734 APPENDIX 



had been drifting towards Greenland and gradually thickening season 

 by season until it was comparatively smooth and stable. 



4. We have now considered the main points which must be kept in 

 mind in interpreting the rather rigid data of the map. There remains 

 a matter which was of little consequence to Wrangel, Nansen, or Peary. 

 In their work they counted little upon replenishing their stock of food 

 and fuel and thus making their journeys longer and easier through the 

 killing of local animals, such as seals, polar bear, or fish. The presence 

 of these, except near land, was either unsuspected or ignored ; it formed 

 no basis of their calculation and did not in practice affect their results 

 materially. But in the system of "living off the country" * the animal 

 life of the region is vitally important. 



THE QUESTION OF FOOD SUPPLY 



From my study of north polar conditions I conclude that the amount 

 of animal life has no direct relation to latitude. We have already seen 

 that the North Pole by no means corresponds to the Pole of Inaccessi- 

 bility which is distant from it by more than 400 miles. The North Pole 

 lies, therefore, towards the edge of the area that is difficult of access 

 through being covered with floating ice. It might seem more reasonable 

 to suppose, then, that the amount of animal life would vary with dis- 

 tance from the Pole of Inaccessibility, but that does not seem to be the 

 case either. 



In the present discussion we shall ignore all forms of life except the 

 seal, for this is the only animal upon which it appears practical to rely. 

 We have seen whales and fish as far from land as we have seen seals, 

 but in planning a journey over the ice I think it unlikely that I should 

 ever trouble enough about animals other than the seal to carry equipment 

 for securing them. It is probable that seals have no great difficulty 

 anywhere within the polar area in securing food and that the most seri- 

 ous condition they have to fight is the massing of the ice in such a way 

 that they cannot come up to breathe. In the summer it can be assumed 

 that most of the seals are in open water ; that is, they are either living in 

 neighborhoods where there are scattered ice cakes like islands in a sea 

 of water or else where there are open leads running like great rivers 

 across the ice fields. In autumn the water of the leads will freeze over, 

 at first with a thin ice that can be easily broken; but when this ice gets 

 to be four inches or more in thickness the seal has to keep open a 

 breathing hole by gnawing. Seals that live in comparatively level bay 

 ice near land (and the same is doubtless true of seals living under level 

 patches of ice on the ocean) have commonly several breathing holes, 

 perhaps half a dozen or more, scattered over two or three acres of area. 

 These holes are of necessity cigar-shaped, so as to admit the body of the 



*Vilhjalmur Stefansson: "Living Off the Country as a Method of Arctic 

 Exploration," Geogr. Rev., Vol. VII, 1919, pp. 291-310. 



