“Signs that an untouched continent is hidden in the uncharted wastes of the western Arctic Sea. A vast area of waters, a blank space on the map lies there, but that is simply the refuge, for cartographic lucidity, of our ignorance. What really lies there is reciprocal on the west of Greenland on the east, of the Franz Josef Archipelago and Spitzbergen north of us. There is there another large fragment of that original circumpolar continent that Science, in a moment of intuitional certainty, points to as the source of the world’s animal and vegetable life. And the signs? You ask me, your faces do, what they are. They are negative indeed but they are convincing. Payer reached 82°5´ North Latitude, on an island, Crown Prince Rudolf’s Land, and still further north he thought he could see an extensive tract of land in 83°. He called it Petermann’s Land. Driftwood on the east of Greenland comes from Siberia, circuitously perhaps around the pole, not across it, since the ‘Fram’ drifted from the north of Cape Chelyuskin in 1893 to north of Spitzbergen in 1896. The wood is Siberian larch and alder and poplar. Articles from the American ship ‘Jeannette,’ which foundered near Bennett Island, had taken the same course, being picked up on the east coast of Greenland. Professor Mohr held that they drifted over the pole. Why did not the ‘Fram’ drift over the pole? The set of the waters that way is obstructed, and that obstruction is a continental mass. Nothing surer.
“Dr. Rink has reported a throwing stick, used by the Eskimos in hurling their bird darts, not like those used by the Eskimos of Greenland, and attributed by him to the natives of Alaska. The path traversed by this erratic could not have been directly eastward from Alaska, threading an impenetrable and devious outlet in the Canadian archipelago, neither was it over the pole, as any pathway there would, constructively, have reached northern and not eastern Greenland. Again that invisible obstruction, as patent, as real, as the influence of the undiscovered Neptune in the perturbations of Uranus, which led Leverrier and Adams to make their prophetic directions for its detection.
“Sir Allen Young, appreciating the nucleal density of the land towards the pole, and speaking of Nansen’s promised attempt to drift over it, said, ‘I think the great danger to contend with will be the land in nearly every direction near the pole. Most previous navigators seem to have continued to see land, again and again farther and farther north.’
“Peary has seen Krocker Land. Over the western verge of the horizon its peaks rose temptingly to invite him to new conquests. That was a segment, a tiny fraction, a mere hint of the unknown vastnesses beyond. But the most convincing symptoms—Ah, a feeble word to designate a fact—of this continent are the observations of the United States’ meteorologists. Dr. R. A. Harris, a competent authority, has shown that the tides, mute but eloquent witnesses, testify to its existence. The diurnal tides along the Asiatic and North American coasts are not what they would be if an uninterrupted sweep over the Arctic Sea prevailed. Their progress is delayed and along narrow channels is accelerated or heightened, as past the shores of Grant Land. Why? Again that undiscovered country.”
“Harris, a clever fellow. Met him in Washington just two years ago this autumn—a crackerjack at mathematical guessing. The way he can figure and run off a reel of equations on anything from the rate sawdust makes in a wood mill to a mensuration of the average dimensions of turnips is surprising. If he says Krocker Land is there—why, then I guess IT IS,” was Spruce Hopkins’ comment, while we all turned our eyes from the cliffs to catch the Professor’s rejoinder, and Goritz leaned towards him, fixing him with those luminous orbs of his that betrayed his suppressed excitement.
“What does this man Harris say?” asked Goritz.
“He says,” answered Bjornsen, thrusting his hands in his pockets after he had looked them over in his habitual manner of inspection, “he says this. The diurnal tide occurs earlier at Point Barrow than at Flaxman Island; the diurnal tide or wave does not have approximately its theoretical value; at Bennett Island, north of Siberia, and at Teplitz Bay, Franz Josef Land, the range of the diurnal wave has about one-half of the magnitude which the tidal forces acting over an uninterrupted Arctic basin would produce; the average rise and fall at Bennett Island is 2.5 feet, but the rise and fall of the semi-daily tide is 0.4 at Point Barrow, and 0.5 feet at Flaxman Island. And he makes this point.” The Professor drew a red chalk from his vest pocket, stood up, and pushing our glasses aside, drew a squarish outline, broader on one side, with a tail standing out at its lower right-hand corner. He drew a circle a little above its long side, and scribbled Pole within it, then a jagged scrawl to either side, representing the coasts of Asia and America, with an indentation like a funnel for Behring Straits.
“He points out that the ‘Jeannette’, an American ship sent out by the proprietors of the New York Herald, stuck in the ice here”, he jabbed his crayon, which crumbled into grains under his pressure, to one side of a projecting point of the outline, “and that the ice drift carried her eastward”; he made a flourish under the fascinating trapezoid that we now understood embodied the suggested continent; “while the ‘Fram’ stuck here,” again a red splotch above the diagram, “and was carried westward toward Greenland. Again why? Because at a critical point between their two positions the ice current is divided by the influence of a terminal promontory of Krocker Land. It splits, so to speak, the trend over the pole of the ice drift, turning one arm of it eastward, the other westward. His creative vision goes farther. A point of this new land lies just north of Point Barrow in Alaska, that causes the westward tide at the point; and he thinks it is distant from Point Barrow five or six degrees of latitude, 350 to 420 miles. Harris claims the ice in Beaufort Sea, north of Canada, here—” Another flaming signal was scrawled on the white tablecloth below the right-hand corner of the fascinating outline that now, assuming a magical premonition of some great geographical reality, kept our eyes fastened on it almost as if it might sprout before us with mimic mountains and ice fields.
“Harris says that the ice in Beaufort Sea does not drift freely northward, and is remarkable for its thickness and its age. He says the ice does not move eastward, for you see,” the Professor flung his hands over the cryptogram on the tablecloth like an exorcising magician, “you see Beaufort Sea is a sea, land-locked by Krocker Land, that here approaches Banks Island. Are you convinced?”
We looked at each other a trifle slyly and disconcertedly, and Goritz laughed, but it was Spruce Hopkins who suddenly turned to the Professor, caught his arm and held him for a moment without speaking but with his face yielding slowly to some growing impression of wonder within him until he became quite grave.