CHAPTER XLIV 
CONCLUSION 
The long and glorious story of Arctic discovery is 
drawing to a close. Two unknown areas of unequal 
importance remain. One is the extensive region now 
known as Baffin Island, which needs thorough explora- 
tion, and will doubtless receive it from the Dominion 
Government in due time. The other is the part known 
as the Beaufort Sea, a much more extensive unknown 
area from Prince Patrick and Baring or Banks Islands 
westwards to the Liakhov Island between the 70th and 
80th parallels of North Latitude, and indeed much 
further to the north. Future explorers have still before 
them the problem of the distribution of land and water 
over this unknown region. Ever since I collected vestiges 
of Eskimo encampments along the shores of the Parry 
Islands and became convinced that the wanderers came 
from the west, I have been inclined to expect the discovery 
of land in this area. The description of the ice off the 
west coast of Banks Island confirmed me in the belief of a 
land-locked sea. Deductions from the additional know- 
ledge furnished by the Nares Expedition rather shook 
my belief on some grounds, but the apparent impossibility, 
if there is no land, of all the ice over so vast an ocean 
escaping between Spitsbergen and Greenland was an argu- 
ment on the other side. Professor Spencer and Dr Harris 
support the view that there is undiscovered land north- 
ward over the Beaufort Sea on grounds connected with 
tidal phenomena. Dr Harris's view is that this land is 
of great extent, stretching away far to the north. The 
existence of an archipelago, of continental land, or of 
a continuous ocean is the problem to be solved — the 
remaining Arctic achievement of the future. 
Impressed with this conviction I read a paper at a 
meeting of the Royal Geographical Society on 
November 13th, 1905, on "The Next Great Arctic 
