ARCTIC RESOURCES 215 



certain distance from the equator was no more reliable than the 

 Eskimo belief in a lifelessness beyond a certain distance from land. 



It would take too long to explain here why early travelers did not 

 observe life and considered themselves to have observed the absence 

 of it in regions which we now know to be well supplied. But I have 

 dealt with this fully elsewhere.'' 



Up to fifteen years ago, as indicated by the quotation from Mark- 

 ham, ante, Beaufort Sea was considered practically or wholly devoid 

 of living things. It had been defined as the peculiar home of the 

 massive ice known as paleocrystic. No part of the Arctic Sea seemed, 

 in 1912, more dead and forbidding. We have come to realize since 

 then that the center of the floating Arctic ice, now called the pole of 

 inaccessibility, does not coincide with the north pole, as was pre- 

 viously assumed, but is really near latitude 84° N. and longitude 

 160° W., therefore nearer to Beaufort Sea than was formerly supposed. 

 Had that been understood in 1912,'^ the presumption for the lifelessness 

 of that sea would have been further increased. 



The Theory Challenged 



But it is from the reported actual abundance of life in Beaufort 

 Sea that the ancient view of the lifelessness of every part of the Arctic 

 has been challenged recently. We must therefore consider why Beau- 

 fort Sea used to be "known to be" lifeless; therein we have a key to 

 the supposed general lifelessness of the central Arctic waters. 



Since it had been observed both that the abundance of ocean 

 life generally increases as you go northward from the equator and that 

 life is tremendously abundant at the edges of the ice, the problem was 

 to reconcile these observations with the theoretical scarcity or absence 

 under the ice. 



The long-known abundance of whales at the edge of the ice pre- 

 supposed a corresponding abundance there of the tiny living things 

 upon which whales feed. This had been independently observed, 

 too; so there was no room for argument. Plankton would be carried 

 under the ice by any current in whatever direction that current was 

 tending and at a rate approximately set by the current itself. 



If able to, the larger animals would follow this feed. So you ac- 

 counted for the assumed absence of the food things farther north 

 either by denying that there were currents to carry them or else by 

 explaining how they -died and sank to the bottom. You had to sink 

 them as well as kill them, for if they floated after death they might 



s See "The Friendly Arctic, " where the subject is dealt with incidentally throughout the narrative 

 and particularly in Chapters 12 and 13. 



' For Kolchak's formulation of that conception as published in Russian in 1909, of which Mr. 

 Stefansson was not aware until recently, see the text passage at footnote 3 in the translation from 

 Kolchak on "The Arctic Pack and the Polynya" presented above. See also footnote 3 there. — Edit. 

 Note. 



