The Arctic World

by Anonymous

The inhabitants of Western Europe, and more particularly those of the British Isles, have a peculiar interest in the North Polar Regions. Deriving their wealth and importance from their commercial enterprise, and that commercial enterprise leading their ships and seamen into the furthest seas, they have necessarily a vital concern in the discovery of the shortest possible route from that side of the Earth which they inhabit to the other, or eastern side; and this, more particularly, because the East is rich in natural productions which are of high value to the peoples of the West.

Now a glance at the map will show the reader that the traders of Western Europe—the British, the French, the Dutch, the Scandinavians—are situated on the northern shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and that, to reach the Pacific Ocean or the Indian, only two routes are at present open. For instance, they may cross the Atlantic to the American coast, and, keeping southward, strike through Magellan’s stormy Strait or round the bleak promontory of Cape Horn into the Pacific, and then, over some thousands of miles of water, proceed to Australia or Hindustan or China; or they may keep along the African coast to the Cape of Good Hope, its southernmost point, and so stretch across the warm Tropical seas to India and the Eastern Archipelago. A third, an artificial route, has indeed of late years been opened up; and ships, entering the Mediterranean, may pass through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea. But this last-named route is unsuitable for sailing-ships, and all three routes are laborious and slow. How greatly the distance would be shortened were it possible to navigate the Northern Seas, and, keeping along the north coast of the American continent, to descend Behring’s Strait into the Pacific! In other words, were that North-West Passage practicable, which, for three centuries, our geographers and explorers so assiduously and courageously toiled to discover! But a still shorter route would be opened up, if we could follow a line drawn from the British Islands straight across the North Pole to Behring’s Sea and the Aleutian Archipelago. This line would not exceed 5000 miles in length, and would bring Japan, China, and India within a very short voyage from Great Britain. We should be able to reach Japan in three or four weeks, to the obvious advantage of our extensive commerce.

Hitherto, however, all efforts to follow out this route, and to throw open this great ocean-highway between Europe and Asia, have failed. Man has been baffled by Nature; by ice, and frost, and winds, and climatic influences. With heroic perseverance he has sought to gain the open sea which, it is believed, surrounds the Pole, but a barrier of ice has invariably arrested his progress. His researches have carried him within about 500 miles of the coveted point; but he is as yet unable to move a step beyond this furthest limit of geographical discovery. Immediately around the North Pole, within a radius of eight to ten degrees or more, according to locality, still lies an Unknown Region, on the threshold of which Science stands expectant, eagerly looking forward to the day when human skill and human courage shall penetrate its solitudes and reveal its secrets.

This Unknown Region comprises an area of 2,500,000 square miles; an immense portion of the terrestrial surface to be shut out from the knowledge of Civilized Man. Its further exploration, if practicable, cannot but be rich in valuable results. Not only would it furnish the shortest route from the West to the East, from progressive Europe to conservative Asia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but it could not fail to add in a very important degree to our stores of scientific information. Sir Edward Sabine is surely right when he says, that it is the greatest geographical achievement which can be attempted, and that it will be the crowning enterprise of those Arctic researches in which England has hitherto had the pre-eminence.

We may briefly indicate to the reader some of the advantages which might be expected from exploration in the Unknown Region. It would unquestionably advance the science of hydrography, and lead to a solution of some of the more difficult problems connected with the Equatorial and Polar ocean-currents, those great movements of the waters of which, as yet, we know so little.

A series of pendulum observations, it is said, at and near the North Pole, would be of essential service to the science of geology. We are unable, at present, for want of sufficient data, to form a mathematical theory of the physical condition of the Earth, and to ascertain its exact configuration. No pendulum observations have been taken nearer than 600 or 620 miles to the North Pole.

Again: what precious information respecting the strange and wonderful phenomena of magnetism and atmospheric electricity would certainly be acquired! How much we have yet to learn in reference to the Aurora, which can be learned only in high latitudes, and at or near the point which apparently represents a magnetic focus or centre!

It has also been pointed out by Mr. Markham that the climate of Europe is largely affected by the atmospheric conditions of the Polar area, in which the development of extremely low temperatures necessarily leads to corresponding extreme changes of pressure, and other atmospheric disturbances, whose influence extends far into the Temperate Zone. For the satisfactory appreciation of these phenomena, says Mr. Markham, a precise knowledge is required of the distribution of land and water within the Polar Region; and any addition to our knowledge of its unknown area, accompanied by suitable observations of its meteorology, cannot fail to afford improved means of understanding the meteorology of our own country, and of the Earth generally.

There can be no doubt, too, that geology would profit, if we could push our researches nearer to the Pole, and force our way through the great barrier of the Polar ice. It is highly desirable, too, that we should know more of that interesting class of animals, the Mollusca, both terrestrial and aquatic, fresh-water and salt-water. Again: what a wide field of inquiry is opened up by the Polar glaciers; their extent, their elevation, their range, and the effects produced by the slow but continuous motion of those huge ice-rivers over the surface of the country. And the botanist has a right to calculate upon the discovery of many precious forms of vegetable life in the Unknown Region. The Arctic flora is by no means abundant, but it is peculiarly interesting. In Greenland, besides numerous mosses, lichens, algæ, and the like, flourish three hundred kinds of flowering plants, all of which are natives of the Scandinavian peninsula; and Dr. Joseph Hooker remarks that they exhibit scarcely any admixture of American types, though these are found on the opposite coast of Labrador. It would seem probable that in the warm period which preceded the Glacial Age, the Scandinavian flora spread over the entire area of the Polar Regions; but that during the Age of Ice it was gradually driven within its present limits, only the hardier types surviving the blight of the long lingering winter.

And what would be the gain to the zoologist? Why, it is a well-known fact that life abounds in the Arctic waters, and especially those minute organisms which play so important a part in the formation of sedimentary deposits, and help to build up the terrestrial crust. We have much to learn, moreover, of the habits and habitats of the fish, the echinoderms, the molluscs, the corals, the sponges of the extreme Northern Seas.