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The National Geographic Magazine 



A MODERN ViKING 



ROALD AMUNDSEN, the Nor- 

 wegian who has just accom- 

 plished the Northwest Passage from 

 Europe to Alaska, has performed a feat 

 which the explorers of England and 

 Scandinavia attempted in vain for many 

 centuries. Scores of expeditions were 

 lost, and hundreds of brave men per- 

 ished in the endeavor to do what 

 Amundsen in a walrus sloop, equipped 

 with a small gasoline engine, has suc- 

 ceeded in doing. The old mariners 

 fought for the Northwest Passage be- 

 cause they believed that it would prove 

 a short commercial route between the 

 East and West. The English Parlia- 

 ment had a standing offer of $50,000 to 

 the man who first made the passage. 

 The offer stood for nearly one hundred 

 years, until McClure, in 1853, won the 

 prize by going from Bering Sea east- 

 ward to Europe. Nobody except 

 Amundsen has ever before made the 

 passage from East to West. Henry 

 Hudson was searching for it when his 

 crew mutinied and thrust him into a 

 tiny boat, and left him to perish on the 

 lake which bears his name. Sir John 

 Franklin was also seeking it when he 

 and his 220 men disappeared, but Lieu- 

 tenant Gore pointed out the opening 

 which Amundsen has used. The route 

 which Amundsen has definitely located 

 will be of considerable use to whalers, 

 who are venturing further and further 

 north each year, but it is unlikely that 

 anything else will come of it. 



But Amundsen's achievement has 

 much more than a romantic value. For 

 two years he has been conducting mag- 

 nectic observations in the vicinity of 

 the north magnetic pole which Sir John 

 Ross claimed to have located in 183 1. 

 He has now definitely fixed the position 

 of this pole in King William Land, not 

 far from the position ascribed to it by 

 Ross. The new knowledge which his 

 observations will give us of the char- 



acter and influence of the magnetic pole 

 will prove of immense value in the 

 study of magnetic variation which is 

 now being conducted by several obser- 

 vatories, particularly by the U. S. Coast 

 and Geodetic Survey and the Carnegie 

 Institution, under the direction of Dr 

 L. A. Bauer. Magnetic deviation of the 

 needle is one of the principal uncer- 

 tainties with which mariners have to 

 contend It is so important that the 

 Carnegie Institution recently estab- 

 lished a special department to help the 

 magnetic survey of the world, purchas- 

 ing a special ship for work in the Pacific 

 Ocean. Terrestrial magnetism is a mys- 

 terious force. Nearly every year we 

 have a magnetic storm which interrupts 

 our telegraph wires for several hours. 

 Whence it comes or what it is we know 

 not. The eruption of Mont Pelee was 

 accompained by magnetic waves which 

 were simultaneously recorded in Ha- 

 waii, Alaska, United States, and Eu- 

 rope. All this makes the magnetic 

 work of Amundsen particularly valu- 

 able, and we must remember that that 

 was the principal object of his expedi- 

 tion. 



Amundsen left Christiania in June, 

 1903, taking only seven men with him 

 in his sloop the Gjoa. His route lay 

 up Baffin Bay, and then through Lan- 

 caster Sound, Barrow Strait, Peel 

 Sound, James Ross Strait, Rae Strait, 

 Simpson Strait, Dease Strait, Corona- 

 tion Gulf, and Dolphin and Union 

 Straits to King Point, on the western 

 side of the Mackenzie River delta. 



At the Mackenzie River, where he ar- 

 rived in September, 1905, he found 

 some whalers who were caught in the 

 ice. They told him that the political 

 situation between Norway and Sweden 

 was strained, and, being anxious to 

 learn what had happened as well as to 

 hear from his family, he determined to 

 march south to the Yukon telegraph 

 line. It was a 700-mile trip on snow 

 shoes; it had been made only once or 



