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MT EREBUS FROM THE SOUTH. 416

AD?LIE PENGUINS 456

EMPEROR PENGUIN WITH CHICK 456

CHASM SEPARATING ICE AND LAND IN LAT. 82? S. 463

TYPICAL LOOSE PACK--MT MELBOURNE IN DISTANCE. 480

A TILTED BERG, SHOWING THE OLD SURFACE INCLINED TO THE LEFT 492

EMPEROR PENGUIN ROOKERY, CAPE CROZIER. 497

ERRATUM

PART I

THE ARCTIC REGIONS

The history of the Polar Regions, of those vast areas, difficult of access, which include millions of square miles of land and ocean at either extreme of our planet, is of surpassing interest and importance. It is not only that we here meet with examples of heroism and devotion which must entrance mankind for all time. It is not only that there are dangers to be encountered and difficulties to be overcome which call forth the best qualities of our race. These, no doubt, are the main reasons for the deep interest which polar exploration has always excited. But there are others of almost equal importance. These regions offer great scientific problems. They present wide fields of research in almost all departments of knowledge. They have in the past yielded vast wealth, and have been the sources of commercial prosperity to many communities, and they may be so again. Their history is a history of noble and persevering effort; extending over a thousand years in the Arctic where the work is well-nigh finished, but only just beginning in the Antarctic regions, where it will have to be completed by our descendants.

In approaching the subject it is well to have before our minds the extent of these great areas, the history of which we would grasp and understand. At the polar circle, which is 1410 geographical miles from the centre, they have a periphery of 8460 miles, and each includes 6,000,000 square miles. The Arctic and Antarctic circles are in 66? 32? North and South, but these parallels are merely conventional. It is more convenient, as will be seen hereafter, to take the Polar regions as beginning at about the 70th parallel, the Sub-arctic and Sub-antarctic regions extending from 60? to 70?, a zone in which the fauna is richer and more varied.

The division of these polar regions into quadrants is useful because it facilitates geographical description and impresses the relative positions of the different parts on the mind. In the Arctic regions a line may be drawn from the Lofoten Islands to Bering Strait, with another crossing it from the head of Hudson's Bay to Cape Chelyuskin; thus forming four quadrants.

At the present day a fringe of coast lines forming the northern shores of the three great continents, with a deep interior polar sea, are the main features of the Arctic regions, but it was not always so. Looking back into remote geological periods, we have evidence of marvellous changes in the Arctic regions since the globe was a gradually cooling mass of vapour. In this process, extending over vast ages, the polar regions must have been, as they are now, cooler than the equatorial regions, and for the same reason. It was, therefore, in the polar regions that life first became possible, and here the life of the Silurian age arose. There is evidence of a continent in Jurassic and Tertiary times where now there is a polar ocean of great depth, save where Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land exist as the sole remaining fragments of that continent. There is evidence that forests once flourished where now nothing higher than the dwarf willow can exist. There is evidence, too, of tremendous volcanic eruptions, covering great areas with sheets of basalt. In contemplating these mighty revolutions, and the gradual changes through long aeons of ages, the leading fact connected with the polar regions is that here life first became possible. Here it was first possible that man could exist. The evidence that the arboreal vegetation of the miocene period originated round the north pole appears to be quite conclusive. The exploration of the Arctic area has disclosed proofs of wondrous secular changes which no imagination, however vivid, could surpass. Alike in the far south, as in the far north, there is food for the imagination--lights thrown here and there on the history of a marvellous past. Such speculations are a fitting introduction to a study of the existing state of things, which has lasted through the historical period, and probably for ages before the dawn of history.

The two halves of the Arctic regions may be called the Old World or Eastern, and the New World or Western halves. In the former the water flows in, and in the latter it flows out, thus causing a great oceanic circulation not yet fully investigated, but now clearly understood in its general outline.

In the eastern half of the Arctic regions the warm current from the Atlantic flows along the coast of Norway and then bifurcates, one branch going north along the western side of Spitsbergen, the other continuing along the Lapland coast and turning up the west coast of Novaya Zemlya. All the great rivers of Siberia also empty themselves into this eastern half. Thus there is a constant tendency, aided by prevailing winds, for the whole drift from the eastern shores to flow across the Arctic Ocean to the western side.

On the American or western side the tendency is to flow outwards, but there is only one outlet, along the east coast of Greenland. The in-flow is insignificant, Bering Strait is shallow, and but a small volume of water finds its way within the Arctic area by that opening. The flow from all the American rivers, except the Mackenzie and Colville, is at once checked by land in front of their mouths. Hence the whole tendency of aqueous movement is to flow out, while there is only one means of escape.

The consequence of this general drift outwards, with but one corresponding outlet, is very remarkable. The harvests of ice are carried across the Arctic Ocean until they are brought up by the American coast and islands, where they are completely stopped. Then the ice gradually increases from annual snow falls and other causes until it becomes upwards of a hundred feet in thickness. There is some movement in the summer, and a tendency eastward to the north of Ellesmere Island and Greenland, to join the Greenland current. The other straits and channels are too shallow for such ice to pass. In one place alone, between Melville and Banks Islands, there is a drift of this heavy ice into the Parry Archipelago, for a distance of 500 miles, but it is then stopped by King William Island. Otherwise the only outward current for the heavy polar ice is down the east coast of Greenland. Even there the great body of ice comes from the Arctic Ocean itself, and but a small part is due to the escape of ice that has been pressed upon the western land. The outward current of Baffin's Bay only carries off the ice of one or two years' growth, which has formed in the bay itself and in the straits and channels leading into it. There is thus a vast accumulation along the outer shores of the western side, and the rising tendency of Arctic lands no doubt increases the difficulty of escape, and the consequent secular and unchanging block all along the western outer shores of the Arctic Ocean.

We may now turn to the quadrants of which mention has already been made on page 4. On the eastern side the first quadrant extends from the Greenwich meridian to 90? E., on an arc of the Arctic Circle, with two converging lines each 1410 miles long. In this quadrant we have Arctic Norway and Russia to Cape Chelyuskin, and the Spitsbergen, Franz Josef, and Novaya Zemlya groups of islands. It may be called the Spitsbergen Quadrant. The second quadrant on the eastern side includes the Siberian coast from Cape Chelyuskin to Bering Strait--the Siberian Quadrant. The third quadrant, being the first on the western side, includes Greenland, Baffin's Bay, and Baffin, North Devon, and Ellesmere Islands. The fourth quadrant, being the second on the western side, contains the northern coast of the American continent, and the Parry Archipelago. It is the American Quadrant.

It is desirable thus to have before us a general sketch of the Arctic economy before proceeding to the contemplation of the achievements of discoverers. We shall better appreciate their labours, their splendid efforts extending over centuries, if we know what they did not know, the results of their combined victories over the mighty obstacles which Nature placed in their way.

ICE AND ICEBERGS

A knowledge of the nomenclature of polar phenomena is an essential preliminary to the study of the history of Arctic adventure. We must know the meanings of words which constantly recur and which form, as it were, the dialect of our subject. We begin then with the names for different forms and appearances of polar ice.

In a year, under favouring circumstances, the ice attains a thickness of six feet, in two years of nine feet. Sometimes masses of ice under-run each other, and the result is a thickness of 20 to 50 and even 100 feet.

The "Inland Ice" of Greenland rises to a height of 8000 feet, and the deep fjords run for 80 or 100 miles before they end at the foot of walls of ice rising abruptly from the water. These walls are the terminations of glaciers from the inland ice, which, constantly throwing off icebergs, are called discharging glaciers. There are eight principal discharging glaciers on the west coast of Greenland. On the Greenland continent the snow, converted into ice by pressure, has in the course of ages filled all the valleys, covered the mountain tops, and formed a smooth plateau far above them, so that the thickness of the inland ice is measured by thousands of feet. The ice walls at the heads of the discharging glaciers are driven onwards by the force of gravity, the pressure of the superincumbent mass behind them being enormous. In some cases the rate of movement is as much as 28 yards in a day.

A discharging glacier, on reaching the sea, has a thickness of at least a thousand feet. It continues to slide along the bottom until it reaches a point where the depth of the water has sufficient buoyant force to lift it. Still it continues its course. The action of the tides gives rise to fissures in the enormous mass, and at length the foremost part is broken off, and drifts away as an iceberg. The icebergs are discharged from the fjords in vast numbers, and are eventually carried by the current of Baffin's Bay and Davis Strait into the Atlantic.

The colour of an iceberg is opaque white. Scattered through the mass, and sometimes visible on the surface, are strata of deep blue ice, varying in width from one to several feet. They have an exquisitely lovely effect, contrasting with the deep white of the rest of the berg. These blue stripes may be formed by a filling up of the fissures in the inland ice with water. Such refrigeration of the water in the fissures may be an important agent in setting these great mountains of ice in motion. Sometimes there is a passage right through an iceberg. But it is when a line of icebergs is refracted on the horizon that the polar scenery is converted into a veritable fairy land. Some are raised up into lofty pillars. Again a whole chain of them will assume the appearance of a long bridge or aqueduct, and as quickly change into a succession of beautiful palaces and temples of dazzling whiteness, metamorphosed by the fantastic wand of Nature. When the ice breaks up in summer, the current takes many of the icebergs into the Atlantic.

"Like a scarlet fleece the snowfield spreads And the icy fount runs free, And the bergs begin to bow their heads And plunge and sail in the sea."

The difference between the two polar areas--the Arctic an ocean surrounded by continental lands, the Antarctic a continental land surrounded by oceans--causes the differences in the character of the ice with which the sea is laden.

The Antarctic continent is covered with an ice-cap, which along some coasts is buttressed by ice cliffs terminating in the sea, and on coasts facing east is bordered with lofty mountains through which glaciers have forced their way. Throughout the Antarctic regions there is evidence of much more extensive glaciation in former ages. The glaciers are for the most part receding, although there are proofs that some are still moving down to the sea. But there are fixed masses of ice on the sea coast, in the form of cliffs: tongues which could not have been deposited or fed by existing glaciers. At the period of maximum glaciation the climate was much milder, and as the severity of the temperature, due to less precipitation, increased, there must have been sterile ice conditions, and consequent retirement of glaciers and ice-fields. These receding glaciers do not supply bergs; and as the Antarctic icebergs are by far the largest in the world, their origin must be from some other source.

The great ice barrier of Ross fills a vast bay 400 miles across, and at least 300 miles deep, with soundings of about 600 ft. There is no reason why other such barriers should not exist in other parts of the Antarctic regions as yet unknown. These barriers must be the sources of the enormous tabular icebergs which float northward in such vast numbers. Their height is about 200 ft., and their length from one or two to as much as twenty miles.

TRIBES AROUND THE POLE

Before we begin to follow the achievements of the great Polar worthies, it seems desirable to take a brief survey of the dwellers on the threshold of the Arctic regions; for here are races who have for ages found homes along the European, Siberian, and American coasts of the Polar Ocean and in Greenland.

To begin with the Spitsbergen quadrant; the northern coast of Norway, now known as Finmarken, and the Kola peninsula face the Polar Sea, but, owing to the warm current from the south, this coast has its bays and inlets clear of ice throughout the year. The coast is lined by numerous islands, several of them of considerable size to the west of the North Cape, and is indented by deep fjords. The most northern point of Europe is in 71? 11?. Inland there is a flat mountain plateau, with a height of some 1500 feet, consisting of stony desert with a few patches of reindeer moss, and some morasses. The plateau is traversed by rivers such as the Tana and the Alten, which force their way through accumulations of gravel before reaching the sea. Pine forests have now receded from the coast to the foot of the gneiss mountains in the interior, and their place is taken by dwarf birch near the sea. The Kola peninsula, known to the Russians as the Murman coast, has high and precipitous granite cliffs and a line of central hills sending the drainage on one side to the Murman, and on the other side to the White Sea.

This is the land of the Lapps, encamped for hunting, and on the sea coast for fishing in summer. Their average height is about 5 ft. 1 in., and they have high cheek-bones, small elongated eyes, wide mouths, little or no beard, and dark straight hair. Their circular tents are made of coarse cloth supported by branch poles of birch and pine. A fire is lighted in the centre, and there is an opening at the top by which the smoke escapes. The Lapps are always wandering for food for their reindeer--moss and birch leaves, and in winter lichen. One family requires a herd of at least 200 animals. The Lapps drive their reindeer in sledges, make cheese from their milk, eat the venison, and make most of their clothing of the skins. These people can march great distances with a short quick step and carry very heavy loads. They live to a considerable age. Their language is Mongolian, and their religion one of magic and witchcraft, which inspired some awe in the minds of the Norsemen who enforced tribute from them.

Eastward of the Samoyed country is the Siberian coast, extending for 2000 miles of longitude along the Polar Ocean, a vast tundra traversed by three great rivers--the Obi and its tributary the Irtish, the Yenisei, and the Lena. To the east of the Lena there are three smaller rivers, the Yena, Indigirka, and Kolyma, but all have their sources far to the south of the Arctic Circle. Some other streams, merely rising in the tundra, flow into the Polar Ocean. These are the Piasina, Taimir, Khatanga, Anabara, and Olenek between the Yenisei and Lena, and the Alaseia between the Indigirka and Kolyma.

The three great rivers have remarkable width and volume. The Yenisei is more than three miles wide for at least a thousand miles, and a mile wide for another thousand. The 200 miles of delta have a width of 20 miles. The sudden melting of the winter accumulations of snow gives rise to floods of great magnitude. Vast harvests of ice are thus annually poured out. The tundra is generally a slightly rolling plain sloping towards the rivers, intercepted by deep river valleys with precipitous sides. The ground is frozen for several hundreds of feet below the surface, and for eight months, from October to May, the tundra is a sheet of snow 6 feet thick. In the summer a wild-looking country appears, full of small lakes, swamps, and streams, swarming with mosquitos and frequented by myriads of birds. The sun brings to life a brilliant Alpine flora, and the tundra has a carpet of grass and mosses.

The Siberian shores of the Polar Ocean forming the edge of the tundra are for the most part low and flat, and Cape Chelyuskin, the northern termination of the Taimir Peninsula in 77? 36? N., is a low promontory.

This Siberian tundra is the coldest region in the world. The earth, alternating in many places with strata of solid ice, is hard frozen in perpetuity for a depth of several hundred feet. The mean temperature of January is -65?, but the interior is much colder than the sea coast, there being a difference of 20?. At Yakutsk -79? has been recorded, but the greatest natural cold ever measured is -93? at Verkhoyansk, in 67? 34?, near the river Lena.

A great part of the Siberian coast is quite uninhabited, but some hardy tribes extend their wanderings to, and even have permanent settlements on the shores of the polar sea. The Samoyeds, with both reindeer and dog-sledges, extend their wanderings to the Yenisei. The Ostiaks of the Obi and upper Yenisei rivers, numbering 27,000, are Finnish and have close racial affinities with the Samoyeds. They possess a fine breed of dogs, but live chiefly by fishing. The Yuraks of the Yenisei are a branch of the Samoyeds. The Tunguses and Yakuts wander further to the east, as far as the Kolyma.

The mysterious Onkilon or Omoki inhabited the river banks and sea shores of eastern Siberia. "Once there were more hearths of the Omoki on the shores of the Kolyma than there are stars in a clear sky." They were established in fixed settlements. The remains of their forts, built of tree trunks, and their tumuli are found, especially near the banks of the river Indigirka. Nordenski?ld found the ruins of their house-sites near his winter quarters, and his excavating operations were rewarded by finding a stone chisel with a bone handle, slate knives, bone and slate spear-heads, and a bone spoon. Some centuries ago there was great pressure from the south, and the Onkilon, Omoki, and Chelagi appear to have been driven northwards. The Omoki are said to have gone away over the frozen ocean, but it is not known whither. It is thought that they went to the land said to be visible from Cape Jakan in clear summer weather. At all events they disappeared.

Their place was taken by the tribe called Chukchis, who occupy the Siberian coast from Chaun Bay to Cape Chelagskoi. They are divided into reindeer or inland, and coast Chukchis, each with about 400 tents representing a population of 2000. The Chukchi race is the finest on the Siberian coast, the finest eastward of the White Sea. They are cleanly compared with the Samoyeds, with a higher type of head, more intelligent-looking, and with a reddish-white complexion. They are a hardy and thriving people, with many children, but indolent when not forced to exertion by want of food. They live in large and commodious tents both winter and summer, which are unlike those of any other tribe. The Chukchi tents consist of an outer and an inner tent. The outer one is of seal and walrus skins sewn to each other, and stretched over wooden ribs bound together by thongs. The inner tent is covered with reindeer skins and a layer of moss, and is warmed by oil lamps. The tents are usually pitched on the necks of land separating the strand lagoons from the sea. The boats of the Chukchis are of walrus hide sewn together, and stretched on a frame of wood or bone. Their dog sledges are very light and narrow, with runners of bone covered with layers of ice, and they use shoes for their dogs, to prevent their feet from being cut by the ice. Their snow-shoes, for the winter, have a frame of wood crossed by well-stretched thongs. Expert with lance, bow and arrows, fishing line and nets, they live on the spoils of the chase, to which cloudberries are added in favourable seasons, when the fruit is able to ripen. The Chukchis carve animals and other figures during the long winter nights, and display considerable skill and ingenuity in the conversion of all the means that Nature has placed within their reach to their own uses. They are brave and independent, intelligent and well disposed, and on the whole must be considered to be the finest of the Arctic races.

The dogs used for draught by the Siberian tribes have much resemblance to the wolf. They have long projecting noses, sharp upright ears, and long bushy tails curling over their backs. They vary in colour, and the size of a good sledge dog is about 2 feet 7 inches in height, and 3 feet in length. In summer they dig deep burrows in the ground or lie in the water to avoid mosquitos. The feeding and training of dogs is a special art, but their natural sagacity is extraordinary.

This American coast produces edible berries and roots, and on the land are musk oxen, reindeer, wolverines, wolves, foxes, martens, hares, and marmots. Salmon, with other fish, frequent the rivers, and many wading birds, besides ptarmigan and willow grouse, ducks, geese, and guillemots, come to breed. It is a Sub-arctic, not an Arctic region. The whole coast, for 1700 miles, affords the means of subsistence.

The American coast Eskimos have a dozen winter settlements, four of which are never altogether abandoned in the summer. They move about for purposes of bartering and trading, as well as for hunting and fishing; but they have permanent settlements, like that at Point Barrow, with a population of 300 souls in 50 huts. These Eskimos average a height of 5 feet 4 inches, with square shoulders, deep chests, and great muscular strength in the back. The hands are small and thick, and the lower limbs well proportioned. In walking their tread is firm and elastic, the step short and quick. Their hair is black and cut in an even line across the forehead, the complexion fair enough to make the rosy hue of the cheeks visible, giving place to a weather-beaten appearance before middle age. The face is flat and plump with high cheek-bones, forehead low, nose short and flat, eyes dark, sloping obliquely. The mouth is prominent and large, the jaw-bones strong, with firm and regular teeth. The expression is one of habitual good humour, but marred by wearing large lip ornaments of stone.

In October the sea becomes closed and the men set nets under the ice for fish, also angling with hook and line through ice holes. In January they set out in search of reindeer, hollowing out dwellings in the snow-drifts. Their hunting employment lasts until April, when they return home to get ready their boats for whaling. In summer they are scattered over the country in search of seals and birds.

These Eskimos are described as cheerful and good-humoured, quick-tempered but placable, and with strong conjugal and parental affections. They are shrewd and observant and some exhibit considerable capacity. Far to the eastward, in Boothia, the Eskimos live in snow houses instead of wooden huts. These snow houses are built of large blocks of snow carefully laid and made in the shape of a dome with a square hole for light. The dog sledges of the Boothians are rude, and the runners made of folded seal-skin carefully coated with ice.

Thus the Eskimos spread themselves over a vast extent of country, wandering from Bering Strait to Labrador, a distance of 2000 miles. They adapted themselves to their environment alike in the construction of their dwellings and in their contrivances for fishing and hunting. They are equally at home whether the building material is plank, drift wood, stone or snow; and with the same versatility they adapt their weapons and sledges to the materials within their reach. These Eskimos, by reason of their vigour and courage, of their shrewdness and intelligence, have been among the greatest and most successful wanderers on the face of the earth.

Equally ingenious is the use of an air bladder attached to their harpoons to retard the seal in its rush when struck, and to keep the harpoon floating if the quarry is missed. The point of the harpoon is also so fitted that, when the seal is struck, it slips out of the shaft, obviating the danger of the shaft being broken by the animal's struggles, and of the barb slipping out of its body. The point is attached to the shaft by a thong.

Seals provide material for clothes, boots, tents, and food. The Greenland dogs are excellent for their purpose and draw sledges 30 or 40 miles a day over smooth ice easily; but the dog as a draught animal is an Asiatic invention. The Greenland sledge consists of a couple of boards for runners, 6 feet long, with cross pieces, and two upright poles for guiding. All is kept together by seal-skin thongs, thus affording elasticity. On smooth ice a pace of 16 miles an hour can be attained, the load for dogs being nearly 500 lb. Eskimo necessary furniture consists of lamps, wooden tubs, dishes, and stone pots. Their arms are bows and arrows, bird darts, javelins, and lances.

The wood required by the Greenland Eskimo is provided by the Arctic current. Flowing down the east coast of Greenland it is diverted by the Gulf Stream, turns round Cape Farewell, and flows up the coast of Greenland bearing abundance of drift wood. Again meeting the Baffin Bay current, it is turned again down into the Atlantic. This drift wood consists of coniferous trees which must come from Siberia. Pieces 60 feet long are found on the coast so far north as 60? 30?, one yielding 3 cords of wood in 63? N., and pieces of 12 to 30 feet are not uncommon.

We have now passed in review all the dwellers on the Arctic Threshold, from Lapland round the northern shores of Siberia and America to Greenland, considering them with reference to their environment, and we have traced the wanderings of the Onkilon until we find the last remnant of the exodus on the northern shore of Baffin's Bay. Such a brief survey is a necessary introduction to the history of Arctic enterprise.

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