ArciK Ice Roll ^ 



This is the largest natural province on this continent, covering 

 over 2.500.000 square miles or almost one-third of its total land 

 area. North America wraps almost halfway around the pole — i.e.. 

 through 160 degrees of longitude. What ive here call the Arctic 

 thus constitutes almost half of the earth's northern, dry. cold, 

 desert belt. 



For our purposes, the northern limit of this natural province 

 is the northern shore of the Mackenzie District of the 

 Canadian Northwest Territories, the Canadian Islands, such 

 as Banks, Prince Patrick, Parry, Effef, Sverdrup, and Ellesmere; 

 and the northern lip of Greenland. Its southern boundary is 

 the northern limit of trees, which forms a line that makes a great 

 sweep to the south as shown on the accompanying map. 



There is also a narrow strip of truly Arctic vegetation that 

 rims Alaska from the mouth of the Mackenzie River to 

 Point Hope, and then south to Bristol Bay. It is. in some respects, 

 a western outlier of this province, and it will be described 

 with Alaska. 



This Arctic province may be divided into four parts. 

 First, to the west, a huge triangle extending along the northern 

 coast of the Mackenzie District, then widening out to the 

 east to include almost the whole Keewatin Peninsula; second, 

 the western Islands, forming another triangle between the 

 Arctic and Beaufort Seas on the west. Smith Sound, northern 

 Baffin Bay. Lancaster Sound, and the Gulf of Boothia on the 

 east, and the mainland on the south. Third, Baffinland and the 

 northwestern tip of Labrador named the Ungava Peninsula: 

 and, fourth, Greenland. 



About one-third of this province is occupied by sea and 

 almost half the remainder by an icecap. About a third is 

 permanently covered with snow and nearly a quarter of that 

 which is not is composed of fresh-water lakes. Sea ice covers 

 almost the whole of the sea surfaces during the winter. 

 The polar pack ice lies against its northern periphery, from 

 Prince Patrick Island in the west to Foreland in Greenland in the 

 northeast. The greater part of the land of this province, apart 

 from Greenland, is at a low level (mostly below six hundred feet), 

 but a chain of substantial mountain ranges extends from 

 northern Ellesmereland to southern Baffinland. 



Greenland is, in some respects, a world unto itself, 

 85 per cent of it being covered with a great dome of ice. There 

 are three theories as to its true nature: one, that it is a huge 

 mountainous island: a second, that it is two islands split almost 

 up the middle by a deep channel: a third, that it is a large 

 group of islands, many of them below sea level, with considerable 

 distances between them. The icecap that now holds it all 

 together is estimated to be almost two miles thick in some places 

 near its center. It is the only substantial icecap in the Arctic, and 

 it rises to almost ten thousand feet above sea level in the middle. 



water everywhere, the area has a lower rainfall than the Sahara. 

 A far greater menace than the winter snows are the summer 

 dusts that sometimes transcend in choking oppressiveness any- 

 thing produced in a hot desert. Mosquitoes and other blood- 

 sucking flies may here surpass in number and virulence any- 

 thing found in the tropics — the mangrove swamps of South 

 America with their mosquitoes, ihenni, and sand flies not ex- 

 cluded. The coloring of even the Barren Lands may be brighter 

 than almost any temperate land in the fall and the flowers are 

 as gay, vividly colored, and numerous as in any other part of the 

 world. Finally, the insects there form richer feed for birds than 

 anywhere else on earth because of certain special circumstances. 



Let us assume that we have been dropped on the north axial 

 pole. This place is very odd in sundry respects. First, if you 

 weigh 135 pounds at the equator, you will weigh 150 pounds at 

 this point because there is no centrifugal force to partially coun- 

 terbalance the pull of gravity. Second, you will partake of one 

 less motion than everybody else in that you won't be going any- 

 where around the axis of our planet but, instead, will be sta- 

 tionary but revolving. This lack of one cosmic movement is not 

 appreciable, but the increased weight must be taken into account 

 in transporting freight. Much else is also at first very strange. 



For two parts of the year, days alternate with nights in a fairly 



normal manner, but for a time in the summer the sun stays 

 above the horizon all day and all night, whereas in winter it 

 goes away below the horizon for several weeks. In spring and 

 autumn there are periods when it is perpetual sunrise or sunset. 



The show that the polar ice can put on during fine weather in 

 spring and autumn is almost unbelievable. One cannot, of course, 

 see the fullest display everywhere in the north, and least often 

 at the pole itself, which is in the middle of a huge, inverted 

 saucer of sea ice with little surface topography. There is little but 

 a white glare there, though the sky can sometimes be of an 

 intense turquoise or sapphire blue, with clouds that form a sort 

 of tent over one's head because of the uninterrupted horizon. 

 Rather, it is in those places within the Arctic Circle where 

 coastal ice of one kind or another is present that purely fantastic 

 effects are encountered. This is particularly true where the 

 tongues of glaciers, sea ice, and other residuals of snowfall are 

 framed by dark rock or decorated with bright-colored lichens. 



Ice, according to its origin, gge, and location, varies in color 

 all the way from white to black and crosswise through every 

 shade of the spectrum, but intrinsically and for the most part its 

 shades are in the blues and greens. When the rays of a per- 

 petually rising or setting sun glance across the gently curving 

 surface of the earth and strike upon mountains of faceted and 



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