We may now look back on all the expeditions, extending over more than a thousand years, that we have passed in review, and sum up the result as regards Arctic lands. The islands on the continental shelves and the bordering continental lands must be regarded as comprising the whole of the terrestrial Arctic Regions, and geographers should look upon problems connected with those regions from that point of view. On the Siberian side the shelf is described to us from careful personal observation by Nansen. We see the group of New Siberian Islands rising from it, with their mammoth ivory and cliffs of fossil wood. We then contemplate the land masses of Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, and Spitsbergen rising from the Barentsz and Kara Seas, with the marvellous tale they tell of the former condition of the region in recent geological times. Next, on the further side of the great southerly ice-stream, is the continental mass of Greenland, with its glaciation only surpassed in grandeur and extent by the Antarctic ice-cap. Then come the somewhat analogous land masses of Baffin and Ellesmere Islands, with the separating straits and channels, and finally the intricate Parry Archipelago to the north of the American continent. These lands bordering on or rising from the continental shelf form the Arctic Regions as we know them. But between the Parry Archipelago and the Siberian shelf there is the vast area in and to the north of the Beaufort Sea, to which I have just referred and of which we know almost nothing. Our knowledge of the Arctic regions will remain incomplete until this area has been discovered and explored.
When we now look back on the history of Arctic enterprise from the earliest times it is impossible not to be struck with the high qualities it brought so frequently to light, and the fine record of courage and endurance it presents for our admiration. The objects have differed, but there has throughout been the same splendid contempt for danger and hardship, and the same resourcefulness and habit of quick decision brought out by the nature of the work on which the explorers were engaged.
The Norsemen, and afterwards the Danes, have been the colonisers, undertaking the hardest and most difficult work of all, and they furnish a record of commercial success and civilising influence on the natives which places them in the first rank among Arctic labourers in a hard but fruitful field. Next come the English adventurers seeking for a shorter route to India by the north-west, the north-east or the north; and thereafter the period of fishers and trappers, when it was shown of what immense value were the products of the Arctic regions. First the Dutch established whale-fisheries in Spitsbergen and Davis Strait, and then the English who, in the person of Scoresby, combined commercial profit with scientific research. The labours of these daring whale-fishers enriched and gave prosperity to numerous communities, while beginning later, but working contemporaneously, we see the Hudson’s Bay Company opening up the wilderness, accumulating wealth, and largely influencing Europeans and natives for good.
The Russians, too, achieved a great work in delineating the whole northern coast of Siberia. Then came the great era of Ross, Parry, and Franklin; a time of heroic effort, of vast discoveries, and above all of the ceaseless training of men in ice-work, the training of men, that is, alike for science and for war. In this Arctic work we see the nursery of a Nelson, a Riou, a Nias, a Sherard Osborn, and such men as Sabine, Beechey, and Foster.
The expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin and his gallant companions raised Arctic work to the highest plane it has yet attained. The motive was the highest that has ever actuated polar or any other discovery, the cause of humanity. Very extensive discoveries were made and the art of sledge travelling with men was brought nearly to perfection.
After the completion of the Franklin search and the return of the Nares expedition, Americans, Norwegians, Swedes, and Austro-Hungarians stepped in. The best of the American Arctic leaders were Greeley and De Long, although their expeditions ended in misfortune, for they were instructed officers, with a strong feeling of responsibility and of the obligations of duty. The work they did was well done and reliable. The expeditions of Nordenskiöld and Nansen stand by themselves owing to the personality of those leaders. The Swede was a man of high scientific and literary attainments, the Norwegian alike a man of action and a profound student, an unusual combination. He is endowed with rare gifts. His ideas almost amounted to prescience, and he was equally sagacious in working them out to practical conclusions. He drew back the veil which had concealed the Arctic secret. Although the English occupy the first place in Arctic discovery, yet it was begun and was completed by Scandinavians—by Erik the Red and Fridtjof Nansen.
In the history of mankind since the Christian era, the annals of Arctic discovery occupy a very glorious place. They run like a bright silver thread through the darker tales of war and crime, for the most part showing the nobler side of the qualities of our race.
PART II
THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS
CHAPTER XLV
THE GREAT SOUTHERN CONTINENT
The Far South waited much longer for the attention of mankind than the Arctic regions. Antarctica has had no dwellers on the threshold, no demigod clearing its circle on Sleipner or any other fabled horse, no Norsemen daring its icy solitudes, scarcely even a tradition; although the anonymous Franciscan, in the fourteenth century, when he was in Prester John’s country, heard that the four rivers of Paradise flowed from an inaccessible mountain of great height at the south pole[180].