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Sierra Club Bulletin 



Two Arctic A time when nearly the whole world is at war offers little 

 Expeditions encouragement to the enterprise of explorers. Two notable 

 Arctic expeditions, however, were undertaken before the 

 outbreak of the war. The safe return of members of both exploring par- 

 ties last summer is a fact of great interest to students of the earth's sur- 

 face. The Crocker Land Expedition carried a survey along the south- 

 eastern coast of Ellesmere Island, northwest of Greenland. That these 

 explorers found a great increase of glacial activity throughout the north- 

 ern regions, since the middle of the nineteenth century, is a fact of con- 

 siderable climatic importance. In one place an enormous new glacier has 

 formed as a result of the progressive refrigeration of the country. The 

 land is said to be fairly buried in ice, which flows over and around the 

 headlands and fills all the fiords. In view of the fact that the seasonal 

 cold broke all records for one hundred and nine years in New England 

 last spring, and the further fact that this increase of cold has been 

 noted in the temperate zone of the entire northern hemisphere, one is 

 tempted to raise the question whether another northern ice period is ap- 

 proaching. 



At Cape Isabella Mr. Macmillan, the leader of the expedition, was 

 fortunate enough to find the records left by Sir George Nares of the 

 British expedition of 1876, and mail for the Discovery and the Alert leit 

 a generation ago by Sir Allen Young of the Pandora. The latter vessel, 

 renamed the Jeannette, was commanded by George W. De Long when 

 he set out in 1879 from San Francisco on his fateful expedition. 



The southern party of the Canadian Arctic Expedition made its way 

 northward around Alaska to the point where the Canadian-Alaskan 

 boundary line touches the Arctic Ocean. From there they explored the 

 coast eastward for a thousand miles, consuming three years in the 

 achievement of this task. Their discoveries are of great interest and im- 

 portance. Among them is the canon of the Croker River, deeply eroded 

 from dolomite. The collections, both of plants and of animals, include 

 specimens of groups never before encountered in the western Arctic 

 area. The ethnologists found brand new material for study in the Cop- 

 per Eskimos, whose language, folklore, and social customs were investi- 

 gated by one of the anthropologists who lived and wandered about with 

 them for half a year on the little known Victoria Island. These Eski- 

 mos make their tools of native copper, which was found there in nug- 

 gets weighing in some cases forty pounds. The geologist of the party 

 estimated that two billion tons of the ore were in actual sight. 



Reports of the discoveries made by the northern party under the di- 

 rection of the noted explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson are now being 

 awaited eagerly. He had not been heard from for a year and a half, but 

 the Navy Department has, just as we are going to press, received word 

 of the safe arrival of his party at Fort Yukon. Stefansson undertook to 

 explore the Beaufort Sea region west of the Parry Archipelago and 

 north of Alaska and Yukon Territory. 



