74 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



Far North" is a shifting term. The Romans considered the middle 

 of France too frigid ever to support a high civihzation. Fifty years 

 ago the Arctic was supposed to stretch a long arm down to where 

 now stands Winnipeg with its 200,000 people, and it was debated 

 if potatoes could be successfully cultivated in that part of Sas- 

 katchewan which is now known to be nearly if not quite the world's 

 greatest wheat country. So the "Far North" will continue retreat- 

 ing till the Arctic that is unpeopled with our race shall have shrunk 

 far within the technical arctic circle as laid down by the mathe- 

 matical astronomer and geodesist. The lands commonly supposed 

 to be covered with ice are even now covered with grass; the "eter- 

 nal silence" of the North exists only in books; the "vast arctic 

 deserts where no living thing can flourish" are the abode of fat 

 herds of indigenous grazing animals winter and summer — as you 

 will see if you read on in this book. 



The "Far West" is gone. But in the North is a greater frontier 

 than the West ever was, stretching across Canada and across Si- 

 beria. The commercial value of the remotest arctic islands will be 

 seen ere we die who now are young. 



To those of broad outlook it needs no commercial development 

 to justify polar exploration, or any honest attempt to widen the 

 bounds of knowledge. Though we hope for commercial develop- 

 ments from the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913 to 1918, we 

 need not await them for justification. More than a dozen volumes 

 of scientific results are partly written (some of them are printed), 

 and charts of new lands have been published as a result of the 

 decision represented by the telegraphic order issued at Ottawa when 

 to those of defeatist temperament everything looked black: 



"Pursue expedition as per original plan." 



