672 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



It seems that schools are much the same in Seattle or in Copen- 

 hagen, and Charlie and Noice laughed now at what they had learned 

 in geographies and read in "adventure stories" about the "barren," 

 "silent," and "frozen" north, which they had found so hospitable 

 and friendly. I wonder if it pays to keep up the bogey of the polar 

 regions, as we do Santa Claus? I have been uncomfortably cold 

 in the North but I have been more uncomfortably hot in the 

 South. I have even been more uncomfortably hot in the North 

 than uncomfortably cold — during my summer on the arctic circle 

 near the Coppermine River in 1910, when we had day after day 

 that ranged from above ninety in the afternoon to above seventy 

 during the night that was no night because the sun still beat down 

 upon us. People do freeze to death in the North but always through 

 some accident or carelessness; people do die of sunstroke in the 

 South, which could presumably be prevented. But germs spread 

 by heat are more menacing and we have no means of excluding 

 heat from our houses comparable with our method of excluding 

 cold and generating artificial warmth. And' especially is there 

 no portable invention for keeping one comfortably cool as clothes 

 keep one warm in the North if rightly made, no matter what the 

 temperature. At this winter camp of Storkerson's I used to warm 

 the mercury before going out to take a star observation at night. 

 It usually froze before the observation was over, which did not 

 entirely prevent results for if properly placed the mercury freezes 

 level. But no matter how solid it froze I lay beside it comfortably 

 warm in my furs, even when I had to wait half an hour for the 

 star to arrive at the point where the sextant was set. I had trouble 

 in keeping the lenses from clouding with my breath, which was 

 only a nuisance. 



How helpful it was to have worked out a new and comfortable 

 attitude towards the North can be seen better the more you 

 read of the difficulties encountered by those who assumed it to be 

 hostile. Sverdrup came out of his four years on the Nansen ex- 

 peditions thinking the polar regions by nature hostile to comfort, 

 but he got nearly over the idea during the four years he spent on 

 Ellesmere Island, though never completely enough to make his 

 work easy. He really knew how rich the North was in vegetation 

 and in animal life, and no book gives more convincing evidence 

 of this than the two volumes of his "New Land." Yet he does 

 not appear to have trusted his own deductions, for he always carried 

 huge quantities of food and never extended his journey beyond 

 the limit for which these sufficed, except that the trips were length- 



