478 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



From Storkerson's letter, with details filled in later, we learned 

 about his survey last fall of the northeast coast of Victoria Island. 

 A few days after his support party returned he made camp near 

 a conspicuous headland. The next morning when he left camp he 

 met a terrific head gale a few miles away, and his camp was so 

 near he decided to return to it. The next day he tried again and 

 met the same gale. Storkerson is an experienced man and the 

 weather must have been exceptional, for he made several other 

 starts and on each occasion turned back on meeting the head wind. 

 This must have been a local phenomenon and the probability is 

 that they could have worked through it. There are similar places 

 known to me on the mainland. At Langton Bay, for instance, 

 there is some years a local gale blowing steadily off the plateau 

 to the south with the force of a hurricane. This storm is similar 

 to a waterfall. The plateau inland is covered with heavy cold air, 

 the sea in front of it is free from ice or covered with thin ice 

 only, with consequent strong ascending currents of warm air. The 

 cold air from the plateau flows over the escarpment to fill the space 

 left by the ascending warm air. When you come from inland trav- 

 eling north towards the coast of Franklin Bay, you notice a light 

 breeze blowing at your back when you are six or eight miles from 

 the edge of the plateau. By the time you come to the edge about 

 three or four miles from the ocean and begin to descend, there is a 

 terrific gale blowing that lifts pebbles and makes slivers of slate 

 go like cartwheels over the snow, which is not snow in appearance 

 but has been hardened and polished by the wind until it resembles 

 ice. This gale may be blowing sixty or eighty miles an hour on 

 the beach, but if you proceed north along the neck of the Parry 

 Peninsula eight or ten miles from the cliffs you gradually walk out 

 of it and find yourself perhaps in calm weather or in a light wind 

 blowing in another direction. 



In Storkerson's camp now the daylight had become so faint 

 and conditions so unfavorable that he decided to return to the 

 Polar Bear, leaving the rest of the work to be done another time. 

 He conjectured that he had been able to finish about half of the 

 space intervening between Wynniatt's farthest on the west and 

 Hansen's farthest to the southeast, and he had discovered a lofty 

 range of mountains running east and west inland. Storkerson has 

 had the naming of all capes, islands and other features discovered 

 on his survey of Victoria Island both at this time and when he 

 continued it later. But to this range I gave the name Shaler 

 Mountains, in memory of an unexcelled teacher and charming gen- 



