128 POLAR PROBLEMS 



tioned conventional boundary of the Yukagir Sea, i.e. of the line 

 Berry Point-Cape Kamennyi. Accepting the limit of the Arctic 

 Pack in the longitude of Wrangel Island (approximately i8o°) to lie 

 in latitude 72° N., it is possible to assume that on the meridian of 

 150° E. (near the eastern end of Novaya Sibir Island) it is located in 

 latitude 76° N., passing near Bennett Island. The route of the schoon- 

 er Zarya of the Russian Polar Expedition in 1901 determined the limit 

 of the pack as 10-12 miles to the south of this island, which agrees 

 with the observations of the American expedition on the schooner 

 Jeannette in 1881. 



Farther to the west the limit of the Arctic Pack bends gradually 

 northward. The position of this limit in 1901, as observed by the 

 Zarya, shows that the outskirts of the pack east of Bennett Island 

 gradually bend to the south and, to the west of it, turn to the north, 

 so that it was possible for the Zarya to penetrate as far as latitude 

 77^° N. on the meridian of Faddeev (Thaddeus) Island. In 

 1893 the Norwegian North Polar Expedition on the Fram met the 

 pack in this region in 77^° N. and passed into it approximately in 

 latitude 78>^° N. on the meridian of 138° E. It may be assumed that, 

 as one goes farther west, the limit of the Arctic Pack gradually recedes 

 still more to the north. This limit lies about in latitude 79^° N. 

 on the meridian of Cape Chelyuskin and in 8i°-8i>^° north of Franz 

 Josef Land and Spitsbergen, rising to 82° N. abreast of Greenland 

 and Grant Land. It then descends in a southwestern direction to 

 Beaufort Sea, coming close to the coast [of Prince Patrick Island] 

 of the Parry Islands in latitude 76° N., and then approximately follows 

 the parallel of 72° N. off the northern coast of Alaska. 



The limits of this region are defined by the extreme northern 

 points reached by ships on the different meridians. It may be rep- 

 resented schematically, on a m.ap of the Polar Regions, in the form 

 of an elongated ellipse whose major axis corresponds approximately 

 to a line connecting Crown Prince Rudolf Island (Franz Josef Land) 

 with Cape Barrow (north coast of Alaska) and whose minor axis 

 corresponds to a line drawn from Bennett Island to Cape Alfred Ernest 

 (west coast of Grant Land, or Garfield Coast). The point of inter- 

 section of these axes lies approximately in longitude 180° and latitude 

 84° N. The area defined by this ellipse encloses the region permanently 

 covered with the ice fields of the Arctic Pack and inaccessible to navi- 

 gation.^ The explorations of Parry, Markham and Parr, Peary, 

 Nansen, Cagni, and especially the drift of the Jeannette under Lieu- 



3 It is interesting to note that this is an earlier formulation of the concept which Stefansson later 

 put forth independently as the "pole of relative inaccessibility" (Vilhjalmur Stefansson: The Region 

 of Maximum Inaccessibility in the Arctic, Ceogr. Rev., Vol. lo, 1920, pp. 167-172, with map; reprinted 

 as an appendix in his "The Friendly Arctic, " New York, 192 1). The position which Stefansson assigns 

 to that point, 83° 50' N. and 160° W., is substantially the same as Kolchak's in expressing the eccen- 

 tricity of the core of the Arctic toward the Bering Strait side in relation to the mathematical pole. — 

 Edit. Note. 



