THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 11 



Pole. Even when you realize that it is comparatively easy of 

 access, it is still ninety degrees away from the equator, and unique. 

 The sentiment surrounding the idea of uniqueness might have been 

 weakened had people realized that as a known mathematical point 

 the North Pole was obliged to be comparatively accessible. But 

 that bit of knowledge has succeeded in maintaining itself as the 

 exclusive property of a few specialists, and the world in general 

 has imagined the North Pole to be to the Arctic what the mountain 

 top is to the mountain. That analogy is true when applied to the 

 Pole of Inaccessibility but not when applied to the geographic 

 North Pole. But false views when strongly held are as powerful in 

 their effect upon human conduct as any true views can be, and this 

 has been another reason why men brought up on the shores of the At- 

 lantic have striven into the polar area with the latitude of 90° North 

 as their goal, but with the practical result of progressively uncov- 

 ering vast areas that lay between. 



In the process of removing the imaginary Arctic from our minds, 

 we come to the proposition that all land in the far north is covered 

 with eternal ice. 



Permanent ice on land is another name for a glacier. When we 

 stop to think of it, glaciers exist in any part of the world with the 

 proper combination of high altitude and heavy precipitation. 

 Mount Kenia in Africa, the top of which is considered to be about 

 seven miles from the equator, has "eternal ice" upon it, a glacier 

 of considerable area. There are known to be huge glaciers in sub- 

 tropical Asia and lesser ones in South America. They are eternal 

 on the mountain-tops of Mexico; in California they come a 

 little nearer sea level, as they do in Switzerland. They come lower 

 yet in the State of Washington, not primarily because it is farther 

 north but chiefly because of the heavier precipitation. British 

 Columbia is the warmest province in all Canada, and yet it contains 

 three-quarters of all the glaciers of continental Canada, again be- 

 cause of the heavy precipitation. The south coast of Alaska has 

 a climate not very different from that of British Columbia or of 

 Scotland, though somewhat more rainy than Scotland. A compara- 

 tively warm country, southern Alaska contains huge glaciers which 

 in some instances reach to the ocean and break off, forming icebergs 

 that float away to be rapidly melted by the warm waters of the 

 Pacific. But if you travel seven or eight hundred miles overland 

 from the glacier-infested south coast northward you come to the 

 prairies bordering the Alaskan north coast. Here is a comparatively 

 cold climate; but on the great triangular coastal plain of fifty 



