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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Island, Borden Island (discovered by the 



Canadian Arctic Expedition in i < » 1 5 ) . 

 Grant Land, Greenland, and Spitzbergen 

 to North Cape, Norway, a total distance 

 of 2,745 miles. From North Cape, Petro- 



gr'ad overland is 788 miles. 



These are but small fractions of the dis- 

 tances that have to he traversed between 

 any of these places by the present land 

 and water routes. 



The shortest air route from the north 

 of Great Britain to the north of Japan is 

 about 4,960 miles, as against 8,542 for the 

 present London-Tokyo rail and steamer 

 route (or 11,236 miles via Montreal). 

 But, as shown above, the polar route has 

 several advantages above the others be- 

 sides shortness. 



A disadvantage of the shortest possible 

 route from England to Tokyo is that it is 

 not sufficiently northerly to give the maxi- 

 mum amount of daylight, for only about 

 half of the journey lies north of the 

 Arctic Circle. 



THE MOST FEASIBLE FLYING ROUTE 



To get a greater benefit from the per- 

 petual daylight of the arctic summer, a 

 route might be laid from Scotland to the 

 east tip of Iceland ; thence by way of Jan 

 May en Island, the summer hotel already 

 established in Spitzbergen ; then Franz 

 Joset Land, Emperor Nicholas II Land, 

 or Cape Chelyuskin, and thence overland 

 to Japan. 



This route is only a few hours' flying 

 longer than the shortest possible route. 



How easy a route this will be with the 

 better airplanes and dirigibles of the fu- 



ture is seen if we compare it with the far 

 more difficult things already done with 

 the appliances of two years ago that are 

 1 asl bec< >ming 1 >bs< >lete. 



The British biplane thai crossed the 

 Atlantic had to make a single "hop" of 

 [,960 miles from Newfoundland to Ire- 

 land ; the X-C4 made a hop of 1 ,-'40 miles 



from Newfoundland to the Azores; Sir 



Ross Smith in 27 days 20 hours elapsed 

 time flew 11.500 miles from England to 

 Australia, with a longest single hop of 

 712 miles, and average hops of 412 miles. 



Compare this with the longest hop of 

 976 miles on the London-Tokyo short 

 ( or polar ) route of 6,300 miles. 



If Sir Ross Smith, with a plane that 

 has been and will be improved upon, has 

 already done these greater things, the 

 solvability of every problem of the Lon- 

 don-Tokyo route is not to be supposed 

 difficult. 



As the centers of population continue 

 to move north in Canada and Siberia, the 

 importance of the transpolar air routes 

 will correspondingly increase. 



Whoever grasps at all the vast natural 

 resources of the polar lands and seas and 

 understands the conditions under which 

 they are already beginning to be de- 

 veloped will have fascinating dreams 

 about any number of transarctic air 

 routes destined to come into every-day 

 use whenever air travel in general be- 

 comes a commonplace on the more dan- 

 gerous and difficult but already specula- 

 tively accepted routes between Liverpool 

 and New York, San Francisco, Hawaii, 

 and Japan. 



