ARCTIC REGIONS -AERIAL EXPLORATIONS. 171 



tute the chief obstructions that bar the channels and inlets 

 fringing the unknown Polar area. The glacier fragments 

 above described are cemented together in the winter time 

 by the freezing of the water between them. An open 

 frozen sea, pure and simple, instead of forming a barrier 

 to arctic exploration, would supply a most desirable high- 

 way. It must not be supposed that, because the liquid 

 ocean is ruffled by ripples, waves, and billows, a frozen gea 

 would have a similar surface. The freezing of such a sur- 

 face could only start at the calmest intervals, and the ice 

 would shield the water from the action of the wave-making 

 wind, and such a sea would become a charming skating 

 rink, like the Gulf of Bothnia, the Swedish and Norwe- 

 gian lakes, and certain fjords, which, in the winter time, 

 become natural ice-paved highways, offering incomparable 

 facilities for rapid locomotion. In spite of the darkness 

 and the cold, winter is the traveling season in Sweden and 

 Lapland. The distance that can be made in a given time 

 in summer with a wheeled vehicle on well-made post roads 

 can be covered in half the time in a>pulk or reindeer sledge 

 drawn over the frozen lakes. From Spitsbergen to the 

 Pole would be an easy run of five or six days if nothing 

 but a simply frozen sea stood between ('hem. 



This primary physical fact, that arctic navigators have 

 not been stopped by a merely frozen sea, but by a combina- 

 tion of glacier fragments with the frozen water of bays, 

 and creeks, and fjords, should be better understood than it 

 is at present; for when it is understood, the popular and 

 fallacious notion that the difficulties of arctic progress are 

 merely dependent on latitude, and must therefore increase 

 with latitude, explodes. 



It is the physical configuration of the fringing zone of the 

 arctic regions, not its mere latitude, that bars the way 

 to the Pole. 



I put this in italics because so much depends upon it 

 I may say that all depends upon it for if this barrier can 

 be scaled at any part we may come upon a region as easily 

 traversed as that part of the Arctic Ocean lying between 

 the North Cape and Spitzbergen, which is regularly navi- 

 gated every summer by hardy Norsemen in little sailing 



