APPENDIX 735 



seal when the ice gets several feet thick. The actual breathing hole to 

 the surface frequently is not more than an inch in diameter, and 

 may be covered with snow. Presumably the seal, in looking up when 

 swimming about in the water, can see light patches where his breathing 

 holes are, and thus he is enabled to find them again after having de- 

 scended to feed. He does not have to go deep to feed, for he lives 

 mainly on the floating animal life near the surface rather than on fishes, 

 although he gets a few of these also. He is stationary with reference 

 to his breathing holes but continually moving with reference to the sea 

 bottom and traveling in the same direction as the ice under which he 

 lives. 



It has been understood now for decades that a ship that freezes in the 

 ice near Wrangel Island or the New Siberia Islands will arrive three 

 or four years later in the ocean north of the Atlantic. Similarly, a seal 

 that finds himself in the vicinity of Wrangel Island in the fall of a cer- 

 tain year will, in all probability, find himself two or three years later in 

 the vicinity of Spitsbergen, Assuming that the ice that drifts across the 

 Pole of Inaccessibility, or the North Pole for that matter, was originally 

 formed in the Beaufort Sea where seals are known to be abundant, it will 

 follow that a certain number of seals are continually being carried across 

 either Pole. 



"ice deserts" 



But there are undoubtedly in the Arctic certain "ice deserts." These 

 are regions of "Sargasso Sea" character. In them pressure due to winds 

 or currents operating from a distance heaps the ice up, and it may even 

 remain in an eddy for years. We found one such region north of Prince 

 Patrick Island. Seals were not absent but they were comparatively rare, 

 and they became more numerous again when we got farther north. On 

 coming to such an ice desert the traveler who depends on some method 

 similar to ours, where the main reliance for food and fuel is upon seals, 

 will find that he is face to face with a problem similar to that of a 

 traveler who, in crossing an unknown continent in tropical or temperate 

 regions, finds himself gradually entering a desert produced by lack of 

 rain. Such a traveler overland would have to depend upon his judgment. 

 He might avoid the desert by skirting it; he might turn back, giving 

 up his journey for the time being; or he might make a dash across, 

 hoping that his resources would take him to the farther side of the hos- 

 tile area. Just such a problem one would have to face in ice travel on 

 coming to a region where an eddy existed and where massed ice had evi- 

 dently persisted for years. 



That is, it would be a problem to a party trying to live by forage. 

 To a company using the pemmican-and-relay system it would constitute 

 no problem at all. They would care about the smoothness, stability, free- 

 dom from leads of the ice, and under these heads they might find the 



