From 84° to 90° there are six degrees, which, at sixty miles each, give a radius of 360 miles and a diameter of 720 miles. The circumference is thus 2216 miles, and the area, in round numbers, 407,000 square miles. This is nearly a tenth of the whole of Europe—a good-sized estate!
The advertisement, it will have been noticed, assumed the principle that regions not known geographically and belonging to nobody in particular belonged to the world at large. That the majority of the Powers would admit this contention was supposable, but it was possible that States bordering on these Arctic regions, or considering the regions as the prolongation of their dominions towards the north, might claim a right of possession. And their pretensions would be all the more justified by the discoveries that had been made having been chiefly due to these regions; and of course the Federal Government, as nominators of the auctioneer, would give these Powers an opportunity of claiming compensation, and satisfy the claim with the money realized by the sale. At the same time, as the partisans of the North Polar Practical Association continually insisted, the property was uninhabited, and as no one occupied it, no one could oppose its being put up to auction.
The bordering States with rights not to be disregarded were six in number—Great Britain, the United States, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Holland, and Russia. But there were other countries that might put in a claim on the ground of discoveries made by their navigators.
France might, as usual, have intervened on account of a few of her children having taken part in occasional expeditions. There was the gallant Bellot, who died in 1853 near Beechey Island, during the voyage of the Phœnix, sent in search of Sir John Franklin. There was Dr. Octave Pavy, who died in 1884 at Cape Sabine, during the stay of the Greely expedition at Fort Conger. And there was the expedition in 1838–39, which took to the Spitzbergen Seas, Charles Martins and Marmier and Bravais, and their bold companions. But France did not propose to meddle in the enterprise, which was more industrial than scientific; and, at the outset, she abandoned any chance she might have of a slice of the Polar cake.
It was the same with Germany. She could point to the Spitzbergen expedition of Frederick Martens, and to the expeditions, in 1869–70, of the Germania and Hansa, under Koldewey and Hegeman, which reached Cape Bismarck on the Greenland coast. But notwithstanding these brilliant discoveries she decided to make no increase to the Germanic empire by means of a slice from the Pole.
So it was with Austria-Hungary, which, however, had her claims on Franz Joseph Land to the northward of Siberia.
As Italy had no right of intervention she did not intervene—which is not quite so obvious as it may appear.
The same happened with regard to the Samoyeds of Siberia, the Eskimos who are scattered along the northern regions of America, the natives of Greenland, of Labrador, of the Baffin Parry Archipelago, of the Aleutian Islands between Asia and America, and of Russian Alaska, which became American in 1867. But these people—the undisputed aborigines of the northern regions—had no voice in the matter. How could such poor folks manage to make a bid at the auction promoted by the North Polar Practical Association? And if they outbid the rest, how could they pay? In shellfish, or walrus teeth, or seal oil? But surely they had some claim on this territory? Strange to say, they were not even consulted in the matter!
Such is the way of the world!