2 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



tion must then have been lacking. To the explorer, as we think 

 of him, the North seems terrible. But certainly it can have had 

 no terrors for people who gradually occupied the land because they 

 preferred it to other lands farther south. It is true that some his- 

 torians and even a few anthropologists have assumed that the 

 northern people were crowded into the North by stronger races that 

 pressed upon them from the south. But in modern times close ob- 

 servers of the polar races have found no evidence that they are 

 now or have recently been suffering any pressure from the south, and 

 there is no real ground for the assumption that they ever suffered 

 such pressure. The northern people do not abhor the North. There 

 have been extensive migrations from northern Norway, but these 

 have never been to the tropics; or, if they have been, it has been for 

 special reasons in restricted cases. The northern Norwegian, if he 

 leaves his country, generally finds himself most at home and hap- 

 piest in Gome similar climate, such as Manitoba or Alaska, where 

 the winter is as cold as or colder than he ever knew it at home. For 

 one who does not stop to think, it might be a source of wonder that 

 runic stones carved by Scandinavians have been found on the coast 

 of Greenland north of Upernivik at latitudes the attainment of which 

 brought glory to John Davis. But to the man who carved the stone 

 and doubtless traveled far beyond it, the feat probably brought no 

 local renown. His countrymen would find it no more remarkable 

 that he could survive the cold of Greenland than a Zulu finds it 

 that his neighbors can survive the heat of Africa. 



Of polar explorers as we know them, in distinction from the 

 people who live contentedly in the North because they understand 

 it, Davis and Hudson are typical. In the first period of polar 

 exploration, men were universally in such fear of the North that 

 they only made furtive incursions into it by ship in summer, re- 

 turning south before autumn if they could. At that time it was 

 believed that men of our race, softly nurtured in countries like Eng- 

 land, either could not survive a polar winter or would find the hard- 

 ships of doing so quite beyond any reward that could be expected. 



In the second stage, of which Edward Parry is typical, the polar 

 winter was still dreadful, but a few men were found of such stern 

 stuff that they were willing to brave its terrors. The battle with 

 frost and storm at that time was a form of trench warfare. The 

 hardy navigator penetrated as far north as might be by ship and 

 then, figuratively speaking, dug himself in and waited for winter 

 to pass, coming out of his hibernation in the spring. In that stage 

 of exploration it was considered an achievement when Parry's men, 



