HE expression used in our title seems a fitting one to apply to a number of meteorological observatories and stations maintained for the benefit of science in regions remote from the comforts and conveniences of civilization. Some are on the summits of lofty mountains, the ascent of which is laborious and even perilous. Others are situated in the bleak wildernesses of the circumpolar zones. Public attention has all too rarely been called to the heroism and self-sacrifice of the men who constitute the staffs of these lonely outposts.
The institution shown in our gravure—officially known, in honor of the Dowager Queen of Italy, as the Regina Margherita Observatory—crowns the summit of Monte Rosa, on the northern Italian frontier, and is 14,960 feet above sea-level. It is devoted not only to meteorological investigations, but to studies of the physiological effects of great altitudes and various other researches, and is open to the savantsof all nationalities who are courageous enough to scale the second highest summit of the Alps. It is habitable for only about two months; viz., from the middle of July to the middle of September. Each year a temporary telephone line is constructed connecting the observatory with the plains of Italy. This is the highest telephone line in the world, and its installation is an arduous undertaking. A permanent line is impossible, on account of the shifting of the glaciers and snowfields on which the poles must be erected.
There is also a meteorological observatory on Mont Blanc, but it is not at the summit and is not quite so high as that on Monte Rosa. The solar observatory which once stood at the very top of Mont Blanc no longer exists. The United States Signal Service (now the Weather Bureau) formerly maintained observatories on Pike's Peak (14,134 feet) and Mount Washington (6,280 feet). The loftiest of meteorological stations was, however, that formerly operated by Harvard College Observatory on the summit of El Misti, Peru (19,200 feet).
For a number of years the United States Weather Bureau maintained a large and important observatory at Mount Weather, at the crest of the Blue Ridge, near Bluemont, Virginia. In the Old World one of the most famous of mountain meteorological observatories was that which stood on Ben Nevis (4,406), the highest summit in the British Isles. This was closed in 1904.
If the conditions of life at these high-level stations are such as to repel any but the ardent lover of science, the same is true in even greater measure of those endured by the little band of meteorologists who man the observatory maintained by the government of Argentina at Laurie Island, in the South Orkneys, on the verge of the Antarctic. Every year a party of four is sent out from Buenos Aires to spend a year of exile in this inhospitable spot, which is generally ice-bound, and has not even wireless communication with the rest of the world. This station has been in operation since 1904. The staff, which is changed each year, has embraced men of several nationalities—Scotch, American and others.
Far within the Arctic Circle two meteorological observatories are maintained in Spitsbergen; but these are, at least, connected with the world by radiotelegraphy.
If the hopes of explorer Peary are accomplished, an observatory will, one of these days, be established at the South Pole.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 4, No. 10, SERIAL No. 110
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
