Course of Empire. I'm Rsefenson. This is the Librivox According, or Libbyvox Accordings in the public domain.

For more information or volunteer, please visit Librivox.org, recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 8. General Considerations In estimating by years or decades, how soon the development to the Far North will come, we can give weight to two classes of fats, specific in general. The first are instances of railway building, the construction of river steamers, the formation of stock companies, the establishment of trading stations, and other concrete things done in the far north or with definite relation to it. This book is not a reference manual, and we shall ignore this class of facts after merely pointing out that the number of them is great and that information about them is obtainable from railway companies, immigration authorities of such countries as Canada, chambers of commerce of such cities as Seattle, etc.

The tourist agencies will give you data about summer hotels and sanitoria that are already located beyond the Arctic Circle, as for instance in Spitsboken, 300 miles farther north than the north tip of the mainland of either Canada or Alaska. We shall here give our attention solely to general considerations. In this book, we have said again and again that the main obstacle to the development of the north is ignorance, or rather positive misknowledge. the belief in difficulties that do not exist. In that the present situation of the north is an ageless to the case of the prairies for the western United States in Canada a century ago. When North America was colonized from Europe, the settlers came from districts of woods and hills and mountains. Most of Europe is that kind of country.

These immigrants were familiar with methods of dealing with hills and woods and mountains. They knew how the rapid rivers could be harnessed to industry. Their ancestors had broken their backs for generations clearing forests and tilling rocky fields, and this they were prepared to continue doing. Sea commerce was already well developed in Europe and river commerce to a less extent, and so they understood how to make distant lands tributary to the port of Boston and how to use as highways, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. But in addition to understanding the lands of forest and hill and river,

they actually suppose a hilly and forested land to be not merely the ideal country, but almost the only country that was fit for habitation by men and women of their kind. The treeless plains they did not understand at all, and supposed them to be essentially inferior through their mere lack of trees. Accordingly, the westward moving settlements followed the rivers, not merely because they were highways of travel, but also because their valleys were forested, and the tentacles of settlements stretched out in every direction, leaving behind vast islands of treeless prairie, as, for instance, in Illinois. Other parries of a vaster scale, the settlers crossed and recrossed grove going from one forested area to another,

never settling in the open for the simple reason that trees were not found there. Then of a sudden it dawned on the pioneers that the absence of trees instead of being a disadvantage is an actual advantage. Those who had gone to the forested sections of say in Michigan has spent years in hard labour before they could cultivate a 10 or 20 acre field. But on the prairie a farmer could arrive in a covered wagon in the early spring, with his wife beside him on the front seat and back of them a plough and a bag or two of grain.

He could stop almost anywhere, pitch a tent if he did not have time to build a more permanent shelter, put the plough on the ground, and in fewer days than it took years in Michigan, could have a 10 or 20 acre ploughed field to be seeded that season and to give him a crop in a hundred days. With the realisation certainly came upon the pioneers, the prairies were flooded in a decade by settlers. From this result of the fact, so well known in all western districts, where prairie and forests alternate, that the descendants of the earliest settlers have inherited

their comparatively worthless forest glands, while the richest farms have come down to the children of those who came later and were forced to homestead the prairie, either because the woodland was gone, or else because they belonged to a latter and more enlightened generation they knew enough to prefer the treeless lands. With the conservatism of our race, many of us still hold in theory, if not in practice, the idea that a farmer is unfortunate who is distant from a forest, an attitude defensible upon aesthetic rather than economic grounds, and commonly amusing to those who have been born and pulled up on the prairie.

When I was a boy, my father was helping develop a prairie state under land laws made by forest dwellers and promulgated from Washington. Congress, among its other benevolent visions, had the dream of rapidly covering the prairie states with clumps of forest, and the land laws were shaped to that end. I set the receipt 160 acres from the government in return for living on the land. This is known as the homestead. He had the right to buy 160 acres of land adjoining for, as I remember it, $320. This was known as his preemption.

Then he had the further right of acquiring 160 acres by planting 10 acres of trees. This was the tree claim. Many of our neighbours made use of both their preemption and tree claim rights. It was common knowledge in our neighbourhood that cotton woods could be planted with less trouble than any other tree, and so we all planted cotton woods. Not one farmer in ten paid any attention to how they grew after being planted, for it seemed that one's right to the claim, if not in law, at least in fact, could be maintained through the mere planting without any successes necessarily following. In a few places there grew up solid 10 acre clumps of trees. In others there would be straggling trees over a 10-acre patch,

and in some you could scarcely speak of trees at all. When the necessary time at a elapsed, the farmers received full title to their tree claims from the government, whereupon more than half the cases they chopped down and burned up whatever trees might be standing and ploughed the ten acres back into wheat. In more recent years, trees have been planted to a considerable extent in states like North Dakota, but largely because doing so became the fashion. They were looked upon as ornaments, as flowers might be. As a shelter from blizzards, they were by no means an unmixed wood. I think the most farmers brought up in the woods preferred to have a small clump of trees around their farms,

by the men who were the products of the real prairie preferred, at least from the point of view of blizzards, to have their houses standing in the open. For the little advantage of tree shelter was more than concealed by the great nuisance of having huge banks of snow piling up in the lee of the trees, bearing the farmer's house, which have built in an open place, would have stood fairly clear of snow. The idea of the inevitable advantage of trees still persist widely.

The first question asked about Arctic lands commonly is, How far north do trees grow? The feeling behind the query is that the farther north the trees go, the better the chance must be for ultimate development. This might be so if we expected to market the trees themselves. But I've heard of no student of sub-arctic, Siberia or Canada, who maintains that the jack pine and black spruce forests of those lands will serve any but auxiliary purposes.

They may even eventually furnish fuel, shelter from storms, and building materials to people who make their living by some other means than lumbering. It might be conceivable that a forest farm would be better than a prairie farm for certain crops after the forest is cleared, but it would have to be considerably superior in soil, or some other important attribute, to pay for the labour of clearing. But we think of the north as a pasture land, and especially pasture for reindeer and offobos.

A dear man who has set down in the sub-arctic forest would inquire his way out to the northern, not southern prairie. For reasons now well understood, the sons of the pioneers of fertile eastern and middle Ontario have passed through forests at Western Ontario to settle and almost crowd the treeless flats of Manitoba. For reasons analogous, though different, men will pass north through the forests of Middle Canada,

or outflank them by one route or another to settle as ranchmen the Arctic prairies. The uncovering of mental wealth causes cities to spring up anywhere. Apart from such fortunate accidents, and apart from some new commercial development of the future, the very nature of which we cannot guess, such forested rocky hills and sand stretches as make up a considerable part of Western Ontario and of Central Canada will be for some time to come islands of spare or no development surrounded by the seas of the colonized southern cereal and northern grazing prairies. It is in reality the great good of the north, therefore. The most of it is prairie land, although

we cannot capitalize that advantage without an educational campaign showing that the northern prairies are more valuable than the northern woods, just as the prairies of Illinois are more easily tamed and have proved, on the average, more productive than the farmlands of Michigan, reclaimed from the forest. Over that campaign, this book is a part in that we have indicated how the northern prairies are about to become pastures of vast herds of domestic animals producing meat and wool and hides and the various other by-products of that sort of development. Settlements are now striving northward along the rivers. Colonists are peering here and there along the seaboard, mines are known to exist and oil wells have been bored.

When people discover that forests were not inevitably associated with the forest, fertile land, as they did after they had passed the forest barrier of the eastern part of the United States and Canada, and then sought the prairie lands in a very direct and eager manner. Men from the eastern states or provinces crossed through the forest belt on trains and landed in the midst of the prairie. Thus men have already learned to cross entire climatic or forest zones in order to get into the more favorable lands beyond. With progress and education and the rapid spread of knowledge, we no longer need to. to wait for a generation of experience to teach us where to go it will defied new economic

opportunities. The prairies of the far north would be entered by ignorant and unintelligent people by working only from the borderlands on the south where settlement was already established. An intelligent and progressive people, aware of the undeveloped opportunities of the northern prairies, should be able to study the situation, arrive from a distance at a conclusion as to their usefulness, and immediately penetrate and occupy in many different places in a large land of promise. It may still be possible to argue that it would have been wiser to develop, to the full, the cattle and wheat possibilities of Georgia, Vermont and Ontario, before leaping into the distant productiveness of Texas, Nebraska, and Alporta.

By the few who could be convinced by such arguments would nevertheless admit that, with the history of the 19th century opened before us, we cannot doubt that the pioneers of the 20th century will cross or outflank the stubborn scrub forests of central Canada on their northward march, just as the earlier pioneers crossed or avoided Western Ontario on their way to the Wheat Prairies. They all do so the Northern Prairies, like the Western hold out to them the promise of an easier livelihood. The sudden development of the North, corresponding to the development of the Wind Western Prairies, will come out when we at length realize that the very qualities which we had supplied, to be its worth drawbacks are really advantages once their true meaning is understood it.

It is commonly supposed to be a disadvantage of the north that the subsoil is frozen. The absurdity of this appears as soon as you think about it. Even the city bread have commonly enough heard that a clay subsoil underlying surface loam makes the ideal condition for most kinds of cropping. The virtue of the clay is not so much in the detriment it furnished, to the plants that grow in the soil above, but more in that it retains water and brings it back by capillary near the surface. In temperate tropic regions, much of the land is so porous that a heavy shower dampens it only for a matter of days, and the water sinks down beyond the reach of the longest roots,

and plants die for lack of moisture in places where the Weather Bureau reports of rainfall that would be abundant if only there were a clay layer, not too far below. But if the clay in southern countries is only in patches, the frozen subsaw the far north is universal. In some cases it may be several feet down, in other places and other circumstances, only a few inches. This frozen subsoil prevents loss of water by drainage and access of reservoir from which water comes during periods of droughts, when the soil warms up to greater depths and makes the frozen water available. This is one of the reasons why no part of the world is so safe from drought as a far north, even though the precipitation is light when measured in inches. How different from a drawback, the frozen subswell may be, is indicated by a recent conversation with Dr. Alfred H. Brooks,

the head of the United States Geological Survey for Alaska. He was showing me a photograph where Dr. Charles C. Georgetown had secured a fabulous strand of wheat on ground, where the frost was only a foot or so down. This picture dated back good many years. Dr. Brooks said that each year of cultivation has forced this permanently frozen layer farther and farther down until there are now some 15 or 20 feet of thought ground where once there was not that many inches. To explain the retreat of the frosted symbol, formerly the ground was covered in a spring with a damp layer of dead vegetation from last year.

This had upon the soil somewhat the protective effect that a layer of damp sawdust as a upon ice. Furthermore, the colour of the surface was whitish, and there may have been some bushes or trees to give shade. With a plough turned to the soil, it exposed a black surface, where previously it had been whitish, and it is well known that the sun's rays generate the maximum of heat when they strike anything dark. The shade of bushes or trees was now removed, and also the protection of the layer of damp dead vegetation. As a result, the heat penetrated deeper, incidentally drying the soil. It takes less heat to raise the temperature of a cubic foot of dry soil than that of a cubic foot of damp soil. So here we have another

factor to increase the depth of thawing. A combination of these and other conditions has gradually compelled the frost to withdraw deeper into the ground until now the cold of winter is no longer sufficient to freeze the surface down into contact with original frost. There is thus even at the end of winter, an unfrozen layer between the temporary surface frost and the permanent ground frost. If ground frost were a handicap, if this appearance would be an occasion for rejoicing. But the interesting and disquieting thought is that, as stated elsewhere in this volume, the subartic regions generally have very light rainfall. Although this is sufficient for the native vegetation, the dead part of which acts as a wet sawdust coming to preserve the underground frost,

It may not be sufficient for cultivated crops. However, the Yukon Valley or portions of it will turn through the thawing of the ground into a region semi-arid in the sense that the rainfall is sufficient for crops. Dr. Georgeson does not yet know, but Dr. Brooks thought he was beginning to worry about it. I've just been reading Conan Doyle's latest book, as I always read his books. I did not expect to find it is anything pertinent to my argument, but I did find so striking, a passage that I doubt ever searched through all our literature, whether scientific or descriptive, would serve as better. In Adelaide, I appreciated for the first time the crisis which Australia

has been passing through in the shape of a two years drought, only recently broken. It seems when involved all the states and of course created losses, and matching to millions of sheep and cattle. The result was at the price of those cattle which survived has risen enormously, and at the time of our visit, an absolute record had been established, a bullock having been sold for 41 pounds. The normal price would have been about 13 pounds. Sheep were about three pounds each, the normal been 15 shillings. This had of course sent the prices of meat soaring with the usual popular unrest and agitation as a result. It was clear, however, there were the heavy rains the prices would fall. These Australian droughts are really terrible

things, especially when they come upon newly opened country and in the hotter regions of Queensland and the north. One lady told us that she had endured a drought in Queensland which lasted so long that children of five had never seen a drop of rain. You could travel a hundred miles and find the brown earth the whole way, with no sign of green anywhere, the sheep eating twigs or annoying bark until they died. But to return for a moment to the droughts, as any writer of fiction invented or described, a more long-drawn agony than that of the man.

His nerves, the more tired and sensitive, from the constant on broken heat, waiting day after day for the cloud that never comes, under which the glaring sun from the unchanging blue above him, his sheep, which represent all his life's work and his hopes, perish before his eyes. A revolver shot has often entered the long vigil, and the pioneer has joined his vanishing flocks.

It is only casual thinkers who suppose that cold is on our earth, the greatest enemy to vegetation. The greatest enemy is drought. It is not only the sheep lands of Australia, and the cattle lands of South Africa that suffer. From Arizona to Alberta, tens of thousands of cattle have died during the last three or four years, if not directly from thirst,

at least from hunger, brought on by lack of vegetation, which in turn was due to lack of water. A losses would have been many times as heavy, but for the fact that some owners butcher their heads, selling the meat out of sacrifice, and others shipped the mountain districts better supplied with rain, or imported hay half across the continent to keep their beasts alive. As this book has been prepared for the press,

famines are terrible as any in history are sweeping over vast areas of Europe and Asia. The leading figure of the Russian relief is Fristjof Nansen. Presumably, few know the causes of the famine there better than he. He is known to be anti-Bolshevik, but he does not put the main blame on Bolshevism. He opposed the blockade of Russia and as he announced the fermenting of civil wars in Russia, but he gives these only a secondary cause of the famine. The main cause, he says, was a two years drought which alone was so serious

that help on a vast scale from the outside world would have been necessary, even had political and industrial conditions being favorable in Russia. In only limited areas of other zones, can we feel sure that the rain will be neither too scarce or abundant in a year. In the Arctic, at least, this serious drawback is absent. In most parts of the United States and southern Canada, we have large-scale cattle raising only in districts that are used for stock because a rainfall is not adequate for cereal crops

and because irrigation is impossible or has not yet been developed. The greatest danger in the stock raising in the semi-arid districts is out for a year or for a cycle of years. You may have desert conditions temporarily prevailing, so that a range which adequately supports ten thousand head one year may prove insufficient for a thousand head two years later that condition will never prevail in any of the polar lands without going tediously into the theory which makes a plan why this is so we can rest here at merely saying that no one has ever observed in the polar regions that the vegetation for rise appreciably from year to year through abundance or lack of rain or snow The grazing experts of the United States' biological survey have concluded that in northwestern Alaska, a square mile of land will support from 25 to 30 reindeer permanently.

A similar estimate, if made for Arizona, would have to embody the qualification that this applies to ordinary years only. In the north every year is an ordinary year, and a range that supports 25 head to the square mile one year will support 25 head forever, if the soil is not mistreated through trampling by driving fast herds over it, or through temporarily being overgrazed by 50 or a hydra-head being placed on an area calculated to support only 25. In this chapter which considers the factors that for the present tend to hold back the development to the north, we may admit again what has been implied above, that a good deal of the north is covered with scrub forest. In some quarters as around Great Bear Lake, fast areas are covered. This will be a drawback there, just as scrub forest in many parts of the United States and southern Canada is a drawback.

But when narrow strips of forests are thrust far out into the Arctic prairie along river valleys, the disadvantage is counterbalanced by benefits of another sort. People coming from the south and unfamiliar with northern prairie conditions who eagerly seek these forest strips as location for their ranch houses. There is also some advantage to gardening from the nearness of trees. Further, it is an undoubted convenience to have firewood available. These advantages of the forest belts along the northern rivers will, in my opinion, about offset the disadvantage of having to subtract their area from the grand total of the available grazing lands. The lack of transportation facilities in the north is a disadvantage inherent in its newness.

Railways and the like will develop as the settlements develop, and the problem here is now wise, different the problems that have already been solved by the railway builders of more southerly portions of North America. From the point of view of boat transportation, it is a disadvantage that in the north the rivers are frozen over for several months each year. The McKenzie between Great Slave Lake and the Polo Sea is, for instance, open only from about the middle of May to the middle of November, and a period somewhat shorter for its delta. Similar conditions prevail in Siberia and in Alaska. But this difficulty is for the present more than counterbalance by the years of overland transportation in winter. In colonizing southern countries, it is found that while lakes and rivers are highways for boats, their obstructions to overland travel.

In the winter, each northern river becomes a highway for sledges and so does a freely. The same country that would be impassable tractors, for instance, during the summer months, will in the far north, be easily crossable in winter. It is not unlikely that the truck and the caterpillar tractor will in consequence find in the polar regions one of their main fields of usefulness. On summer journeys, Indians in Eskimo is commonly go by boat across a lake to a place that is known to be a narrow neck or portage of another lake. Thus, by carrying canoes and freight over the portages, long journeys are made from lake to lake and river to river. In winter these and similar routes they use for slitch travel. The dog team crosses a lake, goes over

potage and crosses another lake. For heavy freighting, the same principle can be applied to tractors. Every lake will be a ready-made road. When you come to the neck of land that separates one lake from another, you may have land which in the summer is a swamp, where men would sink to their knees in mud and horses to their bellies, in winter everything will be found solid, and if only trees that happen to be on the portage are chopped away flush with the ground, you have without any further building a fairly level and exceedingly hard to trap the road. In considering the possibility of this mode of freighting in winter, it is to be emphasized again that snowfall impolar and subpolar lands is nearly everywhere exceedingly light,

a fact that simplifies greatly the winter fruiting problem. In the fish industry on Lake Winnipeg, for instance, tractors and trucks are now in extensive winter use. They will be even more valuable for lakes farther north, both because of the slightly increasing length of winter and because of the continually decreasing snowfall. It is thought by some that the absence of the sun during a part of the year will be a serious handicap to northern development. True for outdoor work, it is highly desirable that the sun should be shining.

But even as it is, mines in every latitude use artificial light at all times a day and night, and the same is true of many of the factories and most of the business officers in our great cities. Certain kinds of work are therefore now carried on by artificial light at all times in every latitude. For travel daylight is generally advantages. It is however well known that automobile travel can be satisfactorily conducted at night. I have found that drivers on such fairly dangerous roads as the Navajo Trail, for instance, or indeed anywhere in mountains, commonly preferred to drive at night. For the light of a vehicle coming round, a curve gives you an earlier warning

than the actual appearance of it would in daylight. The people who now live in the north commonly look forward eagerly to the period of darkness, not because they like the darkness itself, but because the midwinter is the vacation time. This is especially true of the Eskimos, but is to a less degree true of the whites as well. In southerly latitudes we look forward to August not because we like the heat as such but rather because the extreme heat lessens our ability to work and so makes it the accepted vacation time. For no lagos for the reason midwinter is the accepted vacation time in the north. It will always be possible to argue even after the north has been

colonized that the distribution of daylight and darkness is more advantageous in the tropics or in the temperate zones. I think of likely that a vote taken in any place will always show a heavy maturity in favour of that distribution of day and night which is found in that place. Dwellers in the tropics will feel it more convenient that the day and night should be of approximately equal length throughout the year. Dwellers in the polar regions will probably think it more desirable that there shall be perpetual daylight during the seasons of great productive activity. They will say that they would like to have daylight the year round. But if half the year has to be daylight,

and half dark they prefer the distribution found around the arctic circle to that found farther south such a least has been my feeling and that of many of our men since the northern winter is the time of idleness anyway you might as well have the darkness concentrated there when the north becomes really civilized with movie houses on every corner we shall find modern ways of passing the winter that are satisfactorily to us as a sinking at dancing and visiting ar to the eskimos We now come to more serious handicaps to rapid development, our fashionable houses and our fashionable clothes. The great disadvantage of the ordinary European or American house, when employed as a northern dwelling, is a character at the door. It is well known that warm air is light and cold air is heavy. When at low winter temperatures you use doors that are seven or eight feet high and three or four feet across. Your opening a communication at that size between the outdoor air and that at the house, which differ in temperature by, say, 100 degrees, perhaps from 30 degrees below zero outdoors to 70 degrees above indoors.

The gravitational difference in the heavy outer and the light inner air results in an in rush of cold along the floor and an outrush of heat through the upper half of the door. You can scarcely open and close the door so quickly that you do not appreciably lower the temperature of the interior of the house. The solution of this problem is exceedingly simple. In cold countries you should live in houses that have the ground floor devoted to a storeroom. You could enter this ground floor through a door of the ordinary type, then proceed upstairs by major steps. In many of our cities there are flights off from six to a dozen steps leading up to the doors of fashionable houses, and what would think that it would be easy to get people living in the

cold climate to consent to walk up a flight of steps inside a house similar to the one which they so cheerfully melt outside. The fact remains that neither in Dorson nor non, nor Winnipeg, nor any cold city known to me has a sensible method has yet been employed, and I not at all sanguine that it will soon be employed. Fashions do not seem to be developed through any process of conscious reasoning. They are accordingly difficult to alter through motives of mere convenience or common sense. The problem of shutting out the cold by having double or triple windows has already been satisfactorily solved. Apart from a few such modifications,

in the countries now inhabited, that have minimum winter temperatures similar to those of the polar regions, the Dakotas, Manitoba, Russia, etc., we mitigate the worst effects of the thoughtless design of our buildings by a heavy consumption of fuel. This, for the time being, may be considered a practical solution and will tide us over until common sense shall become more powerful than fashioning in the designing of our dwellings.

We do not have to invent, but can borrow from the Eskimos a system of winter clothing that comes near perfection than most human devices. There are many styles adapted to modify conditions, or these are not described but one. First you have a complete suit of light reindeer underwear, the fur in from mittens to socks. You may think this would be ticklish or would have other undesirable features, but on trail it would soon become your favourite underwear for midwinter. If you know how good a seal-skin collar feels against your cheek, you know how such underwear feels all over. It would be uncomfortable indoors at typical American house and temperatures, but it would be about right in Scotland or France. Over this you would wear boots, outer coat and mittens, all the fur and shell to be removed or exchange for lighter ones

on coming into a house. You would wear cloth outer trousers, which need not necessarily be changed for lighter ones on coming indoors. This is about what we are used to in removing at the door rubbers, overcoat middles and cap. If you do not expect to go out again, you could change to lighter house carmas, which would not be any more trouble than you now have dressing for dinner. The sort of complete suit just described need not weigh more than 10 pounds, no more than the average man's winter business suit. It is as soft as chomois leather and so nearly cold proof that you would be much more comfortable in it and 50 blue zero than you are in woolen underwear, tweed suit and light overcoat at 20 above zero.

If then we dress in a common sense way, we can be as comfortable outdoors in the Arctic winter as we are in the winter climates of most any of the temperate lands. But it is a far look ahead to the time when common sense shall supersede fashion in the designing of our clothes. No matter how poor we are, and no matter how silly the fashions are, we discard our clothes or make them over year by year to correspond to the mode in Paris or in London. How wasteful this practice is, and what a millstone it is about our economic necks, we all realise. However, we get along somehow here in the south. Even in cities like Minneapolis and Winnipeg, we worry through the winters, the women in direfaneous dresses, and the men in Oxford's and

hats. But the handicap becomes greater as you go north, for the winter does not become longer, though it be not appreciably colder. Enthusiast that I am about the north, and alighting as I do in the brisk and stimulating air of winter, I always have to admit that I abominate spending the midwinter in a city. I have to dress according to fashion, with the result that I suffer more from cold in the two or three cold months of New York than I do in the six or seven cold months of Banks or Melville Island. The increasing popularity of winter sports in Switzerland and such American winter resorts as Lake Placid

or Algonquin Park shows a clear trend towards the fashionableness of winter. Advertising and skillful propaganda will swing the tourist currents now south and now north, but there will probably, in the long run, be a division. The old and lethargic going prevailingly south, the young years and the young in spirit going prevailingly north.

I cannot see the north as a loafing place, nor as a place for resting, if by rest you mean an activity or languid movement. But if by rest you mean are refreshing, there are a strenuous play that will enable you to return with stored up energy to the hard work of the city after a week or a month of vacation, then there is already ample testimony to show that Lake Placid and Switzerland have much in their favor, as against Florida or the Riviera. But it must be noticed that northern sports everywhere, presuppose, a new place. new way of dressing. These cold weather fashions may be intrinsically as attractive as you please, but they maintain themselves with difficulty sporadically and locally, for they do not fall into the general currents of fashion as predetermined in France and England. In Montreal and Ottawa, boys and girls dressed for skating and skiing are happy as the days long, while their

parents in European fashions complain much of the discomforts they suffer in their hasty excursions to the officers and their afternoon teas. Sensible dress in such cities merely palliates the rigours of winter, for it is so seldom mourn, but it at least points the way. Until people of all ages and all occupations begin to address as sensibly for the cold as do the skaters and skiers of cold countries, there will be much discomfort connected with living in the north. Having considered the handicaps to northern development that relate to the winter cold,

we come now to those that relate to the excess of summer heat and to its corollaries. Heat as heat will not keep back the development of the north anymore than it has kept back the development of the tropics or the temperate lands. Plainly there will be some suffering during the period when the temperature ranges between 85 degrees and 100 degrees in the shade for prevailing the north is humid and the heat will therefore have its fullest disagree upon us. Also we lack in the north the north the,

brief respite to the night's darkness. It has seemed to me in Arizona that the 110 degrees in the shade was even at noon paliated by the approaching coolness of the night. You do not feel really hot if you know that you will soon be cool. And places such as the copper mine river in Canada, you would have to have a vivid imagination to be able to get much comfort in the swelter of 95 degrees in the shade by remembering that inside of six weeks the sun would begin to set and the nights begin to be cool. But in certain ways we can deal with the heat better in the north than we can in the south. The summer of 1918 when it got so hot in the hospital at Fort Yukon that many of us moved down into the cellar, we had a cool cellar to move into because the ground

underneath was frozen. Almost anywhere in the north you could have a sort of cyclone cellar where you could descend into the frozen ground for temporary relief, somewhat as I borrow into the ground to flee the tornadoes of Iowa and Nebraska. In most southern places you can get relief from the heat by dressing lightly. At present this is not an available avenue of escape in most northern lands

because of the plague of mosquitoes. No matter how hot you are, you will have to wear thick enough clothing so they cannot sting through with unpasteable gloves on your hands and a veil over your face. There was a time when many southern places now comfortable in summer

were intolerable through the number of mosquitoes. Settance will in general mitigate the insect pests of any land. However, we look upon the immediate development of the North, as consisting mainly in great stock ranches, where a few people will be all that are needed to look after thousands of animals and tens or hundreds of square miles of grazing land. This type of colonization requiring no cultivation of the land and little drainage will not handicap the mosquitoes of prizory. We shall therefore have to discover some new means of dealing with

the insect pests before we can seek relief from the heat up there by light clothing. Although the mosquito is the worst single insect of the north, the sandflies and horseflies are also to be reckoned with. Some say the sandflies are worse than the mosquitoes because they will get inside of your clothes and crawl over you. This can be dealt with by wearing knitted cotton or woolen underwear that grips the body so tightly that flies cannot crawl under. That is a simple enough way, theoretically, but one of the ones.

does not like to be clerved that way when the temperature is around 90 degrees. I always feel that the sandflies are second to the mosquito, for they come late in the summer when the nights are beginning to be cool, and whatever annoyance they give in daylight, they at least let you alone during the cool and dark hours. The horseflies, or as they are usually called, moose flies or bulldogs, are not any worse in the far north,

than they are in many settled countries. The difficulty with the perpetual daylight of summer, has always been no less imaginary than the difficulty with the darkness of winter. Being imaginary, this difficulty will have to be dealt with only by the early colonists of the North who come into the region believing in its existence. The belief with its attendant ill effects will die out in a year or two. Eventually a tourist who fears a perpetual daylight will get on his nose will become in the North as much of a joke as the Englishman used to be a few years ago in Montreal, who stepped ashore armed to the teeth against desperadoes and Indians. With all the people who find difficulty in getting up in the morning, in time to catch the

suburban train to their offices, and with all the fashionables who sleep till noon, it ought to be a matter of common knowledge that daylight does not interfere with sleep. Still I have heard of people in Alaska and the Yukon, who have worried themselves into a state of nerves by their fear of inability to sleep in daylight. This fear has created the real inability to sleep, which in turn has had its effect upon their disposition and even the health of the person concerned. This is a psychological condition from which many people have suffered during the last two or three decades in connection with the Alaska and Yukon gold rushes, but which has already

passed its crest. When I first went north, 1906, I heard a great deal of talk about this difficulty in sleeping. In spite of careful inquiry, I have heard very little of it in the last few years. We who are trying to abolish the Arctic are well aware of the difficulty of the task. No one can be familiar with similar enterprises of the past without realizing that in its class this is the most difficult. Take for instance the slow decline and fall of the Great American Desert. This was an idea which ran its full course with a single century and therefore never had

the vitality of the polar myth which has come down to us through millenniums of unshaken belief. For the purposes of the illuminating analogy, I had commenced to study the Great American Desert when, there it came to my attention and admirable summary, written by Floyd C. Shoemaker, traditions concerning the Missouri question. An address delivered at the general session of the American Historical Association in St. Louis, December 29, 1921. His account in part is as follows. For 40 years, the Great American Desert included what is today, one half the world's greatest granary, the Mississippi Valley. Considering the relatively accurate knowledge of the trade routes of this region possessed by traders, travelers and explorers, and considering

even the relatively accurate knowledge of this region possessed by scientists and observing travelers, it is surprising that the Great American Desert persisted decade after decade, a barrier to settlements, a refuge for savages, and an all too handy term of derision by foreign writers and statesmen to discourage emigration to western United States. In reading the literature of that day, descriptive of this section, it seems that the government reports educated the adult population and the school textbooks educated the growing generation to recognize the fact that America could rival Africa in possessing a Sahar. To Zebulon M. Pike, a native new Jersey. The West is largely

indebted for the Mirage Barrier of the Great American Desert. This New Jersey, Pennsylvanian did more through his report of 1810 to the War Office to retired settlement of the Trans-Mississippi country than all the Indian tribes of the plains.

His report contains such descriptions and comments as this. From these immense prairies may be derived great advantage to the United States is the restriction of our population, to some certain limits and thereby a continuation of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling and extending themselves on the frontier

will by necessity be constrained to limit their extent to the west, to the borders of the Missouri and the Mississippi, while they leave the prairies incapable of cultivation to the wandering and uncivilized aborigines of the country. Here was an official report based on two explorations, on the country north and west of Missouri. Pike had done more than explore the sources of the Mississippi and discovered the peak which bears his name.

He discovered a desert that equalled to the Sahara. In geographies and literature, both in America and then foreign countries, the Great American Desert, was now to receive unstinted publicity. The next nationwide advertisement of this district was again gratuitously written by a government official. To Major Stephen H. Long, a native of New Hampshire, a graduate of Dartmouth and an officer in the United States Army is the West indebted for the vivid colorings of the Great American Desert.

His great explosion of 1819 to 20 set forth in his report to the Secretary of War is important. In picturing the West beyond Missouri as uninhabitable, he described a country between the Mississippi and the Missouri in these words. Last tracks are often to be met with, exhibiting scarcely a trace of vegetation. of the mountain region he wrote It is a region destined by the barreness of its soil

The inhospitable character of its climate And by the physical disadvantages To be the abode of perpetual dissolution In conclusion he says For the minute account given in the narrative of the expedition Of the bad features of the region It will be perceived to bear a manifest resemblance To the deserts of Siberia

As government documents of Pikes and Long's reports were widely circulated and generally accepted. They finished the data for statesmen, historians, and geographers. The school geography of Woodbridge and Willard in 1824 thus describes the present of Brasca district. The predominant soil of this region is sterile sand. Later geographies used in the schools contain similar descriptions. Iowa and Minnesota were eliminated only as they were settled.

The most graphic and damaging picture of the American desert came from the pen of America's novelist Washington Irving when his Historia appeared in 1836. About the middle of the 19th century, the power of the Great American Desert began precipitably to Wayne, and by 1867, only Western Kansas remained of the fictitious desert, and of course the small patches of real desert there remained to this day and have only gradually and partially being conquered by irrigation.

It is a commonplace, now that much the Great American Desert is the best natural farming land in the world, and parts of it have been selling of agricultural purposes during the last few years for as high as $500 an acre. If one disregards the greater antiquity of the frozen wilderness of the far north, Dr. Shoemaker's account finishes in other respects a striking parallel. The Great American Desert rested upon the accounts of travelers, admired in their time and so charitably treated by posterity that their names will not disappear from our histories for centuries if ever. We reluctantly admit that their judgment as to herbitability of the country they explored was not

sound, but somehow that does not seem to detract very much from our general admiration for them, nor to lower their historical position. From this analogy, we may take comfort, for history would doubtless manage similarly still to rank high the explorers of our frozen north, even after we realize, that is not half so frozen as they report to be, and even after their cities are built in their regions, which they thought would be forever desert. It is striking to note in Dr. Shoemaker's summary

the parallel between the government reports that furnish the chief bulwark of the Great American Desert, and the government reports which still sustain the frozen wilderness of the north. Then as now the school books follow the reports of government and private explorers, and the knowledge of the fertility of the Middle West existed for decades, side by side with the textbooks and encyclopedias which denied it. So it is now, and the slow battle has to be fought over again. No one realizes that better than the author of this book, and the friends who have encouraged

him to publish it. We have no thought of abolishing the Great Arctic Desert, with one book or one short campaign. The best we hope is to focus public attention upon the case, and to provoke discussion and investigation that shall not end until this myth goes the way of the many similar myths of early days that have retired progress each in its own time. Most of the great American desert has vanished because most of it never existed. What did exist, we are conquering, in part at least, by irrigation and dry farming. Where minerals have been found, great cities now stand in patches of otherwise

uncongered desert. A similar destiny awaits the frozen desert at the far north. Much of it will disappear through the mere advance of knowledge. The rest, the ingenuity of man will conquer, here, partially and there completely. In some sections, now most forbidding, we shall find undreamt values. Their creative minds and guiding hands of the future will turn many of the forces we now dread to precious use. When looked at with the perspective of a century to our advantage, it seems a curious thing that Pike could consider the Great American Desert a blessing in that it prevented people from going west of the Mississippi,

thus indirectly, he thought, favoring the development of the eastern half of the United States. It is hard for us to see our people at that time could have been so short-sighted, but it is somewhat easier because we have the advocates now with this to understand why many of the colonists of southern alaska present the development of the reindeer prairies that form the northern third of that territory and why many in ontario think that the prairies that make up the north third of canada should await for their development the time when the scrub covered and rock-infested hills farther south have been laborously brought under the plough The interest in such views, however, must always remain academic, for in the history of the development of the Western Hemisphere, the advocates have never yet prevailed. Neither were similar views, should they be held in Russia or Siberia, keep back more than temporarily the development of the great country. Even though stoner measures may possibly there be taking than any that are congenial to North American political institutions. There is a fundamental difference between colonization from east to west and colonization from south to north.

Each resembles west more closely than north resembles south, and the psychological difficulties on northern colonization are therefore greater. A part of Illinois was colonized from Louisiana and Mississippi. With southern minds, the colonists were naturally inclined to southern ways and southern crops, so they tried to cultivate cotton in Illinois. The results were difficulties that might have fallen a little short of disaster, and not other colonists been there from the east with eastern ideas and eastern crops, their success of which won over the Southerners from cotton to corn. These eastern colonists were the great good fortune of Illinois. Although their minds were intrinsically no better than the mines at the Southerners, they did not have to undergo a fundamental change before they became useful in Illinois. In certain parts of Dakota, we had difficulties analogous to those of Illinois.

Just as a southerners tried to plant cotton north of the Ohio, so did the immigrants from Illinois and Iowa try to plant corn in North Dakota. Broken and fortune and brokenhearted, many of these collars resorted to the cornlands with tails of the inhospitableity of the Dakota Prairie and cattle ranchers spread over the abortive corn fields. When my family moved out to establish a cattle ranch on the public domain, we camped near an abandoned plowed field. Judging by the condition of the ground, I imagine the original homesteader had lived it six or eight years before. Although it was 15 or 20 miles to our newest neighbor at that time, the country had been dotted with homesteads a few years earlier. But North Dakota had colonists from Ontario as well as from Illinois.

Just as Illinois had a colonists from Pennsylvania as well as Westminster. In the main, it was these Northerners that revived the fortunes of Dakota and brought the tide of immigration back again. So after a decade or two of abandonment, the prairie farms were re-homesteaded, this time by a successful people because they were not trying to gather grapes from thorns. They were not cultivating cotton or corn, but wheat. As we go north, the problem of colonization becomes steadily more difficult. Fully half of Europe can give us colonists that are fitted through their bringing up for the development of Illinois. North Europeans can adapt themselves without violent mental riches to southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but none of the European countries, which have so far given any appreciable number of colonists to North America,

is fitted by climate descent as immigrants who in Northern Canada can commence without apprenticeship the development of the land. The southern cotton growers in Illinois said neighbors from whom we learn better. The colonists of the Yukon or of Great Bear Lake must either be of such a high level of intelligence as to think out their problems before they actually meet them, or else they have to go through the painful experience of learning by failure. But history shows that the colonists will not ordinarily learn by failure. Instead, he returns disheartened to the cotton lands and the cornfields. We are frequently asked today why it is that Alaska has a smaller population now than they had 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.

There are various narrow answers such as the effect of hard times in the United States and the drop in the purchasing power of gold. But the broad answer is, Southerners have gone there and have tried to live as Southerners. They have in general failed. A few have learned wisdom, have become northerners and a state, but the majority have returned to lands where they could live as their fathers had lived before them.

To those who suppose that similar latitudes in the old and new worlds necessarily have similar climates and similar resources, it seems reasonable to suppose, also that Norwegians, for instance, would take to the north as ducks due to water. The fact is that Norwegians are not through their experience any better adapted to real polar countries than the natives of Ontario or Michigan. The climate of North Dakota gives a much closer parallel. The immigrant from Dakota would find near the Arctic Circle in Canada for Siberia, many conditions to which he has used, the hot summers, the cold winters and the treeless plains. He might therefore approve the scenery and find the climate tolerable, but he would try to cultivate cereals, build barns and milk cows. Thus, he would be as unfit for the north as a cotton planters were for Illinois. It is true that the northern summer and winter resemble in heat and cold the same seasons in many of the ordinary lands. But the difference in the length of season is enough so that nothing but failure can result from any colonizing scheme,

where the plan is to develop the animals and the crops to which the colonists are used. Here then we have a profoundly serious difficulty to overcome in the colonization of the North, but the difficulty is psychological and can be dealt with by education. It is hard to educate large masses of people, but fairly easy to convince a few individuals, especially when these are men of pioneer minds. Now what happens that many of the large industries of the world and much of the world's capital is in the hands of just

such men. If rapid development of the north is desired the logical way is to convince a few captains of industry and to induce the government's concern to give these leaders a fair opportunity. If a thousand small landholders go north, a thousand men have to be educated to meet the new conditions.

But if a thousand go there as employees of a corporation, they will work under the direction of four men who do much of their thinking for them. This will remove the psychological factor from the case, or at least lessen its effect. An ordinary colony may fail through the conservatism of its members, but a commercial enterprise on a large scale will succeed unless the resources of the land have been overestimated, or unless the plan deliberately intended to meet the new colonists in reality fails to meet them.

Before closing, we have to consider a fundamental weakness in all the arguments of this book. We've assumed in general that the northern frontier will be crossed and the northern lands colonized because the same factors will still take men north as once took them west. The weakness of the argument may be that our people are no longer the same and will not be led far afield by the motives that lure their ancestors. All over our civilized world is seen a tenancy of the land folk to crowd into the cities. Tenement houses not remote from theatres are in our civilized. are increasingly becoming the general ideal. This is a condition which has aroused alarm in many quarters. It has said that we are becoming a weakened and softened nation,

not only because the frontier is not here any longer to struggle with, but also because we shrink increasingly from any sort of active struggle with nature that takes us beyond the reach of our various new and elaborate appliances for coddling ourselves. This argument would have seemed a little stronger before the war than it does now. It was found then that both in the camps before the soldiers went to the front and led her in active service, the milk soaps from the cities not only turned it to surprisingly sturdy men, but proved to be surprisingly fond of the act of life when once they'd be forcibly thrust into it. However, it unquestionably took force to thrust them into it, and as no force can conceivably be applied in sending men to the new frontier, it may well be that those who actually would like the north if they ever tried it can never be induced to go and try. We've argued elsewhere that the development of the northern frontier would be more rapid than was the development of the Western, because everything now always moves more rapidly. When the need is once realized, railways are more quickly built than they were 50 years ago.

Air navigation is an easy way of opening new places, for no matter what the inequalities of the service, no matter what the swamps of rocks, the air above is substantially the same, and the topography is of importance from the point of view of air development. only in so far as it allows or prevents safe landings. It happens that in the far north we have lakes scattered everywhere. There is no part of the world which has so many small lakes. These will always be good landing places for flying boats in summer and for airplanes equipped with skids in winter. The natural limitations of aircraft as freight carriers will lessen but not cancel their value in northern development. It is probable that Daniel Boone in the Kentucky

Forest reconciled himself easily to the thought that he might not hear more than once a year what Congress was doing at Washington. Our different generation may worry if they go far beyond the frontier, this they miss their newspapers for several days. From the point of view of these, the radio and the O'plane will be consoling thoughts. While we recognize that the general modern Tennessee towards city life and the lessened percentage among us of those who enjoy activity in the Baneer will inhibit somewhat the development of the northern frontier. We still feel that the other compensating factors will operate to such an extent that the north will soon come into its own and will be developed as rapidly at least as the West was by our perhaps hardier and more adventurous

progenitoris. Whatever the general effemacy of our time may be, we will still have among us a considerable number of men or the Roosevelt type. There are growing up here and there boys of the Daniel Boone and David Crockett type, with an inborn passion for the frontier. Each giant task that develops along the trail of such pioneers will find that the appropriate time is Cecil Rhodes, is Jim Hill or Strathcona. It is great good fortune that we still have our frontier land in which pioneers may struggle and build where they may dream their dreams of empire, and eventually write upon pages now blank the story of those realized dreams.

End of Section 8. Section 9 of the Northwood course of Empire by Viljama Stephenson This is the Librivox recording or Libbyox recordings in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org Recorded by Leon Harvey PostScript It took 40 years of residents in the Northern Hemisphere 20 years of the study of history, anthropology and geography

and 10 years of residence in the polar regions to open my eyes to the considerations which this book is attempted to present. I handed over to the public disheartened by a realization of the faults of the book, and aware of the ease with which hackneyed tricks of controversy will be employed against it. It is a commonplace with socialists that nothing is so utterly unpleasant as that which is wholly new. The ideas of this book are new enough to be unpleasant to the conservative. From this source alone, there is short, be a good deal of opposition. It is easy to foresee that future opposition will

come from many sources, but foreseeing opposition we are not attempting to meet all of it. That could not be done without making the book, voluminous and tedious. In a talk recently given at the Naval War College, Dr. Iza Bowman said, until the new idea succeeds, it can always be logically demonstrated that the idea is either wrong or unsound, for back of the old ideas and the old ways experiences which were interwoven with the judgments of men, and this advantage is denied the new idea. A class example is the case of Agassiz when he saw the moranic drift about Boston. He said, if this were in Switzerland, I should think the ice had been here. Everybody laughed,

how absurd at that time to suppose that the ice could be there when there were no mountains. When a novel view is not dismissed, off-hand is being observed. The usual method of controverting it is to misquoted sufficiently to make it seem even newer or more absurd, and then to ridicule or disprove it as misquoted. This in its nature is impossible to guard against. With a book against which there are many propositions, the method of confutation by misquotation need not be used. It is almost as effective to take single argument. arguments apart from their context. A structure built to lean against another structure is not

necessarily able to stand alone. In some cases a critic can appeal with confidence to public misinformation. In days when the earth was believed to be flat, a reference to its roundness sounded as ridiculed as a reference to its flatness would sound today. At priori, one would think that ability to change one's opinion was the side of mental power, is instead a gift or a grace. There are minds of once powerful in statuary. they can always see a new point, but there always find a method of explaining it away, so as to avoid changing their previous opinions. Such men have already said about some of the essays that have gone to make up this book,

that they are examples of very clever special pleading. These men do me too much honour. It takes great ability to present a bad case well, and only a little to present the truth convincingly. But when you know a thing, you cannot easily avoid seeming a special pleader to those who either cannot or will not see. In his day, the arguments of Copernicus were looked upon as exceedingly clever, in fact devilishly clever,

examples of special pleading. But the world was, and is around, and his special pleading is now called clear exposition. Many say that I am prejudiced in favour of the north because I have lived there too long. Here again we have a rather fundamental difficulty. Had I lived in the north little enough to retain my prejudiced against it, I should never have had the ideas which this book tries to express.

Knowledge is so apt to purchase one. That is why we have so much trouble finding in an era of general education meant eager enough to serve on our important jury trials. Today it would seem to be almost impossible to find a jury eager enough to give the prosecution a fair chance to burn Bruno. Certainly you could never have picked from McGillan's shipmates and a partial jury to try Copernicus for heresy. but out of forebodings such as these there have come a cheering thought if it took half a century to depose a pretender like the great american desert we cannot expect to compel with one book or a dozen the abdication of the frozen wilderness of the far north legitimately descended as it was from centuries of myth and marvel

what we do reasonably hope not i alone but the men who consider the subject of first importance is that we may start debates and discussions and investigations that shall not end till men's ideas in the north correspond as nearly with the facts as our present ideas of the great american desert correspond with our mental pictures of utah and of kansas since our motive is not to prove the case now but rather to start a discussion they shall prove it eventually some at least of the apparent defects of this book may prove to be among its real merits. If our statement of a point falls short of being convincing, someone may challenge it loudly. Thereupon another who sees the truth, even though our faulty exposition, or who knew the truth before, will arise to the defence of the controverted statement.

Thus it may start the very controversies and create the public interest we desire. The first consideration is to keep the public from forgetting that there is an issue. In this age of an overcrowder world, no one who knows there is an issue here can remain careless of its statement. For upon it hangs the great value or utter worthlessness of lands equal an area to the whole continent of North America.

There is such a special reason why this book is not heavily buttressed with the footnotes that are considered the signs of the strength of scholarship. We are not exactly setting traps, but there is no motive to restore with references to learn to works the possibility

of some critic rushing to print with a denial of a statement or an ill-considered rebuttal of a theory. The more of such, the merrier. End of Section 9. Section 10 of The Northward Course of Empire by Viljama Stephenson. This is the Librevox According, or Librevox Accordings of the public domain. For more information to order volunteer, please visit Librevox.org.

Recorded by Leon Harvey. Appendix Why the erroneous ideas persist Traditional ideas are the polar regions The polar regions is in one sense a term in geography In another sense it is even now a term in folklore And once upon a time that aspect was far more important than it is today We cannot study the origin of the ideas about the polar regions

For the stabless lies in prehistoric times Our earliest histories show us the ideas definite in form although almost wholly erroneous in content. It is probable that few people today have a clearer idea of the polar regions than did, for instance, the Romans and the Greeks. What those ideas were, we shall not consider in detail, merely summing them up as a group of mental pictures of an area lying beyond the sheltering mountains of southern Europe

filled with definite terrors more or less directly allied with cold and darkness. To people of subtropical lands, the very idea of water in a solid state, as ice or snow was gruesome. To those accustomed to a succession of days and nights that varried only slightly in length from season to season, the thought of short days and long nights in winter was dreadful, and that of weeks or months of that sunlight, the depth of horror. As civilization advanced northward,

the northern regions of darkness and desolation were gradually shifted farther and farther north. But the process was slow. The generally accepted idea lagged behind the acquisition of scientific facts. The father's north of Pythias was discredited by Strabo, who placed the boundary of the habitable world just north of Britain, and of the Roman conception of the possible northward extension of civilization. We have a well-known presentation in the gloomy picture of Germany drawn by Taggadus.

When the heritage of classical learning passed through the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages, they readily adopted the idea of the dark and frozen north. It was still the general belief of the Mediterranean peoples. In the 13th century we find Robertus Anglicus protesting in Montpelio against the geographers who are inscribed to England, an uninhabitable climate. Even today parts in Norway that are in reality no colder at Christmastime than Massachusetts or Switzerland are likely to be pictured by even university men as a very outpost of desolation. This is not directly through a misunderstanding of the facts of geography and meteorology, but it's rather a survival, in spite of correctly a pre-perative. pre-handed scientific principles of ancient inherited opinions about the terrors of the frozen north. Present day misconceptions of the Arctic.

Today, the average intelligent person, who is not a geographer or a meteorologist, is likely to have the following ideas about the Arctic. One, in general, is dreadfully cold there at all times of the year. In particular, the minimum temperatures of winter are everywhere lower than they are anywhere in lands occupied by an agricultural population. In summer the greatest heat is not sufficient to make the days comfortably warm. 2. The Arctic lands are nearly everywhere devoid of vegetation. If there is any vegetation, it is mosses and nations. A few people who are not geographers have heard that there are flowers in the polar regions. Some even know that there are carpets of flowers,

but this idea is prevented from becoming very enlightening by the assumption that these are all lowly, hardy, or stunted plants. 3. The Arctic is, generally speaking, devoid of animal life. In some places there are polar bears and seals, but neither of these animals nor any other is found in the water or on the ice when you get to the remote polar regions at great distances from land. 4. A certain mystical idea about the polar regions is responsible for a group of notions as follows. A. that there is peculiar death-like stillness at most or all times. B, that the polar night has a driftful depressing effect on the human spirit, but that sea there is a certain fascination about the north which either, in spite of its terrors, or even because of them, entices men of a peculiarly heroic mold into these dreadful regions. There to suffer, and if need be to die in the cause of science.

We have perhaps not made this picture complete, but so far as we have drawn it, it will be found substantially correct. Noises of the so-called Silent North. A curious instance of how an inherited idea can fail to be corrected, through repeated observation is found in the eternal silence of the north. It seems likely to me that had Sir Clements Murakham lived to see the publication of his last book, it would not have appeared, as it did under the title, The Lands of Silence. Still, it is significant that a book under that title should have been published in 1921, after centuries of polar exploration and as a summary of what is known about the far north and far south.

We know from the fact that Sir Clement's Markham had himself been in the north and also, from his own writings, that he was familiar with the great variety of summer animal life. A hundred species and more of birds nest largely or almost entirely north of the Arctic Circle. There are millions of cackling geese and squawking ducks and tens of thousands of cranes and swans and loons, except for the noise made by our machinery rather than by ourselves, and except for possibly one or two beasts of the tropics. There is nothing in all creation more noisy than the loon. And no one who has ever heard their ghoulish shrieks and their maniacal laughter

can think of any place infested with them as being noiseless. But in the north we have, in addition to them, an addition to the birds mentioned, more than a hundred varieties of other birds, each making some peculiar noise. and then there are the insects. The buzz of the mosquito cannot be said to be particularly loud, but it certainly is a noise that attracts the attention of anyone who happens to be about.

These are the noises of the summer, and there are also the whistle of the spermifier, the sharp bark of the fox, and a long howl the wolf. In the winter the birds are gone with their noise except for the unobtrusive cackle of the petarmigan and the occasional croak of a raven. some owls also are there but they are never noisy the foxes bark occasionally as they do in summer and through the starlit night there resounds afar the howl of the wolf wolves have found in most of the arctic lands either singly or in chorus but even were they and all other animals absent the winter would be by no means silent if you are in land about the only loud noises are the whistle of the wind and the resonant crackling of the ground when it splits and splits again under the influence of expansion and contraction with changing temperature

but few explorers have spent their winters inland rather they have been on their coastlines or in some cases out at sea the book dealing with polar regions that was published in England immediately preceding Markham's lands of silence were Shapplin's south, from which we quote. July 25. Very heavy pressure about the ship. During the early hours a large field on the port quarter came charging up and omitting our flow tossed up a ridge from 10 to 15 feet high. The blocks of ice as they broke off crumbled and piled over each other to the accompaniment of a thunderous roar. August 4. Four nine days we have had suddenly winds, and last four, we have experienced howling blizzards. I am sick of the sound of the infernal wind, din, din, and darkness. Of similar import is a quotation for my own book, the friendly Arctic. Two characteristic noises of southern lands are absent. There is not the rustle of leaves, nor the

war of traffic, nor is there any beating of waves upon ashore except in summer. But none of these sounds are heard upon the more southerly prairies. The treeless plains of Dakota, when I was a boy, were far more silent than ever the Arctic has been in my experience. Near the sea at least there is, not always but on occasion, a continuous, and to those in exposed situations a terrifying noise. When the ice has been piled against a polar coast, there is a high bit screeching as one cake slides over the other, like the thousand times magnified creaking of a rusty edge.

There is a crashing wind cakes as big as a church wall, after being tilted on edge, finally passed beyond their equilibrium and toppled down upon the ice, and when extensive flows about six more feet in thickness, gradually bend under the restless pressure of the pack until they buckle up and snap. There is a groaning as of super giants in torment, and a booming which at a distance of a mile or two sounds like a cannonade. Summer heat in the frigid zone. That the persistence of the idea that the Arctic regions are everywhere extremely cold at all times of year, is not due to any misapprehension of geographical meteorological laws. It is clear, every textbook on geography lays down the principles

from which we could deduce the fact that many parts of the polar regions cannot be as cold as certain other inhabited and civilized parts of the northern hemisphere, and the Arctic summer in certain places must be extremely hot. The weather be roads of all Northly countries furnish facts to bear out these geographic principles. Yet most persons remain oblivious to them. Psychologically, there is another aspect to this case. The mind is a passion for simplicity. From the economic point of view, there is still another angle.

We are in need of every labour-saving device. To say that the tropics are always hot, the temperature regions, neither hot nor cold, and the polar regions always cold, satisfies the mind's craving for simplicity and saves the time of the teacher, who gets an idea into the minds of his peoples with very little effort. The only trouble is that the idea is not correct for any of the zones. The error of this simplified idea regarding the two former zones has been well put by Mark Jefferson. What a suggestion of burning heat has the phrase torrid zone and how unwarranted, and how pleasing is a name temperate applied to our own zone.

So intemperate in fact that the only sound description of it that applies at all times is that every season is exceptional. The textbooks tell us that the amount of solar heat received at any point on the earth service depends on the angle at which the sun's rays fall and the length of day, and furthermore that the rapid increase of length of day toward the pole during summer more than compensates for the decreased angle at which the sun's rays strike the earth. Hence at midsummer, more heat per square miles received within the polar regions than at the equator. This comes into flat conflict with all our inherited views as to the nature of the polar regions,

although it explains satisfactorily such figures as those given by the United States Weather Bureau for the summer temperature of Fort Yukon, Alaska, 4 miles north the Arctic Circle, where according to the Bureau, a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade was recorded in June 1915. Nor are high temperatures unusual. Dr. Cleveland-Abe gives 90 degrees as the summer maximum in the Yukon. Valley, and while he questions certain extremely high temperatures, 112 or over, that have been reported, he says, that it grows very hot in this province, Alaska and interior. No one may deny.

The average temperature of the warmest monk that fought Macpherson, 65 miles within the Arctic Circle in Canada, is 58 degrees Fahrenheit, only 1 degree less than that of San Francisco, 59 degrees. The main maximum is 80 degrees. great variety of temperature conditions in the Arctic. But it is not conservatism alone and the volume of inherited misinformation that have enabled the idea to prevail that the north is always cold. Different parts of the Arctic have very different temperatures.

There are certain parts which never become very warm in summer, and, as it happens, some of the most widely known regions are included in them because they have been convenient to traders and travellers and have been largely through what might be called. accidental reasons, the base stations of many well-known polar expeditions. Take, for instance, Greenland, with its historical connections with Europe and his present-day interest as a Danish colony. The island is a mass of high mountains which store up cold in the form of the well-known ice cap and locally refrigerate the air, so that there are

only a few places in Greenland, where it ever gets uncomfortably warm in summer. Another stored house of cold is a polar ocean which saves up enough chill from the long mum. some winter to neutralize locally a good deal of the summer heat. North the Arctic Circle is only where you get far away from ice-covered mountains and far away from the ocean in such places as the Northern Plains in North America or Asia, and you get the intense summer heat which no one expects to hold the historic view about the Arctic, but which everyone expects who understands the principle of climatology. An instance of the retarding influence of tradition in the development of our prairies. The lands that are the seat of our recent high civilization are mainly forest covered except where their forests have been cleared away.

Our people are accustomed to the idea that in order to be desirable, a land must be forested. This erroneous view kept back the development of the frontiers of the United States, even as far south as Illinois is, until the comparatively infertile lands around had been colonized. Only about half the history of the United States has a nation has passed since people came to realize the land may be desirable, though it would be treeless. It was even more recently that our Midwestern farmers saw that the absence of trees is an advantage, enabling them to cultivate a little expense. Lands more productive on the average than the fields reclaimed quite decades of labor from originally forest-clad areas, such as those of Massachusetts or Wisconsin.

In going west from the Atlantic seaboard, the colonists did not expect to find undesirable land and were surprised and grieved when the prairie lay before them. Those have gone north from either Europe or America prepared to arrive at a region of desolation Found only the desolation they expected When the northern prairies lay before them And wherever they went they filled their narratives With such adjectives as barren and desolate

But although they perhaps intended to indicate By those objectives little beyond the mere absence of trees They have conveyed a gloomier meaning To the state homes who read the books Illustrations are tradition and current descriptions of Alaska. Another reason why we find it so difficult to get correct ideas about the North as that even the writers who are trying to explain to us

the friendliness and fruitfulness of the Arctic are handicapped in doing so by the molds in which their childhood thought is being cast. A good example of that is a recent article in the Review of Reviews. This is a magazine of the higher type. Furthermore, the author of the article evidently intends to be specifically truthful. The whole tenor of what he writes contradicts his opening sentence, which is as follows. A new chapter in the story of the international search for oil is now being unfolded in the frozen wilderness of the far north. By the words, the frozen wilderness of the far north,

he obviously does not mean to convey the idea that the country is particularly frozen. To him this is merely a formula to describe the north, and does not mean that the north is frozen anymore than calling Michigan the Wolverine State. implies that the most outstanding feature of that state is the omnipresence of Wolverines. We see this clearly when we follow the article on towards its end, where we find the following. The Imperial Oil drillers were furnished with vegetable seeds when they went north and requested to observe closely the results of their planting. They found that peas planted early in June were ripe on July 23.

By the end of July, potatoes were ready to eat and the grass was three feet high. The soil is a rich black loam. Some day this country may serve as a great agricultural district. This, then, is the very district to which she refers as a frozen wilderness of the far north. Another good example is A Chichaco in Alaska and Yukon by Charlotte Cameron. Mrs. Cameron also intends to be truthful and scattered throughout her book are rapturous exclamations over the marvellous flowers and fruits and vegetables

which she found growing nearly everywhere she went in Alaska. I have checked up the route by which she has been. traveled and I found that it must have been seldom that she came near enough to any of the high mountains of Alaska to see a snow-capped-peak. She then means nothing beyond the use of what to hers a formula or a name for the north when she says in the afterthoughts of her book. Was this journey of 20,000 miles really worthwhile? The hard-chips, inconveniences, the rebuffs, were they worth it all? Of a surety, this long, long jaunt to the Arctic snows has brought to me face-to-face with a of men and women who one is proud to own his kin, the pioneers, the men who blaze a trail,

the men who, God willing, will point the way to that coming race of pioneers who will set out to conquer these Isolk vastnesses. Of course, she or anyone can defend the description of Alaska as Isolot by pointing out that there are some glaciers, especially near the southeastern corner of the territory, and that several mountains have snow caps. Still no one will seriously maintain that the presence of glaciers around Sitka or Janil is reason for calling Alaska a land of ice-locked fastness. The reason is historical. We are merely making fair acknowledgement by our vocabulary to the ancient southern civilizations for which our ideas have descended to us.

The experience of others confirms this. F.A. McDermid describing the Yukon finds it necessary to combat the old conceptions. He says, For countless ages, all peoples have looked upon the north as a wild and barren land, the home of the iceberg and the storm. In the past few years, it has been given to a favorite view to learn that the Yukon is a land of beauty,

of sunny days and clear skies. The enchanting beauty of the widespread Yukon Valley, its glorious sunshine and its wealth of vegetation of fruit and flowers, comes as a great surprise to one who beholds it for the first time. It often causes the exclamation, this cannot be the north.

indeed is not the North land of which we are read and thought perhaps to see Are the factors helping to preserve the tradition of the North A set of reasons for the persistence of erroneous opinions about the North centres around the fact that many northern travellers have found it advantageous for one reason or another to perpetuate the idea of a land of desolation Take for instance missionaries and explorers Many travellers are hostile in their attitude towards missionaries saying that they do far more harm than good in such places as China and Turkey, the interior of Africa, and the northern coast of Canada.

I am not one of these. My opinion is that it would be a good thing for the Eskimos, if they could be protected from our civilization as a whole. But if our civilization goes to them, as it is bound to do, I would be the last to say that the missionaries should not go wherever the trader and whaler and prospector go. I think the missionaries help more than any other class of persons to temper the shorn lamb and bitter wind of our civilization. The missionaries are doing important work, or at least a work which they think is important. To carry on that work with full efficiency, there must have a great deal of money. They have found out by experience, and the missionary organizations here have found out that there is nothing that opens our purses so readily as a belief that these devoted people have been undergoing great hardships in the far north for the glory of the kingdom.

Accordingly, it is only exceptional missionaries who take pains to explain what easy and pleasant times they have in their remote fields of work. When lecturing recently in Indianapolis, I was presented to the audience by a man who had written on certain aspects of Canadian and Arctic exploration. In his introduction, he assured me that whatever I might say in my lecture about the pleasant aspects of polar regions and the ease with which one could live there, E4.1 would never believe me and my audience would not. That is the beauty of being a polar explorer. You can go far away and do things that are easy to do, come back and say the contrary is friendly, and the work pleasant,

and still get credit for being a hero who must necessarily have gone through terrifying adventures in a region of utter desolation. Furthermore, Southerners do have real hardships in the north, real to them at least, and when geographically related, the hardships are admirably suited to keeping firm in our minds our inherited views of the dreaded polar regions. Stages in the development of Arctic exploration We get a different idea, however, when we read the history of Arctic exploration during the last 300 years and trace the gradual emancipation from its terrors. At first the travellers were in such dread of the northern winter that they made only summer

forays and ships, returning home. in the autumn. In the second stage of Arctic exploration, they did not pass the winter in the north, but practically in hibernation. It was a sort of trench warfare against the cold. They dug themselves in at the beginning of fall and managed to endure the tedium of winter through various devices, such as publishing a newspaper, or the teaching of school where the officers were the masters and the sailors, the pupils or various other occupations designed to kill time. In the spring they came out of their trenches in more or less trepidation. and did what exploring was possible by their primitive methods during the spring and summer.

As late as 1876, Sir George Nairz declared that any polar explorer should be censored for cruelty who required his men to begin the work of exploration before April. But long before the time of Nairz, such pioneers as McClintock have begun to emancipate themselves from the imagined terrors of the Arctic winter. It was considered a great achievement, and was so, in a certain sense, when they began to carry on sledge exploration under temperatures about the same as those at which children ordinarily go to school in winter in Manituba and Dakota.

Explorer after explorer made advances, and one by one the imagined difficulties in the north were conquered until finally, in the time of Piri, only one or two obstacles remained serious. He had emancipated himself so completely from the fear of the winter, that he laid it down as a principle that all-important exploratory sledge work

should be done in winter, and that the journeys ought to be over before this snow-be. began to thaw appreciably in spring. He devised the transportation system which we still consider the best for those parts. The two ideas that remained unconquered were that the polar sea is unnavigable. It really still is, except that it is everywhere sailable by submarines, and that the polar ocean is devoid of food or fuel resources, making it necessary to carry large quantities of both. Piri himself in his journey of 400 miles from Cape Columbia to the North pole used about 10 tons of food and fuel, all of which was exhausted before the journey was over.

The idea that the polar regions are devoid of animal life has been the most stubborn of their misconceptions and now remains the only one of our inherited views that is held by many explorers and many geographers. The bristain polar regions survive only in the minds of the Lati. Heronious beliefs regarding animal life in the Arctic. When the pioneers came to the northern prairies, they were repelled by what was to them a great desolation. Sailors of southern seas were equally repelled by the ice-covered northern ocean. It was the theory of the landsman that whatever birds of animals might be in the north and summer would certainly move south in winter.

Equally, the sailor believed that the whales and seals and fishes found on the margin of the ice would go south of the fall, which is really their case with the whale and the walrus, or would remain at the edge of the ice. It was thought that at no time of year would there be any considerable amount of animal life found in the sea beneath the fairly permanent ice covering of especially that part of the polar ocean which lies around the pole of inaccessibility, the centre of the icy area,

a point lying about 400 miles from the North Pole, a few degrees east of the Meridian of Bering Strait. It is astounding how firm a hold these theories had on the early expletion, His whole record shows that Sir Edward Perry was about as truthful a man as ever lived. Honest as he was, he was unable to distinguish between theories which he held as unassailable and facts which he had actually observed. And so he tells us explicitly that the Caribou and Overboles, Musk Oxen, or Melville Island, leave that island in the fall and go south, returning to it in the spring.

We now know that neither the Caribou or the Overbores leave the island and go south. The Ophabos stay in the island at all times, while the Kerabu do travel east and west at various times a year, not particularly in spring or autumn, going from Melville West to Prince Patrick and east to Bathurst Island. There are some also that go north and south between Melville Island and the islands to the north of that. This may happen at a time of year when the ice is sufficiently stable. There is no southward migration from Borden Island to Melville Island in the fall nor any northward migration in the spring, but merely an erratic movement to between. Furthermore, this fact has no bearing on Perry's statement, which was to the effect that the

animals moved south from Melville Island and came north to it in the spring, a thing that has never been observed, and as doubtless never occurred in their case of ovibles, and seldom or never in the case of Carrabble. When so reliable man is Perry, could make a definite but entirely unfounded statement about the absence of land animals from Melville Island in winter. It does not seem particularly strange that other equally honest explorers. Confusing accepted theory with observed fact make definite statements to the effect that animal life is absent from the ocean

to the north of Siberia or Alaska or Greenland. To begin with, the explorers who traveled over the ice on the polar ocean had inherited from their ancestors the view that these were regions devoid of animal life. Quite as important is the fact that they came to the shores of the polar sea with the idea, which is held nearly universally, that primitive people, such of the Eskimos, are well-nighed fallible in their knowledge of the habits of the animals they hunt. They therefore took its fact what the Eskimos told them about seals being found only near land,

assuming that these seal-hunting Aborigines must know. Such an assumption should not be made. The Irish have been cultivating potatoes now for centuries, and still an Irish farmer will tell you things about the name. nature of the potato, which you classify as simple superstition. Hundreds of generations of sailors have spent their lives on the sea, and have discovered that the moon controls the weather, which it does not, and have failed to discover that the moon controls the ties, which it does.

These things being so, need be supposed that Eskimos are unfallible when they tell us about the habits of seals? Native knowledge, not infallible. As has been said, the explorers appear to have come to the north, with the idea that in this field the Eskimos were infallible. The Eskimos told the explorers that seals are found only near land, and this was taken not as the expression of a view, but as a statement of a fact. When at latitude 86 degrees north, Piri eventually saw a seal in an open lead.

This struck him and his Eskimo companions as remarkable. He has told me in a conversation and requiring special explanation. The explorers then knew the absence of seals from the polar ocean far from land, A, through their inherited views, B through information from the Eskimos, C because they never saw them, and D, because of the absence of polar bears which live on seals. It seems at first a reasonable assumption that if one animal's food is known to consist particularly exclusively of another animal, then you would inevitably find the predatory animal wherever the food animal is abundant.

The solaceic has the flaw, that a beast of prey may succeed remarkably well under one condition and fail entirely under another. A well-known example is a snowy owl which lives on mice. In some of the owls prosper everywhere in the polar regions because at that time the mice can be seen running around on top of the ground. In winter the mice are still in the northern lands, just where they were in summer, for they are in their frozen halls or going around, mom-nourished and envisaged. to the owls under the snow.

It seems clear that owls do not suffer from the cold or the northern winter and that the only thing which drives themselves in the fall is a coming of the snow, a condition that protects the mice or lemmings. I am one of those who admire the cunning and prowess or the polar bear

and believe that this animal has not as yet been given full credit by the animal psychologist for his comparative rank in intelligence. However, I do not consider it a piece of extreme vanity to suppose that I have more brains than a polar bear, that I might be able to get seals in a place where bears fail utterly, and might prosper by hunting in a place where no bear could live. In this article, I cannot go into the details of seal hunting, as practiced by us out in that ocean, which once was

supposed to be devoid of seals. There is no novelty in the method we used. The only novelty is that we applied it in a region in which neither Eskimos nor explorers had considered applying it because of their inherited views to the effect that the seals were absent, and because they had inferred the absence of the seal from the absence of bears and bear tracks. With a party for my expedition, I travelled for two years and a region where we never saw a polar bear track, and still while travelling, we lived mainly on seals which we were able to get from under the ice, where they would have been safe from the utmost ingenuity of polar bears, even had the bears, been there to look for them.

Conservatism again, a hindrance to discovery. The man in the street has ideas of the north that are his because the recent advances of science have not been able to change the current of popular thought as it applies to the north polar regions. The scientists themselves, being victims of their daily association with the average man and of the very vocabularies that have been built up under the influence of our old ideas about the north, have found it difficult to apply consistently. to the deduction of correct views about the remote north,

their scientific principles evolved in southern latitudes. Had there never been a mosaic cosmogony, with its 6,000 years spanning all of human development, those might have been considered the most concertive geologists and anthropologists who made the longest estimates of the period that man as man has existed upon the earth, for archaeology shows that the bodily changes in man during the last 7,000 years have been slight.

Some say negligible, but it has been a fact in our day that those have been called conservative who have assumed or deduced the shortest possible period of man's history on the earth. They have esteemed it a sort of merit to make their conclusions conform to a cosmogony, which, as scientists, they had entirely discarded. There seems to be at present similar tendency among authorities on the polar regions, although the various sciences predispose us to make favourable conclusions about animal life in the north. We are still considered a conservative in so far as we make our judgments conform, not to the principles of the sciences that apply, but to the views inherited from a superstitious ancestry.

It has always been considered probable that great aggregations of animals might be found in the tropics or in the temperate zone. No serious doubts have, therefore, being cast upon the estimates made in Africa. or in the middle of North America about vast herds of grazing animals, whether a land or bison. I do not recall that I have ever heard questioned even the most extravagant estimates of the size of buffalo herds. These estimates, however, do not rest upon any other sort of evidence than that which goes to show that a caribou move in the Arctic and subarctic regions and herds equally large, say a million animals. But so strong in the public bind is a presumption for the barrenness of the north, that the very men who have seen the herds which they think contain a million will limit their real estimates to you only in conversation and will print instead of their real views statements more conservative

similarly the oceanographers who have found out that animal life abounds at the margin of the ice make very guarded statements as to the probability of its extending under the ice one by one we have already discarded nearly all of our former beliefs about the north Even the case of any man, we find nine statements of his to be lies. We are inclined to assume that the tenth is the lie also. In the case of the north, however, when we find our ideas one after another to be wrong, we still continue to act on the principle that the remaining ideas are probably true and that they must not be cancelled except through overwhelming evidence. Animal life proved abundant in parts of the polar ocean. In my reasoning about the polar regions, and in my work based on that reasoning, I have treated

the still accepted views about the north, as I would there still undisproved statements of a man whom I found uniformly unreliable. I have travelled in the particular regions which Sir Clements, Maracam, selected to point out as devoid of animal life, and there I found animal life particularly abundant. Sir Clements was himself a distinguished jocry, an Arctic explorer, and the of most of the well-known explorers of the 19th century, and yet he died believing the Beaufort Sea lifeless. That was because everyone up to that time had accepted the inherited view of Arctic Baroness, and no one had tried systematically to find animal life in the regions previously supposed to contain little or none. But we who since have tried have so far succeeded wherever we have tried,

Should we then be intimidated into conservative adherence to all beliefs and assume that we have happened upon one favourable region after another, and that somewhere else in the polar ocean there must exist at least a little remnant of the desolate polar regions that were once so extensive? Or should we say that since the applicable sciences know no principle, according to which the rest of the polar ocean should be any more devoid of animal life? Then the parts already shown to be abundantly supplied. The time is come at last to follow science and observation and to place the burden of proof upon anyone who desires to maintain that there is somewhere a large part of the polar area that conforms to ancient views. As shown in my recent book, The Friendly Arctic,

and has previously brought out to my article the region of maximum accessibility in the Arctic. The area in the Arctic covered with so much ice that it has till now remained unnavigated is not symmetrical, with the North Pole for a center as seems to have been commonly assumed by those who suppose that the geographic North Pole was one of the places devoid of animal life. The real center of the icy area lies in the direction towards Alaska, at about latitude

85 degrees 50 north, or 400 statute miles from the North Pole. If the iciness of the ocean is the reason why animal life is assumed to be absent, that the assumed area of desolation should lie roughly in a circle which, as the point of inaccessibility rather than the North Pole for a centre. If we reckon from the centre we have already found seals so near the pole of inaccessibility that the North Pole is no farther from it. There is therefore the same presumption for finding seals at the North Pole that there is for finding them where we have actually found them.

Arctic Deserts Not Large As pointed out in the article to which we have just referred, we have found that certain areas the polar ocean are better supplied with animal life than certain other areas. This merely corresponds to our general knowledge of the continents and of the oceans. In any new land, in the sense in which North America was new 400 years ago, the traveller who makes a long journey will find himself at one time in a region of more game and at another in a region of less. Similarly, the fishermen know that certain parts of the Atlantic are well supplied with cod,

as in others the prospect of finding even one codfish is remote. From the point of view of animal life, there are deserts on the continents and in the warmer oceans, so why should there not be similar deserts in the polar ocean? Thus far, we have never found these sealless areas large. As we travel north, we come into a district where there are less and less seals, but as we continue farther north, we come into another district where there are more and more seals. There appears accordingly no definite relation between the abundance of seals and latitude. Conclusion

It cannot be considered proved that seal life is as abundant at the North Pole as at certain places where we have travelled depending for our food month after month on seals. But appears to me we have carried our investigations and reasoning on this subject so far that the burden of proof now rests on anyone who assumes that there is a part of the polar ocean. We have the North Pole or any other part, that is devoid of animal life, or where animal life is so scarce that a skillful hunter would find it difficult to secure food and fuel for a small party of men and dogs. End of Appendix End of Section 10

And the end of the northward course of empire by Villama Stephenson.