POLAR GEOGRAPHY BROWN 371 



civilization.^^ Siberian natives in their greater isolation will no 

 doubt last longer, but they also show signs of failing. 



Up to the present the tide of human migration has flowed and 

 ebbed on Arctic shores and has been mainly a seasonal movement, 

 marked even in the permanent residents by a great degree of no- 

 madism. But eventually the tide of white settlement will definitely 

 set northward, even to the Arctic seas, and in its flood destroy the 

 present inhabitants. 



It is no more presumptuous to forecast a scattered population of 

 reindeer and musk-ox farmers in the " barren lands " of Arctic 

 Canada, the tundras of Siberia, and even in Greenland and Spits- 

 bergen too, a hundred years hence than it was a hundred years ago 

 to suggest sheep farmers in the plains of Australia or wheat fields in 

 the Peace Valley of Canada. Every land beyond the frontiers of 

 settlement has been a " never-never land " to unadventurous and un- 

 imaginative folk living in sheltered homes. But in most cases the 

 prediction has been falsified. 



Prejudice and antipathy, which loom so strong at present, can be 

 ignored. When the Arctic calls for population and offers induce- 

 ment in the form of material gain, all diiRculties of that kind will 

 vanish, just as the old-time horror of the Tropics disappeared as 

 knowledge grew and prospects of gain loomed through the heat. The 

 only question that remains unanswered is the adaptability of peoples 

 of European descent to life in the Arctic climate. At present there 

 is little evidence on which to base satisfactory conclusions, for nearly 

 all migration in historic times has been either within the temperate 

 zone or from temperate to tropical. There are few instances of mi- 

 grations from temperate to polar or even from warmer to cooler 

 climates. 



The problem is one of considerable importance in the future of 

 human settlement for two reasons. First, because there is no real 

 evidence that the white races are suited for the Tropics — that is to 

 say, for permanent racial transference as apart from visits. All the 

 evidence that is conclusive points the other way and suggests that 

 only by a slow process of natural selection can the white races 

 ever find a gure footing in the Tropics. Long before that is 

 achieved the colored races will have effectively occupied the warm 

 lands.^*^ This means that the white races must turn, as in effect 

 they have been turning for several centuries, poleward in their 

 search for new homes. Secondly, the possibility of polar settle- 



1^ See Report of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 1926, and K. Rasraussen, Across 

 Arctic America (1927). 



" From this statement it does not, of course, follow that all regions within the 

 Tropics are necessarily uncolonizable by whites, since altitude may in certain places 

 compensate for the ill effects of a tropical climate. Nor does it follow that a few 

 exceptional families may not now and then persist in the Tropics for a generation or 

 two, though such instances generally involve the introduction of fresh blood. 



