E.— GEOGRAPHY. 83 



water poured into the Arctic basin from the great Siberian and American 

 rivers, which in its turn depends on causes far removed from Arctic 

 regions. The complexity of the problem is almost baffling, but even 

 before the chain of cause and effect is traced, useful work could be done 

 in looking for correlations. 



Methods of Exploration. 



Every age has seen a change in the methods employed in polar 

 exploration, and it may be of interest to review the resources of the 

 explorer in the light of modern knowledge. In the early days of Arctic 

 exploration, attempts concentrated on the hope of finding an open sea 

 route to the north. Hence the lines of attack were by the two gulfs of 

 warmth due to the northward flowing waters of the North Atlantic drift, 

 Hudson Bay with Davis Strait and, particularly, the Greenland Sea. By 

 the early part of the nineteenth century the hopelessness of advance by 

 that means was realised, and not long after the prospect of an open-water 

 route across polar regions in a lower latitude faded. Then came the 

 period of probing the unknown north from a land base in a high latitude 

 from which sledge journeys could take their start. Eventually the North 

 Pole was achieved by this means long after Nansen, throwing aside all 

 accepted canons of polar travel, had found a new and daring method. 

 Instead of avoiding besetment he courted it : instead of battling with the 

 floes he made use of their drift. 



Meantime, the age of steel prompted a new method of attacking ice. 

 The ice-breaker was tried away back in 1899, when the Yermack made an 

 experimental voyage to the north-west of Spitsbergen. On more serious 

 exploration the Russians used ice-breakers on the Arctic coast of Siberia 

 in the years immediately before the Great War. But though an ice- 

 breaker can deal with ice several feet in thickness, it cannot dispose of 

 that ice ; if the pack is close the ice-breaker will sooner or later become 

 beset and helpless and at the mercy of pressure due to wind and current. 

 Even a powerful ice-breaker could be crushed by such enormous pressure. 

 Only a ship that rises is safe. For keeping harbours open and smashing 

 new ice, the modern ice-breaker is valuable, but it has no place in serious 

 polar exploration. 



The polar pack-ice is still the most formidable obstacle that the 

 explorer has to face. It may provide a laborious but uncertain road for 

 sledging, but because of its drift before current and wind, it is always 

 dangerous to vessels except those built on lines that defy crushing. Such 

 a ship can drift in safety with the moving pack, but seldom can retain its 

 freedom of action. Man to-day is little better able to penetrate heavy 

 pack than he was three hundred years ago. The ice-infested seas are 

 still barred to commerce and the only advance that has been made is in 

 a knowledge of the position and drift of the ice, so that navigation of the 

 edge of the pack is relatively safe. 



And now another method of advance has been tried. The baffling 

 pack-ice can be avoided by progress through the air. Air transit in the 

 Arctic is not new ; as long ago as 1897, S. Andree made a hazardous and fatal 

 attempt, but in those days the aeronaut could do no more than drift, and 

 Andree unfortunately drifted to destruction. In recent years the aero- 



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