ARCTIC FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 



By ANDREW J. STONE 



HEN one glances at a chart of the vast 

 region of country that stretches away 

 to the north of the United States and 

 Canada, washed by the waters of Hud- 

 son Bay on the east, Bering Sea on 

 the west, and the great Arctic Ocean 

 on the north, he has before him an 

 Arctic wilderness so great as to cause 

 every section of the Arctics, where exhaustive research has 

 been conducted, to seem small in comparison. Yet this 

 expanse has been avoided and neglected by almost all 

 explorers, naturalists and scientists, while in many places 

 along the shore of Greenland, Spitzbergen and Franz 

 Josef Land the stones have been turned over many 

 times in the hope of finding something new and of interest 

 to science. Just why this is so is hardly clear, unless it 

 be that most men fear to trust themselves very far from 

 the ships or base of food supplies. Certain it is that when 

 one enters the heart of this great wilderness, he is further 

 from civilization in time of travel and further from any 

 real base of supplies than the traveler in any other part 

 of the Arctics, and I might add that the difficulties of 

 travel are almost or quite as great. 



Arctic and sub-Arctic America is rich in its animal and 

 plant life. There is material which is of a hundred times 

 greater importance to either the scientific or commercial 

 world than that of the more barren islands farther north. 



Its zoological, botanical, geological and mineralogical 

 wealth is unquestionably great, to an extent that is not to 

 be compared with that of Greenland and other northern 

 regions. The influence of this will be strongly felt in the 

 commercial world and many branches of science are bound 



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