DISCOVERY 



89 



Reasons based on the nature of the pack-ice found 

 round the margins of the unexplored area cannot be 

 dismissed quite so easily. Yet there is perhaps no 

 more unsound argument ; for heavy pack is used by 

 the protagonist of one party (MacMillan) as practically 

 proving obstructing land, while other authorities (e.g. 

 Nansen) draw from it an exactly opposite conclusion. 

 In this connection, it should be stated that there is no 

 more untrustworthy guide to the natme of the pack-ice 

 than the popular accounts of the expeditions sent out 

 to search for Sir John Franklin : travellers' tales are a 

 byword, and have certainh' lived up to their reputation 

 in the matter of pack-ice. Matters were also made 

 worse through members of the Nares Expedition of 1S75 

 arguing for a " palaeocrystic sea " of unknown anti- 

 quity. Few reliable records, in fact, of the thickness of 

 the ice e.xist before the development of the camera 

 and its application to Arctic work provided a method 

 of standardisation which, when used scientifically as 

 opposed to artistically, does not lie. To-day no one 

 believes in a " palaeocrystic sea" ; and any scientist 

 wishing to argue about the Arctic pack can refer to 

 Nansen's Farthest North, where he will find that the 

 heaviest normal ice the latter met with is not more than 

 five years old. Nansen qualifies his statement by 

 limiting its application to the ice found along the Fram 

 track. The fact is probably, however, of universal 

 application : for none of the photographs accompany- 

 ing MacMillan 's, Stefansson's and Storkersen's articles 

 show anything widely different from the five-year 

 Arctic floes or even from the two- to three-year 

 Antarctic pack. 



Nansen has not only shattered theories built on the 

 nature of the ice, but has also invalidated to a great 

 extent those built on tidal and current phenomena, 

 which are by some regarded as still more convincing. 

 One writer in America, basing his hypothesis on 

 oceanographical grounds, has even drawn a map with 

 the supposed land marked in. Exploration since then 

 has only touched the fringe of the debatable area, 

 snipping off small pieces from the margin of this hypo- 

 thetical polar land. Nansen, however, strikes at the 

 very heart of the theory, pointing out most forcibly 

 that the present tidal observations are contradictory ; 

 they are therefore quite useless for arriving at any such 

 general conclusion, and likely to be misleading if so 

 employed. 



There are, in fact, only two lines of evidence which 

 are in any way reliable. The first of these is the 

 position of the edge of the so-called continental shelf ; 

 the other is based on the drifts of various ships caught 

 in the ice. The edge of the continental shelf is taken 

 as the loo-fathom contour of the sea bottom. It is 

 found in practice that this line approximately encloses 

 a wide area of shallow water round all the continents, 



and that the transition from this to oceanic depths is a 

 sudden one. Known Arctic lands are all situated on a 

 shelf of this nature ; and beyond it Nansen has proved 

 the existence of depths of over 1,000 fathoms, which 

 probably prevail over a large part of the Polar Basm. 

 With the exception of a few isolated islands of volcanic 

 and coral origin in the southern seas, it is contrary to 

 all experience to find lands arising from oceanic depths. 

 One can therefore say that, if the boundary of the 

 continental shelf were completely known round the 

 Arctic Ocean, it would be quite justifiable to infer that 

 there was no large mass of undiscovered land in the 

 Polar Basin. This, however, is very far from being the 

 state of our knowledge. On the accompanying sketch- 

 map a dotted line shows roughly the loo-fathom limit 

 north of Alaska and Siberia. It is based on a relatively 

 small number of observations, and it is quite likely 

 that subsequent exploration will cause big corrections 

 to be made to it. North of the Beaufort Sea, however, 

 there are no observations at all, and it is just here, 

 where the position of the outer edge of the continental 

 shelf is unknown, that land may exist. 



The drifts of vessels in the ice supply very positive 

 information. The Karluk (1913-14), Jeannette (1879- 

 81) and Fram (1893-96) tracks are almost a con- 

 tinuation one of another. They do not represent so 

 much the route of a true current as the mean wind 

 directions from point to point ; and, moreover, the ice 

 does not drift directly before the wind, but 15^-20° to 

 the right. They show, in fact, a wind-drift which can 

 be paralleled in all the other oceans. It is surely a 

 stroke of good fortune that the only three drifts on 

 record should link up one with another to form an 

 almost continuous curve round the unexplored area- 

 It goes without saying that, given the continuance of 

 present meteorological conditions, any other ships will 

 be certain to follow more or less closely this extra- 

 ordinary line. 



An interesting piece of evidence in connection with 

 the above is afforded by the drift of some of a large 

 number of casks which were placed on the ice north of 

 Canada and Alaska twenty years ago. Of these only 

 two have yet been located, one of them having travelled 

 from Point Barrow to Iceland in sLx years, the other 

 from Point Bathurst to the north of Norway in eight 

 years. Very likely both followed the Karluk- J eannette- 

 Frani track : the first, however, did not travel down the 

 Greenland coast to Cape Farewell, as did the Jeannette 

 wreckage, but, being farther off the coast, was deflected 

 to Iceland ; the second was presumably also somewhere 

 near Iceland when it got caught in the Gulf Stream Drift 

 and carried north again to the north of Norway. 



The East Greenland Current is a continuation of the 

 Arctic Drift, but its rate is three to four times as fast as 

 the movement of the ice in the Polar Basin, where the 



