MARSHALL B. GARDNER - A Journey to the Earth's Interior

A Journey to the Earth's
Interior

--OR--

Have the Poles Really
Been Discovered

By MARSHALL B. GARDNER

===============

Preface

Chapter I. Introductory

Chapter II. The Nebula and its Evolution

Chapter III. Mars

Chapter IV. Early Polar Exploration

Chapter V. Further Arctic Exploration

Chapter VI. Greely's Explorations

Chapter VII. Nordenskiold's Voyages

Chapter VII. With Nansen in the North

Chapter IX. Was the North Pole Discovered?

Chapter X. Two Congressional Opinions on Peary and Cook

Chapter XI. The Mammoth

Chapter XII. The Life of the Arctic

Chapter XIII. Other Interesting Animals of the Interior

Chapter XIV. The Aurora

Chapter XV. The Eskimo

Chapter XVI. Evidence in the Antarctic

Chapter XVII. The Journey to the Earth's Interior

Chapter XVIII. The Formation of the Earth

Chapter XIX. How Our Theory Differs From That of Symmes

Chapter XX. The Moon And Our Theory

Chapter XXI. A Note on Gravitation

Chapter XXII. How Our Theory Has Been Received

Chapter XXIII. Our Controversy with Dominian

Chapter XXIV. Our Country and Our Theory

Chapter XXV. In Conclusion

Bibliography 

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CHAPTER IV

EARLY POLAR EXPLORATION

One of the most prominent writers in England, a man, too, who had had a scientific education, was given a sketch of the main arguments in support of our theory, and he replied that our presentation of the facts would have absolutely convinced him if it were not for one thing--that the poles had actually been discovered. Perhaps this is the objection which is most often heard on the lips of people to whom our theory has been presented, and who do not agree with it. But that objection is fully considered and answered in the pages that will follow. What has actually been discovered by polar explorers? That is the question we shall ask of them, and the answers will always be in their own words, the records of their own observations, the findings of their own instruments and calculations.

A WORD IN ADVANCE ON PEARY

We shall follow the history of polar exploration from the earliest days in which real progress was made right through to the discoveries of Peary--and we shall see that what Peary discovered was not an actual polar point of solid ice at the apex of the world, but rather a point which he identified by the

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compass needle--which it should be remembered points to the magnetic and not to the geographical pole--and we shall further prove, from Peary's own recorded observations, from the statements he has made over his own signature, that in the actual polar regions there is every evidence of warm currents coming up from the interior, and that there is even stronger evidence than warm currents that the interior is open to the exterior in that region, and that the opening is what we have said it is and leads to what we have claimed it leads to. But that is to anticipate more than one of the chapters that follow. For the present we will follow the Arctic explorers, and, distinguishing between what they actually observe--which is dependable--and what they merely think--which is subject to error--we shall see all their testimony converging toward the establishment of what we have already set forth.

HOW WE CONVINCE SUCH CRITICS AS THE ONE ABOVE QUOTED

It is of course obvious that if our theory be true, the actual region of each pole will be warmed by the seas of the inner surface of the earth, and that these, warmed by the interior sun, will cause the climate around the polar openings to be a very mild one. The sea around the polar opening will be an open one. At some point on the arctic voyage the ice barriers will be passed and the voyagers will enter

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a region that grows warmer and warmer as they sail up to the polar opening and then over it and on into the interior of the earth. They would only know that they had actually passed over the lip by the peculiar behavior of the magnetic needle and by the fact that they would see above them as above would then mean toward the actual center of the earth--the interior sun which of course would be shining whether the voyagers came under its influence during the day or during the arctic night.

That is what would happen if our theory were true. The question is, then, has anything like that been actually observed? The answer is that every arctic navigator from the beginning has made observations which more and more agree with that view the further north the observers go. To show how unanimous this testimony is let us go back a good distance.

BARRINGTON'S IMPORTANT BOOK

In 1818 there was published in New York an American edition of a book entitled, "The Possibility of Approaching the North Pole Asserted," by the Hon. D. Barrington: A new edition with an appendix containing Papers on the same Subject and on a North-west Passage, by Colonel Beaufoy, F. R. S. Barrington, as well as Beaufoy, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the greatest English scientific body, and he was convinced that the voyage to the North Pole was a possibility. In order to convince

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his colleagues in the Royal Society of this, he read a number of papers containing information that he had gathered from whalers and other voyagers in the Arctic. Here are some of the facts he deduced. In 17S1 a Captain Mac-Callam, commanding a whaler, during a lull in the usual business of the voyage, thought he would make a dash for the North Pole. He reached a latitude of 83½ degrees and he found in front of him no further ice, but clear water. In fact "they had not seen a speck of ice for the last three degrees." But he had to abandon his voyage as he did not wish to incur the displeasure of his owners. The author then cites another voyage, described to him by a Dr. Dallie of Holland who made a voyage on a Dutch war-ship in supervision of the Greenland fisheries, on which voyage a latitude of 88 degrees was reached: "when the weather was warm, the sea perfectly free from ice, and rolling like the Bay of Biscay. Dallie now pressed the captain to proceed; but he answered that he had already gone too far by having neglected his station . . ."

BARRINGTON COMBATS IDEAS OF THE DAY

Before citing further from Barrington let us remind the reader that he is not arguing in support of our theory. He is simply calling to the attention of his contemporaries actual facts which he has collected and which seem to him to make the voyage to the pole more feasible than it was thought to be

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at the time--when of course the means of navigation were so much poorer than they are at present. At that time, too, it was the generally received notion that there was a perpetual barrier of ice whose boundaries corresponded more or less with a latitude of 80½ and that any discovery of the regions north of that would have to be made by a sort of wind-propelled sled, a mechanism actually used for traveling over the ice by the Dutch.

HIS REPORT TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY

This idea Barrington combated. He recalled to the Royal Society that as early as 1663 its secretary at that time had examined a traveler lately returned from Greenland, and that this traveler had told of a Hollander captain who claimed that he had come within half a degree of the pole, and corroborated it by showing his journal, the entries being attested by his mate. Now in view of later explorations it does not matter just how accurate that sailor was--the point is simply that even in those early days it was possible to get much nearer the pole than was supposed at the time, and simply for the reason that the water was open as one went north.

But Barrington has instance after instance of the same kind. He mentions in particular two Hollander whalers who in the seventeenth century--sailed to 89 degrees and found no ice but "a free and open sea."

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SOME OF THE FACTS HE ADDUCES

It is also interesting to note that Barrington quotes a passage from the Philosophical Transactions for 1675 which says:

"For it is well known to all that sail Northward, that most of the Northern coasts are frozen up many leagues, though in the open sea it is not so, no, nor under the Pole itself, unless by accident."

Barrington, of course, was trying to show that the idea of a perpetually ice-bound pole was simply a bogy to frighten explorers away from the attempt to gain the pole, and so he devotes himself next to a consideration of the actual ice-conditions in the far north, and what he says is so sensible and to the point, that we may as well settle the question as far as the ice is concerned, by quoting from his pages. The popular idea, doubtless, is that it is so cold at the actual pole that the sea water there is frozen. But this is not the case at all. The ice we see in pictures taken in polar regions is not frozen sea-water at all. It is frozen fresh water. Here is a description of the actual character of Arctic ice which Barrington translates from a "Dissertation of Michel Lomonosoff, translated from the Swedish Transactions of 1752, entitled 'De l’Origine des Monts de Glace dans la Mer du Nord':

ICE CONDITIONS IN THE NORTH

"There are three kinds of ice in the Northern Seas. The first is like melted snow, which is become

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partly hardened, is more easily broken into pieces, less transparent, is seldom more than six inches thick, and, when dissolved, is found to be intermixed with salt. This first sort of ice is the only one which is ever formed from sea water.

ICE ONLY FROM FRESH WATER

"If a certain quantity of water, which contains as much salt as sea water is exposed to the greatest degree of cold, it never becomes firm and pure ice, but resembles tallow or suet, whilst it preserves the taste of salt, so that the sweet transparent ice can never be formed in the sea. If the ice of the sea itself, therefore, confined in a small vessel without any motion, cannot thus become true ice, much less can it do so in a deep and agitated ocean."

And Barrington adds: "The author hence infers that all the floating ice in the Polar Seas comes from the Tartarian Rivers and Greenland."

It would be tedious to recount the many other instances of sailors reaching latitudes from 80 to 89 degrees given by Barrington, but the notable thing about his instances is that they reveal the fact that the sailors of those early days, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, all believed that the way to the pole was more or less open, and they believed it because the further north they actually reached the less ice they met with.

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WITHIN FIVE AND A HALF DEGREES OF THE POLE

But Barrington has some other very interesting observations. He quotes a memorandum from the Astronomer Royal of England to the effect that a Mr. Stephens, sailing on a Dutch ship in 1754, was driven into latitude 84½ or within 5½ degrees of the pole. They "did not find the cold excessive, and used little more than common clothing; met with but little ice, and the less the farther they went to the Northward. . . It is always clear weather with a North wind, and thick weather with a Southerly wind. . . Says he has often tasted the ice when the sea water has been let to run or dry off it, and always found it fresh."

The author then goes on to cite many instances of warm weather near the poles warmer weather in fact than the observers had experienced at points many degrees further south. He sums up by saying:

"All our accounts agree that in very high latitudes there is less ice."

THE CONFORMATION OF THE POLAR BASIN

But although Barrington had no suspicion of the actual shape of the earth as our theory shows it to be, he did suspect that there was a depression of the earth's surface at the polar circle. In fact he cites an experiment of Sir Isaac Newton based on the

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swinging of a pendulum at various points on the earth's surface--the time of swing would vary according to the distance of the pendulum from the earth's center--and also the actual measuring of a degree at the Equator and at the Arctic Circle. "This last evidently proved the depression of the earth's surface towards the pole, which no doubt gradually increases."

We have only two more observations to make about Mr. Barrington's examples, before leaving his book for those of later explorers and writers--who will be found to corroborate his observations at every point. Then we shall leave him for the present but return to him in connection with some very interesting observations concerning actual evidence of an unexplored country which are found floating on the arctic seas.

REMARKABLE STATEMENT OF DUTCH CAPTAIN

Those two observations are from a Dutch sea captain and an English clergyman, then stationed at Petersburgh, respectively. The Dutch captain makes the remarkable statement that the most open sea to the northward--when in latitude 80, was not in summer as might be expected if the Pole were really solid ice, but "generally happens in the month of September" and this is in spite of the fact that the Arctic night is beginning then--in which surely we should expect the maximum of cold if the outer sun

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were the only factor in melting the ice, as the ordinary scientists have assumed it to be. The other observation, made by the English clergyman may be quoted in full as Barrington gives it:

"Mr. Tooke hath been assured by several persons who have passed the winter at Kola in Lapland, that in the severest weather, whenever a Northerly wind blows, the cold diminishes instantly, and that, if it continues, it always brings on a thaw as long as it lasts.

"He hath also been informed . . . that the seamen who go out from Kola upon the whale and morse fisheries early in March (for the sea never freezes there) throw off their winter garments as soon as they are from fifty to a hundred wersts (three wersts make two miles) from land, and continue without them all the time they are upon the fishery, during which they experience no inconvenience from the cold, but that, on their return, (at the end of May) as they approach land, the cold increases to such a severity, that they suffer greatly from it.

"This account agrees with that of Barentz, whilst he wintered in Nova Zembla, and of the Russians in Maloy Brun; the North wind cannot therefore, during the coldest seasons of the year, be supposed to blow over ten degrees of ice.

THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE

"Governor Ellis indeed, whose zeal in prosecuting the attempt of discovering the North-west passage

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through Hudson's Bay is so well known, hath suggested to me an argument which seems to prove the absolute impossibility of a perpetual barrier of ice from 80½ degrees to the pole.

"If such a tract hath existed for centuries, the increase, in point of height, must be amazing in a course of years, by the snow, which falls during the winter, being changed into ice, and which must have formed consequently a mountain perhaps equal to the Peak of Tenneriffe. Now the ice which sometimes packs to the northward of Spitzbergen, is said commonly not to exceed two yards in height."

The reader may think this is a very old argument to be reproducing a hundred and forty years after it was first made. But we do so because the argument is as good today as when it was first made, and we wish to show that even in those days observations were made which have been corroborated and enlarged right down to the present day--all pointing irresistibly to one conclusion.

CHAPTER V

FURTHER ARCTIC EXPLORATION

Arctic Exploration in the nineteenth century opened out with the brilliant expeditions of Sir John Franklin, beginning in 1818, and when he was lost with 129 companions and the two ships which had been fitted out in 1844, a tremendous effort on the part of Great Britain, with the co-operation, too, of private individuals in the United States, was made to find him. Of course these explorers also made many general observations during their several expeditions, and it is from these that we will now proceed to quote many facts that lead to the conclusion that there is not only an open polar sea, as Barrington contended, but a fertile land beyond it.

EXPEDITIONS IN SEARCH OF FRANKLIN

Among these expeditions was that of Lieutenant McClintock of the. Royal Navy in the steam yacht "Fox" owned by Lady Franklin. This navigator makes three very interesting observations from our point of view. He met with Esquimaux living upon the east coast of Greenland as far north as latitude 76 degrees, and it could not be ascertained how much farther north they lived. It is noticeable that they were separated from the South Greenlanders by

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hundreds of miles of ice-bound coasts and impassible glaciers. He comments on this to the effect that many centuries before a milder climate might have existed, and that that might have rendered the migration north possible, but he himself doubts if that can be the correct explanation. We, however, shall have more to say on that question a little later.

OBSERVATIONS OF McCLINTOCK AND KANE

But the observations of McClintock were nothing like as voluminous or detailed as those of the other explorers of the day. Dr. Elisha Kent Kane sailed as surgeon and as scientific observer with the "Advance" which left America with the "Rescue" the ships being supplied by a wealthy New York man, Mr. Henry Grinnell, and the expedition sailing in 1852. Dr. Kane kept an exhaustive journal of his observations, which he published in two volumes upon his return. An open polar sea was one of the subjects of search of the expedition.

From the time the party reached the polar regions Dr. Kane was astonished by the unexpected phenomena met with. Where the climate was expected to grow colder--as they approached the pole--it grew warmer. At that same latitude of 80 degrees, of which we have seen Barrington's records, Kane found indications of "north water all the year round" as one of his party reported. Another party,

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later, in practically the same latitude while exploring the Greenland coast reported that:

KANE FINDS LESS ICE THAN HE EXPECTED

"The wind blew strongly from the north, and continued to do so for three days, sometimes blowing a gale, and very damp, the tops of the hills becoming fixed with dark foggy clouds. The damp falling mist prevented them seeing any distance. Yet they saw no ice borne down from the northward all this time; and, what was more curious, they found, on their return south, that no ice had been sent down during the gale." Mr. Morton, one of the members of this party, describes this journey--which was northward from Cache Island (see Chapter XXIII of Kane's first volume). The party reached Kennedy Channel after another gale from the north and again there was no ice except what had come up from the south. Ultimately this party reached Mount Parry which was at that time, "the most remote northern land known upon our globe." After quoting many other details of this northern trip Dr. Kane comments on it as follows, and his comment is a reiteration of what Mr. Barrington had claimed many years earlier, and points to what are the facts in the case--although Mr. Kane has difficulty when he tries to explain them:

"It will be seen by the abstract of our 'field-notes' in the appendix, as well as by an analysis of the results

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which I have here rendered nearly in the very words of Mr. Morton, that, after traveling due north over a solid area choked with bergs and frozen fields, he was startled by the growing weakness of the ice; its surface became rotten and the snow wet and pulpy. His dogs, seized with terror, refused to advance. Then for the first time the fact broke upon him, that a long dark band seen to the north beyond a protruding cape--Cape Andrew Jackson--was water. With danger and difficulty he retraced his steps, and, reaching sound ice, made good his landing on a new coast.

"The journeys which I had made myself, and those of my different parties, had shown that an unbroken surface of ice covered the entire sea to the east, west, and south. From the southernmost ice, seen by Dr. Hayes only a few weeks before, to the region of this mysterious water, was, as the crow flies, one hundred and six miles. But for the unusual sight of birds and the unmistakable giving way of the ice beneath them, they would not have believed in the evidence of eyesight. Neither Hans nor Morton was prepared for it.

"Landing on the cape and continuing their explorations, new phenomena broke upon them. They were on the shores of a channel so open that a frigate or a fleet of frigates might have sailed up it. The ice, already broken and decayed formed a sort of horse-shoe shaped beach, against which the waves

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broke in surf. As they traveled north, this channel expanded into an iceless area; 'for four or five small pieces'--lumps were all that could be seen over the entire surface of its white caped waters. Viewed from the cliffs, and taking thirty-six miles as the mean radius open to reliable survey, this sea had a justly-estimated extent of more than four thousand square miles.

PLENTY OF GAME IN FAR NORTH

"Animal life, which had been so long a stranger to us to the south, now burst upon them. At Renselær Harbor, except the Netsik seal or a rarely encountered Harelda, we had no life available for the hunt. But here the Brent goose, the eider, and the king duck, were so crowded together that our Eskimos killed two at a shot with a single rifle ball.

"The Brent goose had not been seen before since entering Smith's Straits. It is well known to the Polar traveler as a migratory bird of the American continent. Like the others of the same family it feeds upon vegetable matter, generally on marine plants with their adherent molluscous life. It is rarely or never seen in the interior and from its habits may be regarded as singularly indicative of open water. The flocks of this bird, easily distinguished by their wedge-shaped line of flight, now crossed the water obliquely, and disappeared over the land to the north and east. I had shot these birds on the coast of Wellington Channel in latitude 74 degrees, 50

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minutes, nearly six degrees to the south: they were then flying in the same direction."

That is to say the birds were then flying north as they were now flying north from a latitude of approximately 80 degrees, .50 minutes, and the question at once rises in the mind, why were they flying north? If these birds were dependent upon living sea-plants with living molluscous life on them for their food, and if they are, therefore, always to be found in open water, they could only be flying north for one reason and that reason is that there was open water north, and there could only be open water if there were a more temperate climate than the severe climate to the south that Kane has just described.

Kane goes on:

"The rocks on shore were crowded with sea-swallows, birds whose habits require open water."

As the party left the land marine birds also appeared, no less than four kinds of gulls being seen, and as Kane says, "it was a picture of life all round." Morton, he further tells us, had also seen a large number of flowers in his explorations.

Kane then proceeds:

"It is another remarkable fact that as they continued their journey the land-ice and snow, which had served as a sort of pathway for the dogs, crumbled and melted, and at last ceased altogether; so that, during the final stages of their progress, the sledge was rendered useless, and Morton found himself

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at last toiling over rocks and along the beach of a sea, which, like the familiar waters of the south, dashed in waves at his feet.

"Here for the first time he noticed the Arctic Petrel, a fact which shows the accuracy of his observation, though he was then unaware of its importance. This bird had not been met with since we left the North Water of the English whalers, more than two hundred miles south of the position on which he stood. Its food is essentially marine, the acalesphæ, etc., etc.; and it is seldom seen in numbers except in the highways of open water frequented by the whale and the larger representatives of ocean life. They were in numbers, flitting and hovering over the crests of the waves, like their relatives of milder climates, the Cape of Good Hope Pigeons, Mother Carey's Chickens, and the petrels everywhere else. . . .

AN OPEN NORTHERN SEA

"It must have been an imposing sight, as he stood at this termination of his journey (past Sir John Franklin Island), looking out upon the great waste of waters before him. Not a 'speck of ice,' to use his own words, could be seen. There, from a height of four hundred and eighty feet, which commanded an horizon of almost forty miles, his ears were gladdened with the novel music of dashing waves; and a surf; breaking in among the rocks at his feet, stayed his further progress.

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"Beyond this cape all is surmise. The high ridges to the north-west dwindled off into low blue knobs, which blended finally with the air. Morton called the cape, which baffled his labors, after his commander; but I have given it the more enduring name of Cape Constitution."

Dr. Kane goes on to say that this observation of open water to the north harmonized with the observations of all the other members of the expedition. He admits that he cannot explain it, and adds the following comment:

OTHER EXPLORERS HAD POSTULATED OPEN BASIN

"An open sea near the pole, or even an open polar basin, has been the topic of theory for a long time, and has been shadowed forth to some extent by actual or supposed discoveries. As far back as the days of Barentz, in 1596, without referring to the earlier and more uncertain chronicles, water has been seen to the eastward of the northernmost cape of Nova Zembla; and until its limited extent was defined by direct observation it was assumed to be the sea itself. The Dutch fishermen above and around Spitzbergen pushed their adventurous cruises through the ice into open spaces varying in size and form with the season and the winds; and Dr. Scoresby, a venerated authority, alludes to such vacancies in the floe as pointing in argument to a

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freedom of movement from the north, inducing open water in the neighborhood of the pole. Baron Wrangell, when forty miles from the coast of Arctic Asia, saw, as he thought, a 'vast illimitable ocean' . . . So, still more recently, Captain Penny proclaimed a sea in Wellington Sound . . . Unlike the others, however, that which I have ventured to call an open sea has been traveled for many miles along its coast, and was viewed from an elevation of five hundred and eighty feet, still without a limit, moved by a heavy swell, free of ice, and dashing in surge against a rock-bound shore.

"It is impossible in reviewing the facts which connect themselves with this discovery, the melted snow upon the rocks, the crowds of marine birds, the limited but still advancing vegetable life, the rise of the thermometer in the water, not to be struck by their bearing on the question of a milder climate near the pole. To refer them all to the modification of temperature induced by the proximity of open water is only to change the form of the question; for it leaves the inquiry unsatisfied--What is the cause of the open water?"

Dr. Kane was not only impressed by the warmer climate toward the pole, however, but he records that in a large indentation in Dallas Bay they found the remains of an Eskimo village, surrounded by bones of seals, walrus and whale. And furthermore:

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TRACES OF THE ESKIMO

"In impressive connection with the same facts, showing not only the former extension of the Eskimo race to the higher north, but the climatic changes which may still be in progress there, is the sledge runner that Morton saw on the shores of Morris Bay, in latitude 81 degrees. It was made of the bone of a whale and worked out with skillful labor."

That is not the first time the Eskimos have been mentioned by the explorers quoted in this chapter, and every time the mention of them is connected with the north rather than with the south. We shall find more of this sort of evidence as we go along.

HARD TO DETERMINE HIS LOCATION

To the claims of both Cook and Peary that they have reached the north pole we shall give detailed answers shortly. But there is one paragraph in Dr. Kane's record which we may as well quote while we are dealing with his observations, and it throws some light on the later claims made by some Arctic explorers and the doubts as to their locations expressed by others (Hansen, for instance, in one place frankly admits that he was lost in the Arctic and had no wav of knowing where he was). Here is the passage, which refers to the difference between Kane's projection of the coast around Cape Isabell and that made by Captain Inglefield:

"The difference between our projection of this

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coast and Captain Inglefield's refers itself naturally to the differing circumstances under which the two were framed. The sluggishness of the compass and the eccentricities of refraction in the Arctic seas, are well fitted to embarrass and mislead a navigator. . . ."

It is interesting, too, to see that, in a note subsequently appended to these observations, Dr. Kane makes some other observations upon the distribution of the polar ice, and remarks: "I do not see how . . . this state of facts could be explained without supposing an iceless area to the farther north.

"How far this may extend,--whether it does or does not communicate with a polar basin,--we are without facts to determine."

But by following the observations of other and later explorers we shall endeavor to supply the facts whose absence left Dr. Kane so puzzled.

OBSERVATIONS OF DR. HAYES

We may now turn to the observations of one of Dr. Kane's companions, Dr. I. I. Hayes, who took a prominent part in the expedition and who wrote his account of it under the significant title, "The Open Polar Sea." Dr. Hayes went up Kennedy Channel, along the coast of Grinnell Land almost as far north as 82 degrees. Long before he had reached that point, however, he began to notice the strange contradictions that the arctic regions present. He passed into the Arctic circle on July 30, and was

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soon in the middle of a vast field of ice-bergs. He says of this experience:

"The air was warm almost as a summer's night at home, and yet there were the ice-bergs and the bleak mountains, with which the fancy, in this land of green hills and waving forests [that is to say, America], can associate with nothing but cold repulsiveness. The sky was bright and soft, and strangely inspiring as the skies of Italy. The bergs had wholly lost their chilly aspect."

That is sufficiently remarkable--surely indicating, according to what other explorers have already told us, in these pages, that the wind must have been from the north for the few days previous that would have brought some of the mildness from the actual polar regions down. If the reader is not yet convinced of that let him watch Dr. Hayes as he proceeds further toward that region. Conviction will follow.

MILD TEMPERATURES FOUND

By November 2, Dr. Hayes had reached Cape Alexander, on the Greenland Coast (Grinnell Land forms the other coast of Kennedy Channel which the explorers will soon reach) at a latitude of a little over 78 degrees. Here they were hit by a gale, strong enough to break up the ice and send it scudding away southwest. But Dr. Hayes is surprised by two things: Although the gale is from the north east, the temperature has all the time been very mild

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[paragraph continues] --in fact it has never been below zero, and moreover, when the gale had driven the ice away there was no more ice from the north to take its place.

WARMTH WHERE COLD WAS EXPECTED

By November 13th the party has proceeded a little further north, and Dr. Hayes, believing as he did that the pole was a solid ice-cap, is sorely puzzled by the actual phenomena with which he is met. Here is his diary, the first entry, "Worse and worse," referring to the fact that snow had been falling, which made it very disagreeable on the ship:

"November 13: Worse and worse. The temperature has risen again, and the roof over the upper deck gives us once more a worse than tropic shower. The snow next the ice grows more slushy, and this I am more than ever puzzled to understand, since I have found today that the ice, two feet below the surface, has a temperature of twenty degrees; at the surface it is nineteen degrees, and the snow in contact with it is eighteen degrees. The water is twenty-nine degrees.

"November 14. The wind has been blowing for nearly twenty-four hours from the northeast, and yet the temperature holds on as before. At ten o'clock this evening it was four and a half degrees. I have done with speculation. A warm wind from the 'mer de glace,' and this boundless reservoir of Greenland frost, makes mischief with my theories, as facts have

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heretofore done with the theories of wiser men. As long as the wind came from the sea I could find excuse for the unseasonable warmth."

It is a pity that the open-minded spirit shown there is not more evident among other scientists. Dr. Hayes would have tried to explain that warmth if he could possibly have done so. But when the wind that brought it came no longer from a sea that was itself above freezing point but came from a land that was covered with ice, he was simply at his wits' end and frankly acknowledged that he could not account for the phenomenon. So he left it an open question. And it has really been an open question ever since--but it is at last closed.

Let us, however, follow Dr. Hayes still further north. By the end of November the Arctic night has set in. The voyagers are by now a little farther north. And yet here is the sort of thing that hap-pens to the temperatures:

"The temperature had been strangely mild, a circumstance at least in part accounted for by the open water, and to this same cause was due no doubt the great disturbance of the air, and the frequency of the gales. I have mentioned in the last chapter a very remarkable rise in the thermometer which occurred early in November (see above); but a still greater elevation of temperature followed a few weeks later, reaching as high as 32 degrees. In con-sequence of this sudden and unaccountable event, the

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thaw was renewed, and our former discomfort arising from the dampness on deck and in our quarters was experienced in an aggravated degree. . ."

Then snow began to fall, and Dr. Hayes was still more astonished--for this was above the line where snow usually falls--when it was followed by a shower of rain. He also noticed that the snow came in very beautiful and perfectly formed crystals, which is always, he says, a sign that the snow was formed in a temperature that is quite mild. "I have not observed them when the thermometer ranged below zero."

But by January 13 quite .a good deal more snow had fallen, and in spite of the fact that there had been terrific storms the air had never been really cold. (The party were wintering at Port Foulke.) The explorer notes these high winds and high temperatures, and snow, and says:

UNUSUAL PHENOMENA

"All these unusual phenomena are, as has been hitherto observed, doubtless due to the proximity of the open sea. How extensive the water may be is of course unknown, but its limits cannot be very small to produce such serious atmospheric disturbance. It seems, indeed, as if we were in the very vortex of the north winds. The poet has told us that the north winds

'Are cradled far down in the depths that yawn
Beneath the Polar Star;'

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and it appears very much as if we had got into those yawning depths, and had come not only to the place where the winds are cradled, but where they are born."

We might say here that if the open sea really accounted for the high temperatures it follows that there must be a still greater source of heat to account for the open sea. And we should remember, too, that Dr. Hayes observed the same high temperatures when the northeast wind was coming across, the frozen surface of Greenland.

And let us also say that if the poet imagined a great space where the winds are born, beneath the Polar Star, the fact may again turn out to be more wonderful than the fiction--the depths may yet be plumbed. In fact we have indubitable proof that they can be plumbed and explored. But that we will discuss later.

At last the Arctic winter began to wear away. One of the first signs of the change in season was the appearance of a flock of birds, which, curiously enough, "warmed their feet in the water which the winds would not let freeze." The explorer was surprised to find these birds the Dovekie of Southern Greenland--"denizens of the Arctic night so near the Pole." But there again we must reserve comment until later.

A WARM SLEDGE JOURNEY

When the sun did arise the explorer left his ship and undertook a sledge journey whose object was to

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cross the frozen sound to Cape Sabine on its other side (just south of Grinnell Land). As a matter of fact he had to strike for a point north of that on account of the ice hummocks. Before long the explorer finds that although the sea is now frozen over so that he can cross it in this manner, the air is quite warm. The warmth, he thinks, is "unseasonable," and it must have indeed felt so, for the party wished to take off their coats and could not as the added weight of the coats on the sledges would have been an unfair handicap for the dogs. At one time the members of the party wondered whether the ice was going to melt under them, and kept a watchful eye in the direction of Port Foulke. The author notes that along the entire coast of Grinnell Land, which could be seen in the distance, there were no glaciers, which he noted as being in striking contrast with the Greenland coast. At this point in Dr. Hayes' journey he had reached a point somewhat to the northward of that reached by Morton, the member of Dr. Kane's expedition whose observations we have already noted, being in fact at a point, "sixty miles to the northward and westward of Cape Constitution." He pushed on, and was soon stopped by bad ice. Returning to the Grinnell coast and climbing an elevation, the author made the following observations which had better be given in his own words:

"The ice was everywhere in the same condition as in the mouth of the bay, across which I had endeavored

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to pass. A broad crack, starting from the middle of the bay, stretched over the sea, and uniting with other cracks as it meandered to the eastward, it expanded as the delta of some mighty river discharging into the ocean, and under a water sky, which hung upon the eastern and northern horizon, it was lost in the open sea.

ON THE EDGE OF THE POLAR BASIN

"Standing against the dark sky at the north, there was seen, in dim outline, the white, sloping summit of a noble headland--the most northern land upon the globe. I judged it to be in latitude 82 degrees, 30 minutes, or four hundred and fifty miles from the North Pole. Nearer, another bold cape stood forth; and nearer still the headland, for which I had been steering my course the day before, rose majestically from the sea. .. .There was no land visible except the coast upon which I stood.

"The sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white and dark patches, these latter being soft, decaying ice or places where the ice had wholly disappeared.

"I reserve to another chapter all discussion of the value of the observations which I made from this point. Suffice it here to say that all the evidences showed that I stood upon the shores of the Polar Basin, and that the broad ocean lay at my feet; that the land upon which I stood, culminating in the distant cape before me, was but a point of land projecting

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far into it, like the Ceverro Vostochnoi Noss of the opposite coast of Siberia; and that the little margin of ice which lined the shore was being steadily worn away; and within a month, the whole sea would be as free from ice as I had seen the north water of Baffin Bay,--interrupted only by a moving pack, drifting to and fro at the will of the winds and currents."

BIRDS FLYING NORTH

Dr. Hayes was, of course, unable to proceed any further, as the ice was rapidly vanishing and rotten where it was exposed outside the bay. But before planting his flag and other evidences of his discovery and returning to his base at Port Foulke, he was surprised to note again those small birds, a flock of Dovekie. He expresses surprise at seeing them so far north so early in the season. He also saw a number of burgomaster-gulls which, significantly enough, were "making their way northward, seeking the open water for their feeding grounds and summer haunts." Rather curious, is it not, that these birds should be flying toward the North Pole in search of summer haunts and open water and food?

A PROPHETIC VISION OF OUR THEORY

And Dr. Hayes evidently felt to the full the strangeness of his situation and the possibilities that were hidden in that stretch of polar sea which he could not explore. Something of a prophetic vision

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would almost seem to be behind the following words with which he ends this chapter in his record:

"But I quit the place with reluctance. It possessed a fascination for me, and it was with no ordinary sensations that I contemplated my situation, with one solitary companion in that hitherto untrodden desert; while my nearness to the earth's axis, the consciousness of standing upon land far beyond the limits of previous observations, the reflections which crossed my mind respecting the vast ocean which lay spread out before me, the thought that these ice-girdled waters might lash the shores of distant islands where dwell human beings of an unknown race, were circumstances calculated to invest the very air with mystery, to deepen the curiosity, and to strengthen the resolution to persevere in my determination to sail upon this sea and to explore its furthest limits; and as I recalled the struggles which had been made to reach this sea--through the ice and across the ice--by generations of brave men, it seemed as if the spirits of these Old Worthies came to encourage me, as their experience had already guided me; and I felt that I had within my grasp 'the great and notable thing' which had inspired the zeal of sturdy Frobisher, and that I had achieved the hope of matchless Parry."

We can understand those feelings. Often a vision of achievement like that has led men to make great efforts and those efforts have resulted in achieving

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not what they saw in the vision but something even better. It was not reserved for Hayes to discover what he thought might possibly be found. And he might think it a strange thing if he could revisit the earth and see that the first actual discovery of what is really at the "ends of the earth" is made not by an explorer with ships and sleds and dogs, but by an explorer of the facts which observations have gradually given us. It is not the actual explorer, collector of facts, or in an army, the actual scout, who wins the victories of science or of war. It is the philosopher who puts the facts together and draws inferences; it is the general who puts together the isolated tidings brought in by scouts. And so in this case. Kane and Hayes, Greely, Nansen and Peary, have indeed gathered in many a fact and observation. But the very nearness of these men to their own actual problems has perhaps prevented them from seeing the whole field at a glance. By taking all their results and comparing them with what the astronomers tell us of other polar regions and of the evolution of planets in this way only can the actual visions of men like Hayes be turned into the concrete reality of scientific knowledge. And then, once having achieved that, the task of the explorer is rendered much more easy and more fruitful, for he is guaranteed a definite goal, and knows just at what he is aiming.

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But to return to Hayes. In a very interesting chapter he summarizes the available knowledge of the open polar sea. He first draws the reader's attention to the fact that the north coasts of Greenland and Grinnell Land are about the only boundaries of this sea which have not been well defined along their northern coasts. He also makes special note of the fact that while the boundaries of the Open Polar Sea are all within the line of perpetual frost, the sea itself is open and all the serious attempts of polar explorers have had to reckon with this fact. For their difficulty has been to break through the ice barriers and to reach the open sea. He, himself, of course did reach this open sea but as he had come to it by sledge he was unable to take advantage of his discovery. Had he been able to get a ship up to that point all would have been easy--he might well have been the discoverer of the so-called "pole".

THE TEMPERATURES OF THE POLAR REGIONS

In this chapter Hayes prints a very interesting note about the temperature of the polar regions. If the pole is what it has always been supposed to be--namely a sheet of solid ice, the coldest part of the world,--it would follow that the closer we approached to it the lower the temperature would be. And even if the equator were not the parallel of maximum heat (for as a matter of fact that is

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only an approximation, and the actual parallel of maximum heat departs from the line of the equator) it would still be true that at, or very near, the place which has always been called the pole, there would be a spot where the temperature reached a perpetual minimum. But as early as the first serious attempts to get to the pole, it became evident that this was not the case--that the polar region was warmer than the regions immediately surrounding it. As early as 1821, Sir David Brewster, knowing that exploration pointed to a higher temperature at the poles wrote a paper in which he put forth the theory that figuring from the mean heat of the globe, compared with actual heat measurements on various parts of it, it might be found that the heat at the pole was ten degrees higher than at other points in the Arctic circle.

THE EARTH'S HEAT AND BREWSTER'S GUESS

But if we admit that Sir David Brewster's guess is right--and it is remarkable that, on the evidence available in his day he should have hit upon this idea--what can possibly cause that rise in temperature? If the poles were solid, or at least if they had no source of heat such as out theory predicates, how could they possibly reach that higher temperature? Where could the heat come from? Only if there were such an inner source as we indicate could this take place. And if there were such an inner source,

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[paragraph continues] Sir David Brewster's guess might prove to be remarkably accurate. For the heat coming from the interior of the earth would not make the whole polar basin into an ice-free region. As we shall show later, there are icebergs and glaciers on the inner lip of the polar orifice. We shall show how mammoths have been entrapped in the crevasses of these glaciers and carried into Siberia in a freshly frozen condition. The polar ice of the external surface would be sufficient to cover the whole pole as well as the region which we speak of as the ice basin, if the polar region were solid. As it is not solid, but communicates with a warmer region, we have the ice from the outside forming a barrier around that region and also forming into ice-fields and glaciers on the inner rim, these latter, however, being prevented from becoming one solid mass by the warm currents from the hotter parts of the interior. It might well be, although we do not say this dogmatically, that the resulting mean temperature in the region that we may call the "lip" of the polar orifice would be found to be on the whole about ten degrees higher than the temperature further south, just as Sir David Brewster thought. But that actual temperature is a matter for actual observation by an expedition. Here we merely call attention to the curious fact that without knowing of this polar orifice a scientist was led to postulate such a relatively high and with difficulty

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explained temperature at what was thought to be the solid pole.

HAYES AGREES WITH WRANGEL

Before leaving Hayes, however, we may briefly note a number of interesting observations he makes all of which go to support our explanation of the true nature of the polar regions. Lest it be thought that the foregoing accounts of open water were simply due to temporary conditions it may be noted--on Hayes' authority--that as early as the time when Baron Wrangel, then a young lieutenant in the Russian navy made his polar attempts it was clearly proved that the open water to the north was always open whatever the time of year. He also quotes Dr. Kane's findings, whose explorations preceded his own and have been already described here. It may be noted that Wrangel found the open polar sea from an almost opposite point in the polar circle while Parry discovered it to be open from a point above Spitzbergen.

One of the most interesting of these closing observations of Hayes, however, deals with the Eskimo. An Eskimo to whom he spoke before his dash for the polar circle told him that he would find the tribesmen as far north as he could go. Dr. Hayes did find traces of them "up to the very face of Humboldt glacier" and as far north as Cairn Point. Dr. Hayes goes on to say:

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"The simple discovery of traces of Eskimos on the coast of Grinnell Land was not altogether satisfactory to Kalutunah, for he had confidently expected that I would find and bring back with me some living specimens of them; but he was still gratified to have his traditions confirmed, and he declared that I did not go far enough or I should have found plenty of natives; for, he said, in effect, 'There are good hunting grounds at the north, plenty of musk-ox (oomemak), and wherever there are good hunting grounds, there the Eskimo will be found.'

ANIMAL LIFE AROUND THE POLE

The importance of that point will readily be seen. Good hunting grounds means vast tracts of land that will support the animals, in which they can not only find food but opportunity for breeding. It means, in short, a salubrious climate. But to that point we shall return later, fortified with a vast mass of positive evidence.

That musk-ox is not the only animal to be found where we should hardly expect it is evident from another entry in Hayes' diary. When he was in latitude 78 degrees, 17 minutes, early in July, he says "I secured a yellow-winged butterfly, and--who would believe it--a mosquito. And these I add to an entomological collection which already numbers

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ten moths, three spiders, two bumble-bees, and two flies". One wonders where they all came from, especially the butterfly and the mosquito which have been known to find even the American climate too cold for them. But here again we shall not press the subject until we come to treat it in greater detail, for we have other explorers to follow and other evidences to record drawn from their experiences in looking for that pole which does not exist.

CHAPTER VI

GREELY'S EXPLORATIONS

We now come to the many and valuable observations made by General A. W. Greely, who as a young lieutenant in 1881 began his "Three Years of Arctic Service" (as he calls his book) by setting off on the "Lady Franklin Bay Expedition" one of the objects of which was to attain the old goal "farthest north".

A REMARKABLE PREFACE

In the preface to this book in which he recounts his experiences, General Greely tells us that the wonders of the Arctic regions are so great that he modified his actual notes made at the time, and understated them rather than lay himself open to the suspicion of exaggerating. That the Arctic regions are so full of life and strange evidences of a life further north that an explorer cannot tell them all without being accused of exaggeration is surely a very strange thing if those regions only lead to a barren pole of everlasting ice.

But let us see what those actual wonders are. Let us take Greely's own account of them noticing how perfectly it agrees with the accounts of earlier explorers. He proceeded along the coast of Greenland to Melville Bay.

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THE CRIMSON CLIFFS

By August first he had reached a point near the Petowik glacier which lies just northward of the "Crimson Cliffs" of Sir John Ross. This is so called from the fact that on the snow-clad cliffs and glacier surfaces at this point Sir John Ross, in 1818, discovered a red deposit which had fallen about and mixed with the snow, giving it a reddish color which was pretty widely distributed. What was it? For a long time this was a mystery, but it was at last proven to be of vegetable origin: now, the point--to be taken up in detail later is simply this: where could any vegetable matter, either a pollen from larger plants or a very humble sort of red mossy or spore like growth, come from? There is no other case in the whole realm of botany that would justify us in assuming that a plant can grow on ice-bergs or on snow. A plant requires certain elements and certain temperatures. Evidently, somewhere those factors must be in existence. Where, we shall see later.

ARCTIC TEMPERATURES

Greely's next observation of interest to us is that any errors in the reporting of arctic temperatures are likely to be on the side of making them too low. So that in case any readers have doubted the accuracy of previous explorers they may set their minds at rest.

When part of Greely's party had gone almost as

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far north on the Greenland coast as Newman's Bay, Sergeant Brainard made this rather remarkable discovery:

THE MUSK-OX

"Just before going into camp, Sergeant Brainard discovered on that winter's snow the dung of a musk-ox, which he thought could scarcely be a week dropped. He well says: 'This should be positive proof that the animal does not migrate south with the sun and return the following year as the sun advances, as many assume to be his habit, but remains in some well sheltered valley or ravine during the winter darkness, subsisting on whatever comes his way.' This incident (Greely adds) and my personal experience, as well as that of the British expedition, leaves no doubt that the musk-ox is a regular inhabitant of Grinnell Land and Northern Greenland the entire year.

We admit the above proves that the ox does not migrate to the south. For we have seen already other instances where the trend of animal and bird migration was not to the south. But in our other cases there was a migration. But it was to the north. It is absurd to suppose that the musk-ox, which is certainly not an eater of birds or a hunter of fishes, could live on "what came its way" in ravines, even sheltered ones during the Arctic winter. What would be wandering about the ravines or valleys of the bleak lands here mentioned, during

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the long Arctic night, anyway? No, the musk-ox goes for his winter where he can find food in abundance. And that is north--over the lip of the polar orifice.

LOCKWOOD'S OBSERVATIONS

One of Greely's assistants, Lieutenant Lockwood, explored the Greenland coast to a point ninety-five miles beyond the farthest ever seen by his predecessors. Among the results of his journey were observations of tidal and ice effects which convinced him that "open water spaces exist in the Polar Ocean, and its main ice moves the whole winter." This main ice, it will be remembered is the ice that forms the barrier to further sledge travel toward the north. That it is moving all the time proves conclusively that there is warmer open water to the north of it which is constantly breaking it up and keeping it from encroaching any further north. In this observation of his assistant General Greely concurs fully, and he gives additional data to prove that the polar pack ice is not unified and continuous "even in the early spring when the floe-ice is most solid".

General Greely also says that the depth of the sea at this high point augurs the inconsiderable extension of Greenland to the northward. He thinks it may extend to the eighty-fifth parallel and that deep sea will be found after that. That would certainly indicate that any land suitable for animal breeding and feeding--such as we have seen there must be--is

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still farther north, on the other side of that deep sea, in other words, over the lip of the polar orifice.

COMPLETE CONIFEROUS TREES

Greely then; gives us an account of some of his own explorations in Grinnell Land in the summer--Fort Conger being his base. Among his interesting discoveries were two complete coniferous trees in a ravine near Lake Heintzelman, embedded for two thirds of their length in the ground. "It seemed evident from their position that they must have been brought there as driftwood, and gradually covered up by the earth washing down from the adjacent hill side". Now the only explanation Greely could make of their drifting to that spot--it was twenty feet above the level of the nearby lake--was that "within a tolerably recent period this valley has been an arm of the sea". But that explanation hardly holds water. The trees were not fossilized and were partly ex-posed to air which, as Greely goes on to tell us--but without seeing how it invalidates his idea--was quite warm. Now in such circumstances the wood of the trees would soon rot away. Certainly warming and wetting and freezing and warming again due to being exposed in such a climate would soon finish any wood--much sooner than the time required for the valley once near the sea to be left many miles away from it. No, it would seem as if those trees must have been carried from some other source.

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[paragraph continues] And to regard them as carried by some glacial movement from the northern orifice would seem a much simpler explanation. It is interesting to note that this whole valley, by the way, was free from snow and covered with luxuriant vegetation. And, as was indeed the case generally in these explorations, there was an abundance of animal life observed.

BUTTERFLIES AND BEES

A little later Greely passed to the other side of this valley and found that he had reached the water shed of this part of Grinnell Land, the other side of the ridge draining into Lake Hazen. Here he did actually see a glazier on the north side of that lake--which ought to have given him a hint about the two trees he had so recently discovered. He also caught, at that point, a butterfly, and saw three shuas, two bumble bees and many flies. A little later a member of his party saw two tern and a long-tailed duck. What was even more remarkable, they next came across a flock of twelve to fifteen birds which resembled snipe but were unlike any actual species of that bird he had ever seen or read of. Other ducks were also seen and nine musk-oxen. Incident-ally, a few nights the party were unable to obtain much sleep owing to the large number of flies which bothered them incessantly. The temperature was as high as 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and never went below 47 degrees and there was always enough dead willow

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around for fuel. As the days went on, more musk-oxen were seen, a great variety of birds, and quite a little reindeer moss--although it was considered that it never grew as far north as Discovery Harbor. Near Lake Hazen a deserted Eskimo encampment was found, its surroundings "marked by luxuriant vegetation of grass, sorrel, poppies, and other plants. Some specimens of the sorrel in this locality must have been eight to ten inches in height, and they grew in such quantities that we plucked them by the handful.

"A short distance beyond the encampment the party were enlivened by the appearance of a young hare, which we concluded to catch. . . .These exertions caused profuse perspiration which saturated our clothing." At the junction of Lake Hazen and Ruggles River, the air was so balmy, the sky so blue--flecked with true cumulus clouds so rare in the Arctic, and the poppies and other flowers so gaily blooming that Greely said he could well imagine himself in the "roaring forties" instead of in this high latitude--eight degrees from the pole. He goes on:

"I examined carefully the surroundings of the camp. The flora appeared to be the same as that existing in the vicinity of Discovery Harbor, with the exception of two flowers which were different from any others I had seen. Specimens were procured and carefully arranged, but unfortunately

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were spoiled during my trip by being soaked beyond recognition while fording the many streams."

A FLOWER OF UNKNOWN SPECIES

"It is to be regretted that I paid but little attention to the Arctic flora, and in the press of other matters neglected to make a description of these plants. Another plant, of the heath family, was found in large quantities, one or two specimens of which were sent back to Conger."

Yes, we regret too, that that plant, so strange that Greely could not even approximately place its family, was not preserved. It might have shown us that there are other places from which plants may come as well as those regions which we know so well that all the plants that grow in them are identified and classified.

AN ESKIMO ENCAMPMENT

The next interesting discovery was of Eskimo inhabitants in which the explorers found a variety of articles including "several articles of worked bone whose use I could not surmise, and the character of which were unknown to our own Eskimo. The bone articles were of walrus, narwhal, and whale-bone, the first being the predominating material, from which small articles had been made."

That is a very interesting point, for this reason. The same tribes living under the same circumstances would naturally have the same tools. The fact that

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these long departed people whose habitations were now being explored had tools the use of which could not be guessed by the Eskimo with the party shows that they were a tribe who had not been in communication with any of the Eskimo tribes we know, but who had developed along their own lines and made their own tools for their own purposes. Is it not quite possible that they had come up from the land the other side of the orifice at some time long past?

This supposition is strengthened by the fact that their houses showed no sign either of having been covered with stones or of having stones around them to secure the skin coverings as they are secured by the Greenland Eskimos. Either they covered their houses in some way peculiar to themselves or they never covered them at all. In any event here was a peculiarity which set them off from the ordinary Eskimos. The explorers searched diligently to see if the remains of any of these people were to be found. They had left so much apparently valuable material that it looked as if they might have died there. But with the most diligent searching, not a bone could be found--and Greely adds that not even the bone of a dog was visible although the camp looked as if the people had lived there for at least two years. He adds, by the way that bones of musk-oxen or other animals are very rarely found in Grinnell

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[paragraph continues] Land. And that can surely only mean that there is some way by which these animals can leave Grinnell Land.

TEMPERATURE RISES CONSIDERABLY

At about this time, by the way, the temperature had gone up to 74 degrees Fahrenheit--a very high summer temperature which made marching uncomfortable. And even on hills two thousand feet high there was not a trace of snow.

GENERAL RESULTS OF EXPEDITION

Greely ends the account of these summer explorations by telling the general results obtained by himself and his party. He says he has ascertained beyond any doubt that the interior of North Grinnell Land is not what it had always been supposed, but was a fertile land, filled with rich pasturage for musk-oxen, and that, like it, Greenland, was also only an ice-girt and not an ice-covered land; that in conjunction with other explorers' observations--it was safe to say that in north Greenland also there was abundant pasturage and fertility. Such fertility, he adds, Nordenskiold had looked for, but he had looked seven hundred miles too far south. In other words Nordenskiold found only the icy desolation which is usually thought to characterize the poles, but he found it not because he got too near the pole but because he was not near enough.

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HUNTING WAS GOOD

So ends the first volume of Greely's account of his three years in the Arctic regions. The second volume opens with his account of his second winter there. Throughout that period there was plenty of hunting, birds of many species being shot and owls caught and kept in captivity, as well as a white fox. Before proceeding to describe his further explorations Greely sums up his ideas regarding physical conditions to the north of Greenland. Of course he believed in a polar area which was not open to the interior--but all the same he is sure that that supposed area is "washed by a sea which, from its size and consequent high temperature. . . . can never be entirely ice-clad". He also states that Nordenskiold believes the polar sea to be open. That ships in the ice during Arctic winters nevertheless drifted--along with the ice--to the northward he thinks is confirmatory evidence of such an open sea. And yet he hesitates to say much about the matter himself as he thinks that the ice-belt which cuts off the far northern regions may be very thick and hard to get through. This makes him think that "the water space to the northward can only be entered in extremely favorable years by the Spitzbergen route." But the great point is that Greely admits there is a water space to the north.

We now pass on to the observations in ethnology and natural history which Greely made during these

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explorations. How far north did he find evidence of human life? He quotes the explorers in the British Polar expedition of 1875 as finding such evidences in 80 degrees, 25 minutes north, and proceeds:

ESKIMO REMAINS

"Our own discoveries of Eskimo remains to the northward of the eighty-first parallel were numerous and interesting. Evidences of temporary or permanent occupation noted at Cape Baird, at the head of Ella Bay, at numerous points in the vicinity of Fort Conger, in Black Rock Vale, on the shores of Sun Bay, on both sides of Chandler Fiord, and in the valleys in the south side of Lake Hazen. Many of these remains were in the interior of Grinnell Land at distances from the sea varying from fifty to one hundred miles by the route necessarily followed."

The reader will remember the detailed description of one of these discoveries which we have already quoted. He goes on:

"The remains indicate that these natives possessed dogs, sledges, coniferous wood in considerable quantity, stone lamps, iron in small quantities, the bone of the narwhal and walrus. The presence of combs proves that they were accompanied by women. The ornamentation of the combs, and an elaborately worked ivory cap for the top of an upstander, show that these people were above the lowest levels of savage life."

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'We have already noted the fact that some of these houses indicated permanent residence but that there were no graves, showing that the Eskimos had access to some unknown localities. And here is some more evidence bearing upon that very interesting point:

WHERE DID THE ESKIMO GO?

"Much as I could have wished to find evidences of long continued occupancy of these lands by the Eskimo, yet I was forced to a contrary conclusion. The lack of graves only is quite conclusive on this point. I opine that favorable years and the migration of the reindeer and musk-oxen gradually led these natives northward along the coast of Grinnell Land, and later into its interior. Of the many abandoned encampments in Grinnell Land only two evidenced other than temporary occupancy, and these, judging from the surroundings, of but few years."

Seeing, however, that these discoveries were made so far north it immediately occurs to us to wonder why Greely supposes that these Eskimos must have come up from the south and then disappeared into the north. If the northern lands past the ice-barrier are so fertile that these Eskimos were gradually led to explore them and settle there for we have no evidence of their ever retracing their steps is it not just as sensible to suppose that they came from there in the first place, and that the encampments Greely saw represented these people's "furthest

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south" rather than a northern adventure. And the fact that they differed so much from the Eskimos with whom Greely was acquainted the reader will remember the tools whose uses he could not make out--certainly strengthens this view. In fact Greely admits that one other explorer, Fielden of the British expedition, who thinks that a section of the Eskimo race known as the Arctic Highlanders did come from the north.

WHALE AND OTHER ANIMALS

Now as to natural history notes. Greely saw the white whale in Smith Sound as far north as 81 degrees, thirty-five minutes, and a school of narwhal was seen at the same time. Perry, he says, in 1827 saw a white whale five minutes further on. He makes further notes on the presence of the narwhal and says that there is evidence to show that this creature "reaches even the polar sea to the north of Grinnell Land, as a horn was picked up near Floeberg Beach in 82 degrees, 27 minutes, by Lieutenant Parr."

We now turn to the musk-ox. We have already seen traces of this animal described by Greely. In these notes he tells us some very remarkable things about their distribution. It seems that there was hardly an island among those he visited in the far north where there were not traces of musk-oxen. He thinks they must have crossed Smith Sound at one

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time, as their skulls have been found in Inglefield Land north of the seventy-eighth parallel. Members of his party discovered them as far north as 83 degrees, 3 minutes north. Where did they come from? While Greely does not know he makes one valuable statement. He found out by actual trial that the musk-ox will not travel over ice: "both from observation of our musk-calves who could not be driven on it, and from the tracks of adults, which followed carefully in places the rough, rugged shore of Ruggles River rather than cross snow-covered ice by a shorter route."

So it is obvious that these animals must have some permanent and all year round northern habitat from which they emerge at times for breeding purposes, and this habitat can hardly be other than the comparatively warm polar area which communicates with both the outer and the inner surfaces of the earth.

Coming to smaller animals we find that the ringed lemming, a member of the rat family, is found in great numbers in the extreme north of Grinnell Land and in Greenland as far as 84 degrees, 24 minutes north, and although the animal loves to wander but hates to travel on ice, it is not found further to the south--showing that all its freedom of movement is toward the north. The polar hare has also been found in latitude 83 degrees, ten minutes, and both in Greenland and Grinnell Land. Also it has been

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proved, by Greely and others that the lemming and hare do not hibernate in these latitudes.

In connection with the polar bear Greely makes these interesting statements:

WHY DO HERBIVOROUS BEARS GO NORTH?

"Lieutenant Lockwood, in May, 1882, noticed bear tracks (going northeast) on the north coast of Greenland, near Cape Benet in 83 degrees, 3 minutes, the highest latitude in which the animal has ever been known. . . . Fresh bear tracks were seen in September and October, 1883, near Cape Sabine, coming from and returning in the direction of Bache Island. . . .

"With Feilden I cannot understand why the bear ever leaves the rich hunting-field of the 'North Water' (the name of a land or district) for the desolate shores of the northward. Nordenskiold has pointed out that the bear is sometimes a herbivorous animal, but vegetation and animal life are equally scanty to the northward from Cape Sabine."

Had Greely been in possession of the facts laid bare in this book he would not have wondered. Naturally he and the other explorers mentioned above were considerably astonished when they saw that bears went away off north apparently to no-where, but the bears must certainly have known where they were going.

Greely then goes on to give instance after instance

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of the appearance of the fox in these latitudes, as well as of the wolf and the ermine. He next takes up the ornithology of the region. After mentioning a number of other birds seen in latitudes above 80, he has this very remarkable observation:

A BIRD THAT LOVES THE ARCTIC

"Ross' Gull. . . The observations of Murdoch at Point Barrow show that this bird, in thousands, passes over that point to the northeast in October, none of which were seen to return. He says, 'They appeared to come in from the sea to the west or north-west, and travel along the coast to the northeast.'"

If these birds never returned south, where did they go? Our theory supplies the only possible answer.

We will leave Greely's observations on the Aurora Borealis--which can only be fully explained by our theory--for a separate chapter.

GREELY TELLS OF HIS DISCOVERIES

After Greely had been rescued and brought back to civilization there was naturally a great deal of discussion as to the extent and value of his observations. Perhaps the most important announcement that Greely himself made--although it might not have been considered so at the time, for it was not understood was that before the British Association for the Advancement of Science. That body met in Montreal in 1884, and Greely addressed them. Here

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is part of what he had to say, taken from a report of the meeting printed at the time in "The Scientific American" and which was reprinted in many places.

Greely remarked that one of the, surprises of the journey was his discovery that the further north he went the greater was the depth to which the ground thawed. While Lieutenant Ray took observations at the point where his station was established--where he waited while Greely went on to the north--Greely took similar observations ten degrees further north than Ray, and he found that at almost his northernmost point the ground thawed for a depth of twenty to thirty feet. On the other hand, Ray did not find the thaw extending to anything like that depth--at ten degrees further south.

THE FARTHER NORTH, THE WARMER

Now that is proof positive that the further north, after a certain point one goes, the warmer it becomes. Other evidences of warmth at the Arctic have been derived from observations of the temperature of water and air currents, but it is very interesting to have this additional testimony based on the temperature of the earth itself.

TIDAL FLOW OBSERVATIONS

But that was not the most startling thing Greely had to say. The report from which we quote goes on: "In a subsequent speech he (Greely) took occasion

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to say that a fact had surprised him. It was the discovery that when the tide was flowing from the north pole it was found by his observations that the water was warmer than when flowing in the opposite direction. He took the trouble to have prepared an elaborate set of observations showing this wonderful phenomenon, which would eventually be published. To him these peculiarities were unexplainable, and he hoped that the observations would be studied by his hosts, and some explanation found in regard to the thermometric observations of the expedition."

About the same time as the above meeting took place, Mr. George Kennan of Washington, D. C., who took a prominent part in the relief of Greely's expedition, was asked about the importance of his discoveries. (See Dieck's Wonders of the Polar World). Mr. Kennan said:

"Lieutenant Greely has not only taken away from Commander Markham of the British Navy the 'blue ribbon of Arctic discovery' for the highest latitude ever attained in any part of the world, but he has greatly extended the limits of the Nares explorations both in Greenland and Grinnell Land, and has given a severe blow to Captain Nares' palaeocrystic ice, and the theories which the latter founded upon it. The fact that two of Greely's sledge parties were stopped by open water in the polar basin, and that both were at times adrift in strong currents which

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threatened to carry them helplessly away northward, would seem to show that the polar basin is not the solid sea of ancient, immovable ice which Nares described, and which he declared was 'never navigable.'"

OPEN WATER AND WARMER

Now there is testimony of the most unimpeachable character and it is as plain as it is unimpeachable. There is no misunderstanding it. We find Greely ten degrees farther north than Lieutenant Ray, finding not merely that the winds and waters were warmer than further south but that this warmth was so constant that the ground thawed to a depth of thirty feet. We find that whenever water flowed from the north pole it was warmer than when it flowed from the south. We find that there is no sea of "ancient ice" as Nares and explorers before him thought but that there is an open polar basin with strong currents. Now if that open water that stopped Greely were only a small sea that did not extend very far, there would be no such currents in it as are described above. Those currents testify to the fact that here is a sea which does extend to the northern regions. Of course Greely could not imagine how those warm currents could come from the north and he could not account for the strong currents in the sea. But our reader, who remembers the conformation of the polar regions, can easily see how these things would be. The water inside the polar orifices,

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warmed by the inner sun, would naturally form a very strong current as it met the cooler waters of the outside polar regions. Quite as naturally that water would keep clear from ice the great polar sea. Ice from the south could only come up to a certain point--the point where Greely and other discoverers found "open water"--and after that the sea would get warmer and warmer. It is interesting to note that one of the people interviewed in regard to the Greely discoveries at the same time as the other speeches and interviews were made, which we have quoted, said that further Arctic exploration had better be postponed until air ships could be built with which to undertake it. Well, at the time that may not have sounded like a practical suggestion, but it is now a thing of the very near future. And we shall see then just what one would expect from the observations made by Greely. For there is only one possible explanation for them and that is the explanation given in this book.

CHAPTER VII

NORDENSKIOLD'S VOYAGES

The next Arctic explorer whom we shall follow in his voyages is Adolf Erik Nordenskiold whose experiences in the Arctic extended over twenty-one years. Nordenskiold was a Finnish professor, and on all his expeditions he was accompanied by a staff of scientists. So the following observations are no mere pieces of unsupported guess-work but the findings of a man whose name has been made known the world over by the brilliant and thorough-going nature of the discoveries he made.

TWENTY-ONE YEARS' WORK

Nordenskiold's Arctic expeditions were made under the auspices of the Swedish government. His first serious attempt at a polar voyage was made in 1861, starting out from Tromsoe for a comprehensive survey of Spitzbergen. The party had just passed Amsterdam Island, according to Alexander Leslie who prepared the book, "The Arctic Voyages of Adolf Erik Nordenskiold," when a very interesting observation was made. Here is the account of it:

BIRD AND INSECT LIFE

"During the whole voyage no birds had been seen but auks and black guillemots, on their way northwardin immense flocks to revisit their old breeding grounds. The same night, however, (23rd May), great numbers of barnacle geese (Anser bernicla) were seen flying towards the northwest, perhaps to some land more northerly then Spitzbergen. The existence of such a land is considered quite certain by the walrus-hunters, who state that at the most northerly point hitherto reached such flocks of birds are seen steering their course in rapid flight yet farther toward the north."

Passing over Nordenskiold's notes on the abundance of insect and other life in Spitzbergen, we note his surprise at the sudden way in which summer heat set in. In July the ice suddenly began to break up especially where it had been undermined by the waves--which would also sound as if the water of the sea had already reached a fairly high temperature. He was also surprised at the immense number of auk which he found as soon as he began his summer expeditions. "Between Dym Point and Cape Fanshawe the Swedes passed the greatest auk-fell they had hitherto seen. . . . The air is darkened by the number of fowl flying out of such a fell when a gun is fired, without it being possible to distinguish any diminution in consequence in the number of those which sit still so quietly that some, which had made their nests, could be reached from the boat and taken with the hand."

"The party next entered Lomme Bay and after landing found a grassy terraced slope on which they killed three deer. The party could hardly believe them to be the same species of deer that they had seen at Treurenbery bay four weeks before. Then they were as lean as if they had consisted entirely of skin, bones, and sinew; these, on the contrary, might have competed as fat stock. . . ."

VOYAGE AFTER VOYAGE CONFIRMS OBSERVATIONS

Now it is interesting to note that these observations were confirmed and extended by Nordenskiold's further researches, and eleven years later we find him making similar discoveries and having this to say about them (this observation being made when he was on Parry Island):

"Numerous traces and remains showed that even these islands lying in the neighborhood of 81 degrees are inhabited in great numbers by very large animals, which, if the facility of procuring the necessaries of life were the only condition of their choice of habitat, ought to betake themselves to far more southerly regions. Numerous foot-prints of bears, often following the traces of the reins for long distances, showed that a dangerous enemy to the reindeer lives in this neighborhood."

A little later the explorer notices that the reindeer they shoot are, as he had once noticed before, much fatter than those shot in his southerly journeyings.

Now those facts. are sufficiently remarkable, but we will not dwell upon them now because we have further evidence along the same line that will be developed later in this book and that simply explains once and for all the reason of these observations which puzzled this great scientist.

More in line with the sort of evidence which we are now particularly considering are Nordenskiold's observations upon the actual character of the northern lands. We first note that his views coincide with the other authorities we have quoted as to the ice only reaching to a certain latitude and then ending. Here is what he says on that subject:

EXPLORERS TOO AFRAID OF ICE, HE SAYS

"Of this inland ice the natives entertain a superstitious fear, an awe or prejudice, which has, in some degree, communicated itself to such Europeans as have resided long in Greenland. It is only thus that the curious fact that in the whole thousand years during which Greenland has been known, so few efforts have been made to pass over the ice farther into the country can be explained. There are many reasons for believing that the inland ice merely forms a continuous ice frame, running parallel with the coast, and surrounding a land free from ice, perhaps even wooded in its southern parts, which might, perhaps,

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be of great economical importance to the rest of Greenland."

ESKIMOS GO NAKED

Again, some years later than the time at which the above observation was made, the explorer on his "North-east passage expedition" noticed that at certain points which he was enabled to visit along the northeastern coast of Siberia, the absence of what geologists call "erratic blocks" or blocks of earth and rock moved by glaciers. This absence proved to him that there does not exist "in the sea to the northward any such glacial land as Greenland." He also made an observation which is very interesting taken in connection with our note in the last chapter about the Eskimos. The women of the Eskimo tribes with whom he came in contact on this voyage, whenever they are in their inner tents, "go quite naked, with the exception of a narrow girdle, probably a reminiscence of the dress the people wore when they lived in a milder climate."

It will be noticed that between the Eskimo memories of a milder climate and all the evidence of a milder climate provided by the abundance of animal life always going to the north to feed or breed we are having quite a lot of warmth in our polar explorations. And Nordenskiold noted on this same voyage that the north seemed to be the source of heat. He says in one place:

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WARM WEATHER COMES WITH WIND FROM NORTH

"The wind had now changed from west to north and northwest. The temperature became milder and the weather rainy, a sign that there must have been great stretches of open water to the north and northwest."

CHAPTER VIII

WITH NANSEN IN THE NORTH

Nothing can illustrate better how really ignorant the scientists have been concerning the real constitution of the polar regions than the ridicule which many arctic explorers, and especially Greely, who seemed to believe in his later years that the pole was really a solid sheet of ice, cast upon Nansen when he announced his plans for a polar expedition.

SCIENTISTS LAUGH AT NANSEN

It was in the spring of 1888 that Fridtjof Nansen startled the scientific world "by announcing his determination to cross the ice-dome of Greenland." Nansen's idea was that instead of starting to explore Greenland from the west coast, leaving behind stores and a refuge that could be turned back to in case of failure, to start from the barren east coast and make toward the west where there were settlements and help. Thus if he got half way across and found great difficulties the natural thing would not be to turn back as was the temptation when food and shelter were behind and only further hardship in advance. It was on the expedition so planned that Nansen observed "a teeming current on the east coast of Greenland, piling the floes into the south"; he had found the same on the west side.

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HOW THE JEANNETTE DRIFTED

"He had learned that wreckage from the Jeannette had drifted through the polar sea and to Julianehaab in the southern part of Greenland; also that Siberian larch and other woods indigenous to northern Europe had been found on the Greenland shores. . . . "--as his story is summed up in D. M. Edwards'"The Toll of the Arctic Seas." So, arguing from these facts, he further startled the scientific world by announcing that it would be possible to build a ship strong enough to withstand all the ice buffeting and drift in it across the polar sea. He was not trying to find the exact mathematical point that formed the earth's extremity, he said, but "to investigate the great unknown regions that surrounded the Pole."

GREELY IS SKEPTICAL

Greely denied that the wreckage which had been found was that of the Jeannette she was the ship on which De Long sailed for the Arctic in 1879--and he did not think that the Fram--as Nansen's ship was called--could stand the pressure of the Arctic ice. It is a curious thing that Greely should have, after all his arctic experience, gone back to such old-fashioned ideas as he seemed to have, but he painted a picture of what the ship would have to endure which was quite falsified by events--and in fact, Greely admitted, after Nansen came back, that

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he had been wrong. So much for scientific infallibility. Let us now follow Nansen upon his two explorations that across Greenland and that which attempted the pole, and see what a lot of evidence he gathers which all points in one direction.

NANSEN IS SUCCESSFUL

On the Greenland expedition--which was quite successful, even to fulfilling practically every plan which Nansen has scheduled he found evidence that while the lower part of Greenland was covered with an immense ice dome, rising to approximately 8,000 feet above sea-level, there was every evidence of fertility and warmth further north and a more open sea along the coast of Greenland as the party skirted it to the north in the small boats which they had carried overland with them.

MOSQUITOES IN GREENLAND

'While they were still on the east coast, traveling north, a swarm of mosquitoes attacked the party one morning and made life miserable for them. They were so thick that the explorers could not get their food into their mouths before it was covered with the insects. And Nansen adds that Greenland is, as a matter of fact one of the worst countries in the world for that pest. The east coast was also found prolific in sea-fowl, including gulls, guillemots, and eider-duck. In a fresh water tarn in a meadow they

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found a new species of fish. Sorrel grew in abundance. On some nights it was too warm to sleep in the tent. In talking to the Eskimo and in reading accounts of earlier explorers, Nansen constantly heard legends and rumors of the fertile land to the north--behind the ice barrier. Nansen also tells of a dust on the ice which was observed by Nordenskiold and which he thought came from some other planet. Nansen, however, thinks that it is simply dust from some mountains that are not covered with ice and that it is blown over to the Greenland ice sheet. But it seems as if the quantities were too great to assume that it comes from any of the mountains known to explorers in those regions. We would be inclined to think that it comes from the other side of the polar ice-ring--from the land to which this book gives us the key. He also recounts, on the authority of Nordenskiold, the appearance to that explorer when in Greenland, of two ravens flying from the north: pretty good evidence that there was land there that was not covered with ice. After Nansen had penetrated the interior for some distance he was visited by a snow-bunting which was flying north--thus strengthening the evidence supplied by the two ravens.

SUCCESS LEADS TO FURTHER PLANS

But the chief importance of Nansen's first expedition was that it led him to think he could reach

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the north pole, and it is on this second journey that he really begins to make remarkable observations.

By the beginning of 1894, Nansen was between 79 and 80 degrees north, not making very rapid progress as they were shut in by the ice and dependent on the drift. And then Nansen noticed that whenever the wind blew from the north the temperature rose considerably. He says:

WARMTH WITH NORTHERN WINDS

"It is curious that there is almost always a rise of the thermometer with these stronger winds. . . . A south wind of less velocity generally lowers the temperature, and a moderate north wind raises it. Payer's explanation of this raising of the temperature by strong winds is that the wind is warmed by passing over large openings in the ice. This can hardly be correct, at any rate in our case, for we have few or no openings."

Nansen's own idea was that the heat was caused by winds from the higher reaches of the atmosphere where it had not been cooled by contact with the ice. But in trying to explain the high temperatures in this way he forgot that it was only the north winds which raised the temperatures and not the south winds. And where would the higher air get its heat from in any case? The heat must come from a definite source and in the far north the only possible source is the one which we have pointed out.

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MEETING A WALRUS

The explorers had reached 79 degrees, 41 minutes when suddenly one day on the ice they observed a large walrus. Nansen--who was out on the ice--rushed back to get a harpoon but by the time he secured it the animal had disappeared. There were no openings apparently in the ice, but the animal had vanished. He regrets that they were not prepared to capture it, but adds:

"But who expects to meet a walrus on close ice in the middle of a wild sea of a thousand fathoms' depth, and that in the heart of winter? None of us ever heard of such a thing before; it is a perfect mystery."

SUN UNEXPECTEDLY SEEN

When the party reached 80 degrees, 1 minute, a remarkable observation was made which may be explained in more than one way:

". . . . about midday we saw the sun, or, to be more correct, an image of the sun, for it was only a mirage. A peculiar impression was produced by the sight of that glowing fire lit just above the outermost edge of the ice. According to the enthusiastic descriptions given by many Arctic travelers of the first appearance of this god of life after the long winter night, the impression ought to be one of jubilant excitement; but it was not so in my case. We had not expected to see it for some days yet, so that my

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feeling was rather one of pain--of disappointment, that we must have drifted farther south than we thought. So it was with pleasure I soon discovered that it could not be the sun itself. The mirage was at first like a flattened-out, glowing red streak upon the horizon; later there were two streaks, the one above the other, with a dark space between; and from the main-top I could see four, or even five, such horizontal lines directly, over one another, and all of equal length, as if one could only imagine a square dull-red sun, with horizontal streaks across it."

COULD IT BE REFLECTION FROM INTERIOR?

Now it is quite a question whether the mirage that Nansen saw at this time was a mirage of the sun in our sky or whether it might not have been some sort of a reflection of the sun of the interior of the earth. Certainly he was not expecting to see the solar light at that time.

Two or three days later this mirage of whichever sun it might have been was seen again.

By spring the party had reached 80 degrees, 20 minutes, and Nansen was surprised to find how warm the water was at a great depth. He remarks that on the surface the temperature of the water of the East Greenland current is just about the ordinary freezing point, while usually--at lower latitudes--the water falls as you get below the surface, so that at depths

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greater than a hundred fathoms it is from one to two Centigrade degrees cooler--but of course it does not freeze owing to the greater pressure and other factors. But here, on the contrary, in 80 degrees instead of from 60 to 70 degrees, he found that the deeper he took soundings the warmer the water was. He did not know where this warm water came from, but we can suspect.

ARCTIC ICE NOT FROM COLD WEATHER

In July, Nansen made a number of observations on the formation of ice and came to the conclusion that the thickness of the arctic ice is not attained by direct freezing as a result of cold weather. Only a little ice is formed at a time, and the great hummocks and floes of which we read are simply formed by the ice packing and mass after mass being frozen up into great aggregates.

SOUNDING THE POLAR SEA

The next job Nansen set himself was deep sea sounding. He had expected the polar seas to be shallow and none of his lead-lines were long enough to touch bottom. So he sacrificed one of the Fram's steel cables, unraveled it, and twisted two of the strands into a lead line of 2700 fathoms in length. With this he touched bottom at depths ranging from 1800 to 2100 fathoms. He says:

"This was a remarkable discovery, for, as I have

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frequently mentioned, the unknown polar basin has always been supposed to be shallow, with numerous unknown lands and islands. . . ."

From this assumption of a shallow polar sea it was concluded that the regions about the pole had formerly been covered with an extensive tract of land, of which the existing islands are simply the remains. This extensive tract of polar land was furthermore assumed to have been the nursery of many of our animals and plant forms, whence they had found their way to lower latitudes. These conjectures now appear to bear upon a somewhat infirm basis.

The importance of those remarks is obvious. If the Polar sea in these latitudes is not shallow and if the land which is spoken of above never really existed in more extended form than the present islands where was that "nursery of many of our plant and animal forms"? If Nansen had only guessed it was not so very far away from the locality which has been assigned to it. Not the land that these explorers and scientists thought arose out of that shallow Polar sea, but a land just a little further away--the other side of the immense polar aperture.

Meanwhile Nansen kept up his records of temperatures at various depths, and always found that while the temperatures fluctuated at various depths, they rose when very deep water was reached.

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NUMEROUS ARCTIC BIRDS

Numbers of birds visited the explorers from early summer on, including ice-mews, kittiwakes, fulmars, blue and herring gulls, black guillemot, skua, and snow-bunting. But these visits were eclipsed in interest by the following, which Nansen tells under date of August 3rd, 1894:

"On August 3rd a remarkable occurrence took place: we were visited by the Arctic ross-gull. I wrote as follows about it in my diary: 'Today my longing has at last been satisfied. I have shot Ross's gull, three specimens in one day. This rare mysterious inhabitant of the unknown north, which is only occassionally seen, and of which no one knows whence it cometh or whither it goeth, which belongs exclusively to the world to which the imagination aspires, is what, from the first moment I saw these tracts, I had always hoped to discover as my eyes roamed over the lonely plains of ice. And now it came when I was least thinking of it. I was out for a little walk on the ice by the ship, and as I was sitting down by a hummock my eye wandered northward and lit on a bird hovering over the great pressure-mound away to the northwest. At first I took it to be a kittiwake, but soon discovered it rather resembled the skua by its swift flight, sharp wings and pointed tail. When I had got my gun there were two of them together flying round and round the ship. I now got a closer view of them and discovered

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that they were too light colored to be skuas. They were by no means shy, but continued flying about close to the ship. On going after them on the ice I soon shot one of them (and, was not a little surprised on picking it up, to find it was a little bird about the size of a snipe; the mottled back, too, reminded me also of that bird. Soon after this I shot the other. Later in the day there came another which was also shot.... Some few days afterwards some more of these birds were shot, making eight specimens in all.'"

Is it not a remarkable thing that these ross-gulls should have no known habitat as Nansen points out in the above paragraph? They must live and breed somewhere, and as these specimens--the first two at all events--were actually seen to come from the north it is only reasonable to suppose that they came from that land which we assert is to be found on the other side of the ice barrier, in the interior of the earth.

NANSEN GETS LOST

The observations quoted above, the constant noting by Nansen that the weather is warmer than he had expected, the soundings of the sea, are all important but they are not so important, from the standpoint of making the reader understand Arctic voyaging, as what follows. The following words of Nansen have been picked out of page after page of his journals. And they all refer to one fact: that he

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could not tell where he was. Before we quote these let us see just what they imply. When we read of Arctic explorers moving from point to point and calculating their whereabouts we are apt to forget that what sounds so simple when expressed on the page--such expressions as "We were now in so many degrees latitude and such and such a longitude"--we are apt to forget that those figures may have been obtained under great difficulties or guessed at, and that they are often mere approximations. Unknown currents and other factors may make what is known as "dead reckoning" quite useless in the Arctic, and the unusual compass variations and the impossibility at times of making observations of the sun or stars lead the Arctic explorer very far astray. Now if the reader does not bear that in mind he is apt to think that Peary's statement that he actually found the Pole knocks out our theory. But if he does bear that in mind and if he remembers, too, that Peary did not figure on the actual conformation of the polar region as we have pointed it out, he will readily see that Peary was mistaken in his assertion. And, apart entirely from the fact that there is no solid pole to discover, he will see how easily Peary could be wrong by noticing how far wrong Nansen is constantly getting. Only Nansen does not feel any hesitation about admitting it. And the fact that this competent explorer with all the science of navigation at his command has so much difficulty in finding

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his way around in the polar regions shows how little is really known about them. Suppose that Peary made one such miscalculation as some of these that Nansen confesses to, and suppose that he used that calculation as a basis from which to make others: the error would be multiplied, and Peary might claim to find the Pole or anything else without being able to prove anything as to his exact location.

HE IS QUITE UNABLE TO LOCATE HIMSELF

But here is the sort of thing which is constantly happening to Nansen. In the course of the voyage of the Fram through the Kara Sea in 1893, while they were still as far south as seventy-six degrees, two minutes north latitude: "or about 14 miles from what is marked as the mainland on Nordenskiold's or Bove's map", we find: "It was hardly to be expected that these should be correct, as the weather seems to have been foggy the whole time the explorers were here".

Right there we see two chances for error: foggy weather and the inaccuracy of maps--itself due to previous foggy weather or to any other cause.

Nansen then proceeds:

"Nor were we successful in finding Hovgaard's Islands as we sailed north. When I supposed that we were off them, just on the north side of the entrance to Taimur Strait, I saw, to my surprise, a high mountain almost directly north of us, which

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seemed as if it must be on the mainland. What could be the explanation of this? I began to have a growing suspicion that this was a regular labyrinth of islands we had got into. We were hoping to investigate and clear up the matter when thick weather with sleet and rain, most inconveniently came on, and we had to leave this problem for the future to solve."

HE IS STILL LOST

That is just one illustration of the uncertainties of Arctic travel. But it is by no means the only one. Here are a number of others taken from the records which Nansen made after he had proceeded much further north. In February, 1895, Nansen left Sverdrup in charge of the Fram and started out on a northward sledge journey which he hoped would take him to the pole and from there to Spitzbergen by way of Franz Joseph Land. The start was made from latitude 83 degrees, fifty minutes north. Nansen was accompanied by Johansen and had six sledges well equipped, including an instrument which registered the mileage covered. One or two false starts were made, but at last the party got under way and by Friday, March 22nd, had reached a latitude of 8S degrees, 9 minutes north. One very interesting observation which was made at this point was of a "large frozen pool" which looked almost like a large lake. Nansen says "It is wonderful that these pools can form up there at that time of year."

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FINDS ICE IS FROM FRESH WATER

It is also noteworthy that the ice over which the party traveled was fresh: Nansen found that it was quite possible to quench the thirst by sucking it. By March 29, we began to get the sort of observation which we promised the reader: the observation which showed that the explorer could not determine his whereabouts. On that date, for instance, Nansen took an observation which showed him to be in latitude 85 degrees, 30 minutes. He says: "I could not understand this; thought that we must be in latitude 86 degrees, and, therefore, supposed there must be something wrong with the observation." Incidentally he also noticed other fresh water pools.

By the time Nansen had reached a latitude of more than 86 degrees he found the temperature rising, and was far more comfortable than he had been further south. By April 14th, Easter Day, Nansen took the opportunity of being halted by lanes to make extensive observations, as he had allowed the watches to run down and wished to calculate the time from his observations. He had also determined not to try to get any further north on that trip and had shaped his course for Cape Fligely. But he was puzzled by his observations. He says:

"I have calculated our previous latitudes and longitudes over again, to see if I can discover any mistake in them. I find that we should yesterday have come farther south than 86 degrees, 5.3 minutes north; but

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according to our reckoning, assuming that we covered fifty miles during the three days we should have come down to 85 degrees and fifty odd minutes."

NEITHER LATITUDE OR LONGITUDE IS RIGHT

Meanwhile, he was also in doubt about his longitude. He assumed that it was 86 degrees East but adds in a footnote, "I felt convinced that we could not have reached such a westerly longitude, but assumed this for the sake of certainty, as I would rather come down on the east side of Franz Josef Land than on the west side. Should we reach the latitude of Petermann's Land or Prince Rudolf Land without seeing them, I should in the former case be certain that we had them on our west, and could look out for them in that direction, whereas in the event of our not finding land and being uncertain whether we were too far east or too far west, we should not then know in what direction we ought to look for it."

PROOF THE ARCTIC EXPLORATION IS LARGELY GUESS WORK

Nov, we ask the reader if that passage does not prove conclusively that finding one's position in the Arctic region is largely a matter of guess work and approximation and luck? Is it not possible that this difficulty is due to the downward curvature of the earth's surface?

Meanwhile, the explorer had sunshiny, mild and

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balmy weather. On April 16th, in fact, the sun scorched quite unpleasantly. The tent was pitched in broiling sun, and for days after the atmosphere was equable and stagnant.

WHERE DID THIS FOX COME FROM?

On April 26th, Nansen has something very significant to report:

"I was not a little surprised yesterday morning when I suddenly saw the track of an animal in the snow. It was that of a fox, came about W. S. W. true, and went in an easterly direction. The trail was quite fresh. What in the world was the fox doing up here? There were also unequivocal signs that it had not been without food. Were we in the vicinity of land? I looked around for it, but the weather was thick all day yesterday, and we might have been near it without seeing it. In any case, a warm-blooded mammal in the eighty-fifth parallel. We had not gone far before we came across another fox-track; it went in about the same direction as the other, and followed the trend of the lane which had stopped us and by which we had been obliged to camp. It is incomprehensible what these animals live on up here, but presumably they are able to snap up some crustaceans in the open water ways. But why do they leave the coasts? That is what puzzles me most. Can they have gone astray? There seems little probability of that."

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Well, this is not the first animal whose presence in the remote Arctic has startled explorers, and as we shall see it is by no means the last. They are so abundant in those supposedly bleak and inhospitable regions that there is only one possible explanation of their presence: they must come from the interior. They could not possibly have come from the south for, as we have seen it is further south than where they have been found that the Arctic explorer finds most of his difficulties. No, these animals and birds have their homes and breeding places in the interior of the earth, near the polar orifice, and it is from there they come and thither do they go. Have we not the explorers' testimony time after time that these animals and birds have actually been seen on their way north?

NANSEN CAN HARDLY SLEEP FOR HEAT

On May 4th, the explorer is again found commenting on the mild weather. One night, he says, he could hardly sleep for heat. In the day time he can lie in the tent basking in the heat from the sun. "Last night," runs another entry, "it was almost too warm to sleep".

About May 19th, Nansen is again off his bearings:

"We can hardly be far from 83 degrees, 10 minutes, North, and should have gained Petermann's Land if it be where Payer supposed. Either we must be unconscionably out of our bearings, or the country

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very small. Meanwhile, I suppose, the east wind is driving us westward, out to sea, in the direction of Spitzbergen. Heaven alone knows what the velocity of the drift may be here."

A few days later he writes:

"We ought to have latitude 83 degrees behind us, but as yet no sight of land. This is becoming rather exciting."

On May 27th he writes:

"We are in latitude 82 degrees, 30 minutes, North, perhaps even a minute or two farther south. But it is growing more and more remarkable that we see no sign of land. I cannot explain it in any other way than that we are some degrees farther east than. we suppose."

By May 31st we find him saying "It is impossible that we can have far to go now." But there is "still no glimpse of land; this is becoming more and more of an enigma."

CONFESSES LOCATION IS A RIDDLE TO HIM

On June 5th, he has still the same story to tell. He wishes for a "final solution of this riddle which is constantly before me". But by June 11th there is still no sign of land and Nansen says, "We do not know where we are, and we do not know when this will end."

A few days later he says: "I have calculated and

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calculated and thought and thought, but can find no mistake of any importance, and the whole thing is a riddle to me. I am beginning seriously to doubt that we may be too far west after all. I simply cannot conceive that we are too far east."

On July 19th Nansen notes the large number of Ross's gulls, which strike his attention as he cannot imagine where they can come from. He is still completely lost.

LAND, BUT WHAT LAND?

It is only on July 24th that he catches his first glimpse of land, which he had really seen a little time before but had mistaken for clouds on the horizon. The two explorers made incredibly slow progress in their attempt to reach it. After traveling day after day and having to fight a bear that had followed them, they actually reached it early in August. After traveling on the land for a few days, Nansen makes this startling entry:

"This land grows more of a problem, and I am more than ever at a loss to know where we are."

Certainly, one would think that even if the explorer were lost as long as he was on the ice he would instantly find his bearings when he reached solid and permanent land. But as a matter of fact Nansen admits that he does not know even whether he is on the west coast of the archipelago of Franz Josef Land or whether he has fetched up on some other

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coast altogether. He keeps on going, however, and a few days later writes:

INCOMPREHENSIBLE

"Where we are is becoming more and more incomprehensible. There appears to be a broad sound west of us, but what is it? . . . . . . . .

"We must have come to a new land in the western part of Franz Josef Land or Archipelago, and so far west that we had seen nothing of the countries discovered by Payer, but so far west that we had not even seen anything of Oscar's Land, which ought to be situated in 82 degrees, North, and 52 degrees East." This was, indeed, incomprehensible, but was there any other explanation?

A few days later Nansen notices that red snow on the glaciers which has been such a puzzle to explorers but which can only come from the interior of the earth.

It may sound incredible, but in February, 1896, Nansen and Johansen have still not succeeded in discovering their whereabouts. They were speculating about getting home, and as to whether the Fram would reach Norway before them, and Nansen writes:

MUST BE A HITHERTO UNKNOWN LAND

"But where were we? And how great was the distance we had to travel? Over and over again I reckoned out our observations of the autumn and

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summer and spring, but the whole matter was a perpetual puzzle. It seemed clear, indeed, that we must be lying somewhere far to the west, perhaps off the west coast of Franz Josef Land, a little north of Cape Lofley, as I had conjectured in the autumn. But, if that were so, what could be the lands which we had seen to the northward? And what was the land to which we had first come? From the first group of islands which I had called White Land to where we now lie, we had passed about 7 degrees of longitude--that our observations proved conclusively. But if we were now in the longitude of Cape Fligely, these islands must lie on a meridian so far east that it must fall between King Oscar's Land and Crown Prince Rudolf Land; and yet, we had been much farther east and had seen nothing of these lands. How was this to be explained? . . . . No, we could not have been near any known land. . . . There were other things, too, that greatly puzzled me. If we were on a new land near Spitzbergen, why were the ross-gulls never seen there, while we had found them in flocks here to the north? And then there was the great variation of the compass. . The whole thing was, and remained, an insoluble riddle."

The reader will at once see how the question of the presence of the ross-gulls only added to Nansen's perplexity, as he could not know of the real facts: that these gulls were seen to the north because

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they came from the north. And the extreme variation of the compass in the arctic regions is not due to the fact that the magnetic pole does not coincide with the north pole, but is due to the peculiar conformation of the region. In calculating the magnetic pole's position, geographers have not allowed for the actual shape of the earth at the polar regions. But that is a matter which belongs in another chapter.

How Nansen gradually made his way south until he came to land that he knew and found his way to Cape Flora, where he met white men, does not concern us here. Suffice it to say that he could not even then discover, with all the maps at his disposal, just where he had spent the previous summer and winter. He says:

PAYER'S MAP DOES NOT HELP

"Much of Payer's map I found to coincide well enough with our own observations. But the enigma over which we had pondered the whole winter still remained unsolved. Where was Dove Glacier and the whole of Wilczek Land? 'Where were the is-lands which Payer had named Braun Island, Hoffmann Island, and Freden Island? The last might, no doubt have been identified with the southernmost island of White Land but the others had completely disappeared. I pondered for a long time over the question how such a mistake could have crept into

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a map by such a man as Payer--an experienced topographer, whose maps, as a rule, bear the stamp of great accuracy and care, and a polar traveler for whose ability I have always entertained a high respect".

WHAT NANSEN'S EXPERIENCE PROVES

No further argument ought to be necessary to convince the reader that the polar regions are not as well known as we are given to suppose. Here is Nansen admitting that even with the maps before him, he cannot identify the mysterious land which he found after making a sledge voyage in which he did not once know just what his bearings were. And here is his pronouncement that lands which were definitely marked on the map of one of the best known explorers and a man used to map making simply did not exist. Surely from those significant facts the reader can draw his own conclusion: that the statements of Arctic travelers relative to reaching the pole and discovering this land or that land, must be taken with a great deal of reserve. When in the near future an æroplane or dirigible shall actually travel over all these regions, the observers thereon will see much that no Arctic explorer has ever told us about, and they will fail to see some things which Arctic explorers have claimed they found. Such observers will see the great barrier of northern ice come to an end at the edge of a great polar ocean, and they will sail high over that ocean until they see,

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even though it be in the midst of the Arctic winter, a sun that is shining all the time. And then they will know that they have followed the curve of that great ocean surface as it dipped out of sight of our horizon and began to wash the shores of the inner surface of the world, a surface divided even as the outer one is, into land and water, both steeped in perpetual but cloud-engirt sunshine, and both the abode of animal and vegetable life. There will be found the home of the ross-gull and the haunt of Arctic bear and fox. And beyond that polar orifice they will not only find those animals roaming and breeding, but they may see the mammoth alive there that is so often found dead in the Siberian ice. But to that immense animal, long thought extinct, we shall devote a later chapter.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MAMMOTH

This is not the longest chapter in this book, but to anyone who wishes to prove our theory "in a hurry" it may be commended, for it brings proof to bear so startling, so incontrovertible, that we wonder how these observations could have been made by the regular scientists and their significance been overlooked. But then the regular scientists had a theory of the earth's composition in their minds before they made these observations. And the theory being there first would not budge to make room for the truth.

FROM WHERE DOES THE MAMMOTH COME?

These observations concern the presence in the polar regions of the mammoth. That scientists should find old tusks and remains of this animal is perhaps surprising, though it could be explained in some way or other; but they also find perfectly fresh bodies of these animals. They reason that these fresh bodies were preserved in that condition in the ice for hundreds, perhaps thousands of centuries, but we shall show that this is not the case. But let us marshal our evidence gradually.

The reader will remember that the mammoth and the mastodon are two elephant-like animals but

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much larger than our elephant of the tropics. They were vegetarian animals and, like the elephant, inhabitants of a warm country. When their remains were first discovered in the polar regions, therefore, it was thought that at one time the polar regions had been very warm, with plenty of vegetation, and that owing to the gradual change of the earth's axis, the area which was once hot had gradually been brought into positions where it grew colder until at last the mammoth and mastodon were frozen out. Let us see whether this idea fits all the facts in the case. But first let us see what those facts are.

In J. W. Bud's "The World's Wonders" we read:

"The farther north we penetrate, in greater abundance are found vestiges of elephants, tortoises, crocodiles, and other beasts and reptiles of a tropical climate. These are found in greatest abundance along the banks of rivers flowing from the north, seeming to prove that there is, somewhere beyond the frozen belt not yet penetrated by man, a warm country, with climate and productions similar to those of the tropics. Along the borders of Siberia, the remains of tropical animals are so commonly found as to constitute a considerable source of commerce. In Asiatic Russia there is not a single stream or river on the banks or in the bed of which are not found bones of elephants, or other animals equally strange to that climate. In 1799, a fisherman of Ton-goose, named Schumachoff, discovered a tremendous

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elephant--perfect as when thousands of years before, death had arrested its breath--encased in a huge block of ice, clear as crystal. This man, like his neighbors, was accustomed, at the end of the fishing season, to employ his time in hunting for elephant tusks along the banks of the Lena River, for the sake of the bounty offered by the government; and while so employed, in the ardor of his pursuit, he passed several miles beyond his companions when suddenly there appeared before his wondering eyes the miraculous sight above alluded to. But this man was ignorant and superstitious, and instead of hastening to announce his wonderful discovery for the benefit of science, he stupidly gazed upon it in awe and wonder, not daring to approach it. For several successive seasons from the time when he first discovered it, did Schumachoff make stealthy journeys to his crystallized monster, never finding courage sufficient to approach it closely, but simply standing at a distance, once more to feast his eyes on the wonder, and to carry away in his thick head enough of terror to guarantee him a nightmare for a whole month of nights. At last he found the imprisoned carcass stranded on a convenient sand-bank, and boldly attacked it, broke the glittering casing, and roughly despoiling the great beast of its splendid tusks, hurried home and sold them for fifty roubles, leaving the well preserved bulk of elephant meat, thousands of years old, yet juicy and without

DISCOVERY OF THE MAMMOTH ENCASED IN ICE

taint, to be devoured by wolves and bears or hacked to bits by natives as food for their dogs."

IN PERFECT PRESERVATION

We next turn to Dr. H. D. Northrop's "Earth, Sky, and Sea", where we find some later information about this same case. It seems that after the fisherman had left the mammoth carcass he told of its whereabouts and a party set out to examine it:

"For some time the flesh of this animal was cut off for dog-meat by people around, and bears, wolves, gluttons, and foxes, fed upon it till the skeleton was nearly cleared of its flesh. About three-fourths of the skin, which was of a reddish-gray color, and covered with reddish wool and black hairs about eight inches long, was saved, and such was its weight, that it required ten men to remove it; the bones of the head, with the tusks, weighed four hundred and sixteen pounds. The skeleton was taken to St. Petersburg, where it may still be seen in the Museum of Natural History. The animal must have been twice the ordinary size of the existing elephant, and it must have weighed at least twenty-thousand pounds."

REMAINS OF TROPICAL ANIMALS

This same author goes on to say:

"Every year in the season of thawing (in Northern Asiatic Russia) the vast rivers, which descend to the Frozen Ocean in the north of Siberia, sweep down with their waters innumerable portions of the banks

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and expose to view the bones buried in the soil and excavations left by the rushing waters. It is curious that the more we advance toward the north of Russia, the more numerous do the bone depositaries become. In spite of the undoubted testimony often repeated, of numerous travelers, we can scarcely credit the statements made respecting some of the islands of the glacial sea near the poles, situated opposite the mouths of the Lena and of the Indigirska.

"All the islands nearest to the mainland, which is about thirty-six leagues in length, except three or four small rocky mountains, are a mixture of sand and ice, so that when the thaw sets in and their banks begin to fall, many mammoth bones are found. All the isle is formed of the bones of this extraordinary animal, of the horns and skulls of buffaloes, or of an animal which resembles them, and of some rhinoceros horns.

WHOLE ISLAND OF REMAINS

"New Siberia and the Isle of Lachon are for the most part only a mass of sand, of ice, and of elephant's teeth. At every tempest the sea casts ashore new quantities of mammoth's tusks, and the inhabitants of Siberia carry on a profitable trade in this fossil ivory. Every year during the summer innumerable fishermen's barks direct their course towards this isle of bones, and during winter immense caravans take the same route, all the convoys drawn by

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dogs, returning laden with the tusks of the mammoth, weighing each from 150 to 200 pounds. The isle of bones has served as a quarry of this valuable material for export to China for five hundred years, and it has been exported to Europe for upwards of a hundred. But the supply from these strange mines remains undiminished.”

All we have to say to those last statements is that the supply must be replenished right along or such a thing could not be so everlasting. And we think there can be no doubt that these supplies of remains have been and are being replenished right to the present moment.

In his book, "In the Lena Delta", George W. Melville, the United States naval officer and explorer, also tells of the immense tusks, in this case stained black by being buried in peat bogs, which he saw in that country. In some cases they measured nine feet along the curve, and were thirty inches in circumference at the end near the skull. He saw one train of thirty sleighs laden with the tusks on its way to China.

Our next witness is Nordenskiold who tells in his "Arctic Voyages" of the traffic in mammoth tusks along the river Yennssej to China and Russia. A little later he says:

"In the Siberian Polar Sea, the animal and vegetable types, so far as we can judge beforehand, exclusively consist of survivals from the Glacial period

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which next preceded the present, which is not the case in the Polar Sea where the Gulf Stream distributes its waters and whither it thus carries types from more southerly regions."

It is evident that Nordenskiold has forgotten that the currents which he thinks carry southerly types to the polar sea, really come from the north, from the polar regions. And we shall show that these animals which are apparently survivals from the glacial period are really inhabitants of the interior of the earth which, owing to its climatic conditions, is now the home of animals and vegetable species which flourished on the outer surface of the earth in the carboniferous era of giant ferns, mammoths, and other species characteristic of that period of damp, steamy, warm climate.

A PUZZLE TO THE GEOLOGIST

But Nordenskiold admits that the finding of mammoth bones, etc., in the Siberian "tundras" or immense plains of sand drifts, is a puzzle to the orthodox geologist. For these drifts were formed quite recently, and yet they contain remains of animals which the orthodox scientist believes to be thousands of years old and no longer existing. He says:

"The tundra has been formed under climatical conditions very similar to the present, which is further confirmed by the geognostic formation of the strata. It has, therefore, long been difficult of explanation

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for the geologist that just in those sandy strata is found a large number of remains of mammoths, rhinoceroses, etc., that is to say, of animal types which for the present live only in tropical or sub-tropical climates. Collections from these regions have a peculiar interest from the remarkable circumstance that in the frozen soil of the tundra are found, not only skeletons, but also flesh, hide, hair, and entrails of animal forms which died out many thousands of centuries ago. Among our collections may be mentioned, large pieces of mammoth hide found along with some fragments of bone where the Mesenkin falls into the Yenissej, the skull of a musk-ox, remarkable for its size, found with fragments of mammoth bones in another tundra valley south of Orlovskoj, a very rich collection of sub-fossil shells found principally between Orlovskoj and Gostinoi."

Now that is a very clear statement of the difficulty in which the orthodox scientist finds himself. Here is a new formation--the tundra--and in it he finds skins and bones and entrails of animals which are supposed to be some thousands of centuries old. It is obvious that they cannot be as old as that, or else they would not be there. And the fact that parts of hides and entrails are found--not fossilized but simply frozen--and that semi-fossilized shells are also found, shows that the shells are older than the hides and bones. For in thousands of centuries the hides and entrails would certainly have disintegrated and

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left nothing but fossil imprints. A little later Nordenskiold says:

"Few scientific discoveries have so powerfully captivated the interest both of the learned and unlearned as that of the colossal remains of elephants, sometimes well preserved with hair and flesh in the frozen soil of Siberia. Such discoveries have more than once formed the object of scientific expeditions and careful researches by eminent men, but there is still much that is enigmatical with respect to a number of circumstances connected with the Mammoth period of Siberia, which perhaps was contemporaneous with our Glacial period. Specially is our knowledge of the animal and vegetable types, which lived at the same time as the mammoth, exceedingly incomplete, although we know that in the northernmost parts of Siberia, which are also most inaccessible from land, there are small hills covered with the bones of the mammoth and other contemporaneous animals. . . ."

IN THE NEW SIBERIAN ISLAND

A little later Nordenskiold sailed for the New Siberian Islands:

"These islands are very remarkable from a scientific point of view, being very rich in the remains of the mammoth and other animals of the same period, which are found in greater abundance among them than on the tundra of the mainland. Some of the sand-banks on their shores are so full of the bones

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and tusks of the mammoth that the ivory collectors who for a series of years traveled every year from the mainland to the islands in dog-sledges, used to return in autumn when the sea was again covered with ice, with a rich harvest. According to Hedenstrom, the only educated person who has examined these islands in summer, there are besides in the interior hills which are covered with the remains of the mammoth, the rhinoceros, horse, aurochs, bison, sheep, etc."

Special collections were made by Nordenskiold of specimens that would aid him in determining what he admitted was a "difficult problem": how it was possible for the progenitors of the Indian elephant to live in the ice deserts of Siberia.

Yes the problem is difficult when you do not know all the facts, but when we know that the mammoth still lives in the interior, then we can easily understand the situation.

Perhaps the reader says, "But you have not actually proved that yet". But let the reader wait until all the evidence is in. We wish to put the matter beyond the shadow of a doubt, and so we call upon every witness who has seen these remains, but we shall leave the most remarkable case until the last.

OTHER SIMILAR DISCOVERIES

In Edwin S. Grew's "The Romance of Modern Geology" we read of the finding of mammoth remains

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in France including a tusk which is carved with a rough but clever picture of a mammoth. That proves that the animal still existed on the outer surface of the earth when mankind had come upon the scene. Mr. Grew also confirms the facts we have told above of the finding of the complete mammoth in the ice by the Russian fisherman in Siberia. He adds that Mr. Adams of the St. Petersburg Museum was sent by the Czar to examine the carcass and found it in a still fresh condition.

He tells us that:

"The Yakuts of the neighborhood had cut off the flesh, with which they had fed their dogs; wild beasts, such as white bears, wolves, wolverines, and foxes had also fed upon it, and traces of their foot-steps were seen around. The skeleton almost cleared of flesh, remained whole, with the exception of one foreleg. The spine of the back, one scapula, the pelvis, and other three limbs were still held together by the ligaments and by parts of the skin; the other scapula was found not far off. The head was covered with a dry skin; one of the ears was furnished with a tuft of hairs; the balls of the eyes were still distinguishable; the brain still occupied the cranium but seemed dried up; the point of the lower lip had been gnawed and the upper lip had been destroyed so as to expose the teeth; the neck was furnished with a long flowing mane; the skin, of a dark-grey

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color, covered with black hairs and a reddish wool, was so heavy that ten persons found great difficulty in transporting it to shore.

THE CARCASS OF THE MAMMOTH

"There was collected, according to Mr. Adams, more than thirty-six pounds weight of hair and wool which the white bears had trod into the ground while devouring the flesh. This mammoth was a male, so fat and well fed, according to the assertion of the Tungusian chief, that its belly hung down below the joints of its knees. Its tusks were nine feet, six inches in length, measured along the curve, and its head without the tusks weighed four hundred and fourteen pounds avoirdupois."

But Mr. Grew has something even more remarkable than this corroborative testimony to tell us, and we shall quote other writers to confirm him. He goes on in this same book to tell of:

"A very curious example of the Siberian Mammoth was discovered only a few years ago by a Lamut of one of the Arctic Villages, and through the energy of Dr. Herz was eventually removed in pieces to St. Petersburg. . . . . It was sunk in frozen ground, and this cold storage treatment had preserved it in an extraordinary manner. If the Siberian natives who had discovered it partially buried in alluvial deposit had not uncovered it, so that the sun was able to play on the carcass and produce

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decay, this wonderful primeval monster might almost have been got out whole. As it was, the frozen ground had so kept the remains that Dr. Herz had found well-preserved fragments of food between the teeth, and the remains of a hearty meal in the stomach. There is no doubt that the Mammoth fell into the crevice or pit and damaged himself so much in the fall that he could not crawl out. . . . . ."

COULD NOT BE "PRIMEVAL"

The reader will notice that Mr. Grew refers to this mammoth as a "primeval" monster. And that is an example of the sort of thinking that has set all the scientists wrong on these questions regarding the polar regions. Instead of studying the actual facts as we have done in this book they come to the facts with certain fixed ideas in their heads, and they can only understand as many of the facts as fit into their ideas. Everything else they pass by as being of no importance. The reader will see that Mr. Grew has read in his previous studies that the mammoth was a primeval animal--which is true enough as far as it goes. It was a very early animal, and in all the outer world is now extinct. But when he hears of a perfectly fresh carcass being discovered, it never occurs to Mr. Grew nor to Dr. Herz nor to Nordenskiold nor to any other explorer, to think anything else than what he has always thought. They still think of the animal as extinct although its fresh carcass

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is before them, and they try to explain the freshness of the carcass by saying that it was preserved by the ice.

COMES FROM WARM CLIMATE

But the mammoth and mastodon are inhabitants, as we have seen, of warm climates, and if the animal we have just read about fell into that crevice when he and his fellows still roamed on what must then have been the much warmer climate of Siberia than the present one, it follows that it was many years before the ice came and froze the animal in its grave.

We claim, it will be seen, that if these animals lived in a certain climate--whatever the climate of Siberia happened to be in the days when scientists claim that the mammoth lived--either one of two things must have happened. If the climate gradually grew colder they would be driven off by the inclemency of the change. If it did not change they would be living in Siberia still. But there are no mammoths in Siberia now. So they were driven somewhere by the growing cold. We claim that they took refuge in the interior of the earth--from whence, for all science can prove to the contrary, they may have come in the first place. We further claim that the fresh remains of their bodies which have been found in Siberia are those of mammoths which in their wanderings came a little further south than usual--for the climate around the polar openings would be quite warm enough for them, and

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that these animals fell in to ice crevasses in places from which they were carried to the present situations by the movements of the ice--by those great glaciers which have from time to time been referred to in accounts of Greenland.

SUPPOSING THEY WERE A MILLION YEARS OLD

For consider the alternative supposition. Suppose the mammoth referred to above had really fallen into a pit or water hole a million or so years ago. Suppose that almost immediately afterwards the climate became so cold that the body was frozen in; and climate never does change so quickly. Even in that short interval the food in the stomach and between the teeth would have decomposed. Food begins to break up the minute it reaches the stomach and is acted on by the gastric juice. The heat and moisture of the mouth is such that all food not washed away from the teeth immediately after eating begins to decompose. It would not take a pretentiously educated scientist or veteran Arctic explorer, it would take no more scientifically equipped man than any dentist to tell that when a carcass is found frozen with fresh food between its teeth, that carcass was frozen either immediately after death or even frozen to death.

CONTRADICTIONS IN THAT VIEW

No, there is no getting away from the fact that the mammoth was alive after the ice was formed,

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and in some manner fell into a crevasse and was frozen. And the only place the mammoth could come from to meet such a fate is the interior of the earth, because the interior of the earth and possibly all the land around the polar lips is the only climate in the north where he could survive. When the Siberian climate became cold the means of escape to the south was shut off. If it had not been, the mammoth might have migrated south and been alive in the warmer regions today. But we have seen that the ross-gull and other birds as well as the foxes and bears go north when the winter sets in, and the mammoth either came from the interior of the earth in the first place or else he sought it for a refuge when the Siberian wilds became too cold for him.

OTHER DISCOVERIES

Apart from that there is no explanation of these remains at all. R. Lyddeker, a British biologist, writing in Knowledge for 1892 says:

"Along the borders of the Arctic Ocean for hundreds of miles mammoth remains are met with in incredible quantities; and it is still one of the puzzles of geology to account adequately and satisfactorily for the manner in which these creatures perished, and how their bodies were buried beneath the frozen soil before decomposition had begun its work, for it is hardly possible to believe that they

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lived in a climate so rigorous that their bodies would have been frozen on the ground immediately after death."

FREEZING INSTANTANEOUS

The same writer in Knowledge for 1892, tells of the many discoveries of mammoth flesh in fresh condition and mentions that the natives of Siberia as well as their dogs have eaten of the flesh another striking proof of its freshness. But perhaps the most remarkable testimony of this sort is the fact that an actual banquet has been served from the flesh of this supposedly extinct animal. Readers may remember the newspaper reports of that banquet, several years ago, in Petrograd, at which the flesh of the mammoth, wheat from Egyptian tombs, and other preserved products from the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum were among the items served, the idea being to serve only those things which were thousands of years old. Unfortunately, the scientists had not gone into the history of the mammoth as profoundly as they might, or they would have seen the inconsistencies in their theories which we have pointed out above. And then they would have had to omit the mammoth steak, or at least admit that it was not as old as the other viands they served at this scientific banquet.

But perhaps the reader is not willing to see a whole argument based on what he may consider the one isolated example of a mammoth found with fresh

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food between its teeth. He may say one witness is not enough in an important case like this. Very well; let us cite another witness. In June, 1894, Dr. Stephen Bower, one of the foremost American geologists, contributed a long article on extinct animals to the Scientific American Supplement. Of course, like other scientists, he thought that the mammoth was extinct, but he knew that its flesh had been eaten by man--in fact his reference to that fact may be caused by his knowledge of the banquet at Petrograd to which we have referred above. In any case he begins his remarks about the mammoth as follows:

"While the monsters we have described perished many ages before man appeared on the earth, and have never been seen by him alive, the monster of which we are now about to write has been seen by man and its flesh eaten by him. That, however, was after it had been entombed for untold ages in the ice of Arctic regions. The remains of the mammoth are widely diffused over the earth. They have been found in great abundance not only in North America, but also in the frozen regions of Siberia, and indeed all over Asiatic Russia. . . . As far back as the tenth century an active trade has been carried on in fossil ivory. It is estimated that during the past two centuries more than two hundred pairs of fossil tusks have come into the market annually, and the localities where found are far from being exhausted. After

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more than forty thousand pairs have been obtained from northern regions the traveler finds them increasing as he approaches toward the north pole. It is said that the soil of Bear Island and Liachoff Island, New Siberia, consists of sand and ice with such quantities of Mammoth remains that they appear as if they were made up of bones and tusks."

Let us break off just a moment to remind the reader how the above corroborates what we have said as to the greater frequency of life and the remains of life as we approach the north polar regions--even the mammoth bones tell the same tale as the gulls and foxes and bears.

Dr. Bowers then proceeds to verify once again the facts we have already heard of:

"But not only have the fossil remains of the Mammoth been found all over the arctic lands as far as man has penetrated, but their bodies, as we have intimated, have been found intact, frozen and preserved in the ice. In the year 1800, the entire body of a mammoth was discovered in a vast stratum of ice on the banks of the river Lena. Afterwards it became disengaged from its icy matrix and white bears, wolves, foxes and dogs fed off its flesh. It was a male and had a long mane on its neck."

ANOTHER INSTANCE

And Dr. Bowers gives once more the details which we already know. He goes on, however, to tell of

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another instance which other writers have also mentioned:

"A young Russian engineer, named Benkendorf, in the employ of his government, ascended the Indigirka in a steamer in 1846. The season was unusually warm for Siberia, and the country was flooded with water. The stream, which was greatly swollen, cut new channels in many places, melting the ice and frozen soil. In one of these newly cut channels he discovered a mammoth in an upright position, where it had been overwhelmed, probably thousands of years before. As its head and trunk rose and fell with the surging waters he discovered that it was still fastened in the ice and frozen soil by its hind feet. The monster was secured by throwing ropes and chains over its tusks and head, and after its hind feet were released it was safely landed by the aid of more than fifty men and horses. It proved to be of gigantic size, and the whole body was in a fine state of preservation. In its stomach was found the food that had formed its last repast, which consisted of young shoots of the fir and pine, also young fir cones. On the shoulders and along the back grew stiff hairs about a foot long. The hair was dark brown and coarsely rooted. Under the outer hairs there appeared everywhere a soft, warm and thick wool of a fallow brown color."

Dr. Bowers can only account for this surprising freshness by supposing that the freezing of the animal

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was instantaneous, and his own theory is that there was a sudden change in the climate which he puts at about the lateness of what he calls the "Noachian deluge". But that is very unscientific, as we know now that changes in climate are gradual, and in serious scientific discussions it is not usual to bring in Noah and the biblical account of the deluge. But in spite of the difficulties, Dr. Bowers makes the most generous acknowledgement of the absolute freshness of this and other specimens found. He even says:

"Many of the animals, as the mammoth, rhinoceros, etc., remain undecayed. Even the capillary blood vessels still retain their contents, showing that there was not the slightest decomposition or breaking down of the tissues, but the catastrophe which overwhelmed them was sudden."

Of the mammoth, therefore, we have the mass of evidence cited to show that the interior of the earth is its habitat. The scientists who have not had this theory to work with have confessed that they cannot explain the phenomenon. But once supply the link which our theory gives and the whole sequence is complete. The mammoth is wandering today in the interior of the earth. When he ventures too near the polar orifice--it must be remembered that the mammoth and mastodon and elephant are all characterized by a tendency to wander widely--he becomes stranded on a breaking ice floe and carried over from the interior regions, to the outer regions or perhaps

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falls in a crevasse in ice which afterwards begins to move in some great glacial movement. In these ways the bodies are carried over to Siberia and left where we have seen them discovered. That such a process has been going on for thousands of years is seen from the abundance of remains. Evidently the migratory instinct, which does not change for thousands of years even when the conditions which started it do change, is still working in these animals. And so we have from time to time their silent testimony to the existence and mild climate and vegetation of that interior land which supports them, and which has been giving this and other testimony for so many years without any of our learned scientists as much as once correlating and putting together the evidence--evidence which they alone among us have had the opportunity of collecting but which they collected piece meal, unaware if its importance, puzzled by it, occassionally admitting that they were puzzled, but which they never faced squarely with minds free from preconception. But at last all this evidence has been gathered together. More of it will undoubtedly be forthcoming. And, not for the first time in the history of thought, the orthodox scientists will have to admit that they were wrong in their interpretation of the facts of polar research, and that there is really something new to be found out.

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THE MAMMOTH BANQUETS

We have referred to the eating of mammoth flesh by scientists and their guests at a banquet, and this evidence of the freshness of the meat of the animal is so remarkable that our readers may well wish to know all the details. As a matter of fact the eating of mammoth flesh by human beings has occurred more than once according to recent reports in newspapers, and, of course, there may be hundreds of cases among the Eskimos or inhabitants of Siberia where some of the carcasses have been found in a fresh condition.

The most talked about mammoth banquet was that given by Professor Herz, of the Imperial Academy of Science of St. Petersburg--as it was then--who had been leader of the expedition into Siberia which unearthed and transported the mammoth in question to the Imperial Museum. Only the bones and the skin were needed for mounting in the museum, and as the professor had kept the whole carcass in cold storage it suddenly occurred to him that it would be quite possible to eat the flesh. Of course he was under the impression that this flesh was over 20,000 years old, an idea which we have already shown to be quite wrong, and he asked scientists in other parts of the world to contribute other ancient foods--such as corn dug up from the ruins of Egyptian cities. As the mammoth flesh was not old at all we need not speak of the other and older items

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of this feast. What does concern us is what the guests thought of the meat. But the account of the banquet says that the banquet was a triumph: "particularly the course of mammoth steak, which all the learned guests declared was agreeable to the taste, and not much tougher than some of the sirloin furnished by butchers of today."

Another mammoth meal was eaten by an American traveler and author, Mr. James Oliver Curwood, who was exploring in the far north when his Eskimo fellow travelers found the body of a mammoth exposed by the falling of a cliff-side. Before quoting Mr. Curwood we should like to point out how little the scientists really know about such matters by contrasting what he gives as the animal's age with what Professor Herz gave. Herz put it at 20,000 years; Curwood, quoted in The Chicago Tribune for July 7th, 1912, puts it at 50,000 to 100,000 years. As we have already shown, Herz is nearer the truth than Curwood. But at that he is about 20,000 years wrong. However, here is what Mr. Curwood has to say:

THE FRESH MEAT

"The flesh was of a deep red or mahogany color, and I dined on a steak an inch and a half thick. . . . The flavor of the meat was old not unpleasant but simply old and dry. That it had lost none of its life-sustaining elements was shown by the fact that the dogs throve upon it."

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What Mr. Curwood calls an old flavor--really there could be no such thing any more than there could be a yellow or a blue flavor--is simply the strong flavor due to the character of the animal. Anyone who has eaten bear steak or even venison and contrasted the flavor with beef or mutton will know just what Mr. Curwood is really trying to say.

But there is on record of at least one more mammoth banquet, this time given by Gabrielle D’Annunzio from the flesh of another mammoth, the bones of which repose in a Paris Museum. Here is part of the story as cabled to the Chicago Examiner some years ago:

"Paris, Jan. 31--Meat between forty and fifty thousand years old was the star dish at a banquet given by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the Italian dramatist and poet, at the Hotel Carlton last evening.

"D’Annunzio obtained the flesh from Russia where it was cut from the carcass of a mammoth which was dug out of the ice around the Liakoff Islands, north of Siberia, by Count Stembock Fermer. The count has presented the pachyderm to the Paris Museum of Natural History, where it is about to be exhibited.

"The body embedded in the eternal ice was in perfect condition, at the time of its discovery, a large quantity of the flesh was kept in cold storage and shipped to St. Petersburg.

"This fifty thousand year old frozen meat is being

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treasured in Russia, but after repeated efforts, D’Annunzio, through influential friends, succeeded in obtaining several pounds of this rare food-stuff.

D’ANNUNZIO'S BANQUET

"Yesterday's sensational dinner was preliminary to the competition for the Fontenoy Cup, awarded by the French Greyhound Club, of which the poet is one of the most enthusiastic members. His guests were five fellow members of the club and covers were also laid for the favorite hounds of the guests. Describing the banquet afterward to the Examiner correspondent, D’Annunzio said:

"'It was the most successful dinner I ever gave. The elephant meat exceeded my highest expectations. In flavor it was like tortoise flesh, but it was, well--a little tough. . . . . . I had it broiled and served with six different kinds of sauce.'"

Of course the reader will notice that D’Annunzio like everyone else thinks the mammoth flesh was much older than it is in this case forty thousand years is mentioned as a possible age as well as fifty thousand. Now what do the scientists mean by saying a thing is forty thousand years old, then fifty thousand, and then a hundred thousand years? Does not that mean that the whole thing is a guess? Otherwise, the man who said it was forty thousand years old would have some reason for that estimate and that reason ought to convince the man who says it is

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fifty thousand years and him who says 100,000 years. Or else the 100,000 year old theory ought to convince the other fellows. Some of them, at least, ought to have some actual evidence on which to base their figures. But as there is no evidence at all, we find guesses all the way from 20,000 to 100,000 years for the age of the mammoth and we find nothing except these guesses, not a single cogent argument. That being the case, it ought to be obvious that a theory such as ours, which explains the actual facts of the case, must supplant these wild guesses. The reason the scientists who say 20,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 years cannot agree is that none of them is right. If any one of them were right he would be able to convince the others by some actual proof or argument. But as all are wrong--almost equally wrong, one might say, although their errors differ by a few thousand years no one man can convince the other. Our own pointing out of the actual facts in the case at once clears away the fog and explains everything in a clear and satisfactory manner.

CHAPTER XII

THE LIFE OF THE ARCTIC

In describing the voyages of different explorers we have spoken more than once of their observations of living creatures in the Arctic and Antarctic regions--creatures which could find no sustenance if there were not warmth and fertility in those regions. Perhaps the reader was inclined to think that the first few instances we adduced were exceptional, but as he found explorer after explorer making the same observation we are sure that he became more and more impressed.

But in order to show the full weight of this evidence we shall bring it all together in the present chapter, arranging it according to the various species observed, so that a complete picture of arctic animal and plant life will be spread before the reader--and that picture when viewed as a whole is a complete proof of our theory--for the number and variety of animals and plants which figure in it is so great that their occurrence in any but a region where they had a firm and abundant basis for their life--such as the interior of the earth supplies--would be absolutely impossible.

GENERAL VIEW OF ARCTIC ANIMAL LIFE

Let us first remind the reader that these birds and animals and flowers of the Arctic regions are no new

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feature of them but have been there as far as the memory of man goes back. We have seen how the Eskimos have old traditions of them. When we come to later times we find the animals and plants still there. Some of the earliest testimony about them, the earliest testimony of modern times, that is, has been collected by the scholar whom we have already quoted, the Hon. Dames Barrington, in his book "On the Possibility of Approaching the North Pole." He tells us not only that driftwood is driven on the north coast of Iceland which could come from no other quarter than the north, but that among other fresh pieces whole trees were found which yet had their buds on them, something which would have been absolutely impossible if this wood had drifted long distances from southern climes. It is obvious that a very few months in salt water would kill the buds, but here were trees which had evidently been growing only a short time before. And he further tells us that observers in Spitzbergen have always noticed that in spring, just before the hatching season, the wild ducks, geese, and other birds, fly in a northernly direction. There is also a heavy fall migration to the north.

PHENOMENA OLD AND WELL ESTABLISHED

Another early modern writer has this to say of the animals and fish of the north:

"It is a fact well attested by whalers and fishers in the northern seas, and one that almost every author

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who adverts to the northern fisheries confirms, that innumerable and almost incredible numbers of whales, mackerel, herring, and other migratory fish annually come down in the spring season of the year, from the arctic seas toward the equator. Some authors describe the shoals of herring alone to be equal in surface to the island of Great Britain. Besides these, innumerable shoals of other fish also come down. These fish when they first come from the north in the spring, are in their best plight and fattest condition; but as the season advances and they move on to the southward, they become poor; so much so that, by the time they get to the coast of France or Spain, as fishermen say, they are scarce worth catching.

IMMENSE SHOALS OF FISH

"The history of the migratory fish affords strong grounds to conclude that the shoals which come from the north are like swarms of bees from the mother hive, never to return. They are not known to return in shoals; and it is doubted by some writers whether any of them ever return north again. . . ."

To that we would simply add that a source of life so prolific and never failing that it is likened to a hive, a place where the fish breed and from which they come in shoal after shoal, is just what one might expect to find in the well warmed interior of the earth. One could never imagine such a place under a sea of solid ice. But our authority proceeds:

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"Pinkerton, in his voyages, states that the Dutch, who at various periods got detained in the ice and were compelled to winter in high northern latitudes, could find but few fish to subsist on during the winter; which proves that the migrating fish do not winter amongst or on this side of the ice."

WHERE DO THESE FISH WINTER?

It follows from that, that there must be immense fish-breeding grounds on the other side of the so-called polar ice, for only in a favorable location could these shoals live and breed--and it must be remembered that they would require an immense quantity of food, and only in a very temperate sea would enough food grow.

THE SEAL

To quote a little further:

"The seal, another animal found in cold regions, is also said to migrate north twice each year; going once beyond the icy circle to produce their young, and again to complete their growth, always returning remarkably fat--an evidence that they find something more than snow and ice to feed on in the country to which they migrate."

In "Ree's Encyclopedia" there is one of the early articles descriptive of Hudson's Bay, and it is there stated that reindeer "are seen in the spring season of the year, about the month of March or April, coming down from the north, in droves of eight or

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ten thousand, and that they are known to return northward in the month of October, when the snow becomes deep." The account goes on to say:

THE REINDEER

"We are informed by Professor Adams, of St. Petersburg, that on the northern coast of Asia, every autumn the reindeer start northeastwardly from the river Lena, and return again in the spring in good condition."

Short of such a hospitable country as is afforded by the interior of the earth, where could these animals possibly find warmth and nutriment?

MUSK-OXEN

Among early nineteenth century accounts of northern explorations, "Hearne's Journal" is one of the most interesting. In its pages we may read that large droves of musk-oxen abound in the arctic regions, as many as several herds each aggregating seventy to eighty head being seen by Hearne in one day. Few of them ever came as far south as the Hudson's Bay settlements. He also states that polar white bears are rarely seen in the winter and that their winter habitat is a mystery. But in the spring they suddenly appear from some unknown place having their young with them.

Hearne goes on to tell us that white foxes are exceedingly plentiful some years, and that they always

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come from the north; that the animals which appear do not go again to the north, so that the supply from there must be inexhaustible. Other species of animals and fish, he tells us, are plentiful some years and very scarce in other years, which would indicate, perhaps, that under certain conditions of weather they migrate within the interior of the earth instead of coming over the ice barriers to the exterior.

VARIOUS WILD FOWL

Hearne has also some very interesting observations about the large numbers of swans, geese, brants, ducks, and other wild water-fowl which are so numerous about Hudson's Bay. Of geese alone there are ten different species, several of which he says--particularly the snow goose, the blue goose, the brent goose, and the horned wavy goose--lay their eggs and raise their young in some country which to Hearne was unknown--as indeed it has been to all explorers, for that country is no other than the interior of the earth. Even the Indians or Eskimos who had explored all the habitable countries in those regions, could never tell where these fowl bred, and it was well known that they never migrated to the south, and as many of these fowl moulted in the sea-son when they were visible in Hudson's Bay it was certain that they did not breed there for a moulting bird cannot sit on the nest--the moulting and the breeding seasons being always separated.

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DRIFTWOOD AND SEEDS OF PLANTS

Now let us follow in further detail the evidences of these various forms of life in the Arctic. We have already spoken of driftwood being found where it could only have come from the interior of the earth. This is such a common occurrence that every explorer almost that we have followed has had .something to say about it. But occasionally even stranger things than trees with green buds on them are found in the Arctic seas. Seeds of unknown species as well as of tropical species have been found, drifted down in northern currents. One very interesting find of this nature was the seed of the entada bean, a tropical seed measuring two and a quarter inches across. This remarkable find was made by a Swedish expedition under Otto Torell near Trurenberg Bay, and it is obvious that this seed must have come from the interior of the earth for it is of a tree that only grows under tropical conditions, and it would have been disintegrated had it been drifting all over the world for many months, as would be the case if it had come up from the tropical regions of the exterior of the planet.

W. J. Gordon, who recounts this find in his "Round About the North Pole" also adduces evidence that in the past there was a great variety of vegetation in Greenland, including magnolia, maple, poplar, lime, walnut, water-lily, myrica, smilax, aralia, sedges and grasses, conifers and ferns. And

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it is obvious that these plants were not migrants into Greenland from the south. They could not pass oceans and icy coasts. They must have come over to Greenland from the warm interior.

MORE ABOUT REINDEER

Gordon also corroborates what we have just read from Ree's old time but accurate observations about reindeer. He tells us that one of the earliest explorers to find this animal in very large numbers, and on its way from some unknown land in the north, was Liakhoff, after whom Liakhoff Island was named, who saw a "mighty crowd" of them, and ascertained that their tracks were all from the north.

Gordon also tells us of Sverdrup's finding of so many hares around latitude 81 degrees that one inlet was actually called Hare Fiord. There was also enough other game to keep the whole exploring party well fed on fresh meat.

Another author who throws much light on this subject is Epes Sargent who, in collaboration with W. H. Cunnington, has written "The Wonders of the Arctic World." In describing the work of Buchan and Franklin, he tells us that one observer in their party, Captain Beechey, saw reindeer grazing on the west coast of Spitzbergen at an elevation of fifteen hundred feet. Meanwhile, there were so many birds that the place reverberated with their cries from dawn till dark, and the little auk were so

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numerous that uninterrupted lines of them would extend all over the bay where the party was resting, and so close together that sometimes thirty fell at one shot. The living column was six yards broad and as many deep, and allowing sixteen birds to a cubic yard, there would be four million of them on the wing at the same time. While, Captain Beechey adds, that number appears very large, the little rotges rise in such numbers as to darken the air, and their chorus is distinctly audible at a distance of four miles. Meanwhile, the islands were thickly populated with eider-down ducks, and the "sea about Spitzbergen is as much alive as the land, from the multitude of burgomasters, stront-jaggers, malmouks, kittiwakes, and the rest of the gull tribe, while the amphibious animals and fish enliven both the ice and the water, from the huge whale to the minute clio on which it feeds, swallowing, perhaps, a million at a mouthful."

Later in this book Sargent tells us that Franklin's second expedition saw large numbers of geese migrating to the unknown north, as well as many other birds--sure indication of land to the north. Still later he mentions "innumerable flocks of Arctic and blue gulls, besides almost a dozen other species." He also notes the fact that no matter how far north the human explorer goes he always finds that the polar bear is a little ahead of him, and no matter how far

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north these bears are met with they are always on their way further north.

Speaking of Dr. Kane's voyages this same author says:

"It was found that animal life abounded. Musk-oxen were shot at intervals throughout the winter . . . Wolves, bears, foxes, and other animals were repeatedly observed. Geese, ducks, and other water-fowl including plover and other wading birds, were very plentiful during the summer . . . there were large numbers of ptarmigan or snow partridge . . . The waters were found to be filled to an extraordinary degree with marine invertebrata, including jelly-fish and shrimps. Seals were very abundant. Numerous insects were observed also, especially several species of butterfly, flies, bees, and insects of like character. Quite an extensive and varied collection of specimens was secured."

--and those observations were made north of latitude 82.

Cunnington also tells of the finding of much drift-wood by the McClure expedition, some of which in the opinion of the ship's carpenter had not been subject to a very long immersion in the water. McClure himself reports on this expedition that his men saw reindeer and killed musk-oxen on the shores of Prince of Wales strait, and he adds that it is pretty evident that during the whole winter animals may be found in these straits, and that the want of sufficient

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light alone prevents our larder being stored with fresh food. And Commander Osborne adds to this testimony the following remarkable admission: "Subsequent observation has completely overthrown the idea that the reindeer, musk-oxen, or other animals inhabiting the archipelago of island north of America migrate southward to avoid an Arctic winter." Later Commander McClure explored Bank's Land and found immense quantities of trees thrown in layers by glacier action evidently that had brought them from the north. Sometimes they protruded fourteen feet from the ground in which they were embedded. One ravine showed along one side a mass of trees tightly packed to a height of forty feet from the bottom of the declivity. The ground around the trees was formed of sand and shingle, showing that the trees had not grown there but had been carried there from some other spot. While some of the wood was petrified much of it was very recent, showing that this process of the trees being carried down had been going on for a great many thousands of years. And Cunnington adds:

"At a subsequent period Lieutenant Mecham met with a similar kind of fossil forest in Prince Patrick Island, nearly one hundred and twenty miles further north."

And yet in the actual latitudes where these trees are found nothing larger than  a stunted willow

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grows. No wonder the people who think the earth is solid are hard put to it to explain where these trees come from.

Nansen himself is puzzled to account for it. In the second volume of his "Farthest North" he speaks of this driftwood which is being continually found on the Greenland coast and whose presence, he says, has caused geographers to doubt if there can possibly be a solid polar ice cap--for if there were where could this wood come from? He says that even as far north as latitude 86 degrees he found such driftwood.

BIRDS AND THEIR MIGRATIONS

In an English work entitled "The Arctic World: Its Plants, Animals and Natural Phenomena" we find further corroborative evidence. The author urges further exploration of the Unknown Region, as he terms it, as the only means of solving the riddles which it presents and which are quite unexplainable according to the orthodox theories. He says:

"There are questions connected with the migrations of birds which can be elucidated only by an exploration of the Unknown Region. Multitudes which annually visit our shores in the winter and spring return in summer to far north. This is their regular custom and obviously would not have become a custom unless it had been found beneficial. Therefore,

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we may assume that in the zone they frequent they find some water which is not always frozen; some land on which they can rest their weary feet; and an adequate supply of nourishing food."

THE SAND-PIPER IS A PUZZLE

From Professor Newton we adopt, in connection with this consideration, a brief account of the movements of one class of migratory birds--the Knots.

"The knot or sand-piper is something half-way between a snipe and a plover. It is a very active and graceful bird, with rather long legs, moderately long wings, and a very short tail. It swims admirably but is not often seen in the water, preferring to assemble with its fellows on the sandy sea-shores, where it gropes in the sand for food or fishes in the rock pools for some crustaceans . . . Now, in the spring the knot seeks our island (England) in immense flocks, and after remaining on the coasts for about a fort-night, can be traced proceeding gradually northwards, until finally it takes leave of us. It has been noticed in Iceland and Greenland, but not to stay; the summer there would be too rigorous for its liking, and it goes further and further north. Whither? Where does it build its nest and hatch its young? We lose all trace of it for some weeks. What becomes of it?

"Toward the end of summer back it comes to us in larger flocks than before, and both old birds and

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young birds remain upon our coasts until November, or, in mild seasons, even later. Then it wings its flight to the south, and luxuriates in blue skies and balmy airs until the following spring, then it resumes the order of its migration."

Commenting upon these facts, Professor Newton infers that the lands visited by the knot in the middle of summer are less sterile than Iceland or Greenland; for certainly it would not pass over these countries, which are known to be the breeding places for swarms of water-birds, to resort to regions not so well provided with supplies of food. The food, however, chiefly depends on the climate. Wherefore we conclude that beyond the northern tracts already explored lies a region enjoying in summer a climate more genial than they possess.

This is a very remarkable corroboration of our theory. Here is a well known bird whose migrations are known in every particular except one--where does it go when it departs for the north? That has been an insoluble question, but at any rate a question which suggests that the far north is not what the scientists have supposed it to be--a barren waste. And when we add to this testimony the fact that animals also disappear in that direction in the winter, we begin to see how certain it is that there is not only a land of mild summer there but of perpetual summer.

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MIGRATIONS OF MEN

Our author goes on to say:

"Do any races of men with which we are now unacquainted inhabit the Unknown region? Mr. Markham observes that although scarcely one-half of the Arctic world has been explored, yet numerous traces of former inhabitants have been found in wastes which are at present abandoned to silence and solitude. Man would seem to migrate as well as the inferior animals, and it is possible that tribes may be dwelling in the mysterious inner zone between the Pole and the known Polar regions."

Well, our chapter on the Eskimo would have been read with interest by the author of this work. He shows every evidence of having an open mind, and we know that any scientists of today, who are as open to conviction as this writer evidently is, will eagerly embrace our demonstration that the so-called "pole" does not exist at all.

This author also refers to the presence of the "Arctic Highlanders" in the most inaccessible regions of the north and repeats their evidence that there are herds of musk-oxen frequenting lands far to the north situated in an iceless sea. He also refers to traces of these animals actually found by European explorers in Greenland, and also the presence of Eskimos who were met with by one captain and found by a later one to have gone north when the

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climate was so severe that their southern route was absolutely blocked.

The late Dr. Nicholas Senn, the well known Chicago surgeon, who is quoted in this book on the subject of the Eskimo, also corroborates the fact of birds migrating to the farthest north. He adds that even in cases of birds breeding in Greenland, the migration nevertheless takes place.

MORE ANIMAL LIFE THAN IN TROPICS

In J. W. Buel's "The World's Wonders"--in which there is a very comprehensive summary of the state of our knowledge of the Arctic regions we are told, "It is a fact that animal life is greater in the Arctic than in the tropical seas. Portions of the Arctic ocean are even colored by the abundance of small creatures that swim therein."

And Herman Dieck, in his "Marvelous Wonders of the Polar World," tells us of Lieutenant Lock-wood's frequent observations in the highest latitudes he attained with Schley. These observations included signs of foxes, hares, lemmings and ptarmigans. Hundreds of musk-oxen, too, were seen by Greely in Grinnell Land. In fact, Dieck goes so far as to say that as the explorers went north they found an "Arctic Paradise" and that the ever increasing fertility of the country would almost justify the acceptance of Symmes' "eccentric theory," as he calls it. Of course Symmes' theory was eccentric because it was merely

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a piece of speculation. It did not really account for the actual conformation of the earth. But at least Symmes had enough sense to be dissatisfied with the orthodox scientific theory of his day. And had Mr. Dieck known of the theory expounded in this book he could not have failed to see in the unanimous testimony of explorers that the further north you go the more animal life there is, a complete proof that there is in the far north a great asylum of refuge where every creature can breed in peace and with plenty of food. And from that region must come also those evidences of vegetable life that explorers have 'epeatedly seen, the red pollen of plants that drifts out on favorable breezes and colors whole ice bergs and glacier sides with a ruddy tinge, those seeds and buds and branches, and, most impressive of all, those representatives of races of animals that yet live on in the interior although they have disappeared from the outside of the earth.

A PARADISE OF LIFE

What a veritable paradise of animal and vegetable life that must be! And perhaps for some sort of human life also it is a land of perpetual ease and peace. The Eskimo people who are probably still living there will have been modified from the type that we see on the outer surface. Their life will be easier, they will have no cold climates and food scarcities to contend with. Like the inhabitants

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of some of our tropical islands they will reflect the ease of their lives in easy-going and lovable temperaments. They will be hunters and fishers and also eaters of many fruits and other vegetable products unknown to us. When we penetrate their lands we shall find growing almost to the inner edge of the polar opening those trees of which we have seen so many drifting trunks and branches. We shall find, nesting perhaps in those trees, perhaps in the rocks around the inner polar regions the knots and swans and wild geese and ross-gulls that we have so often seen in the preceding pages, flying to the north to escape the rigors of climate which we in our ignorance have for so long supposed to be worse in the north than elsewhere.

We shall see all that when we explore the Arctic in earnest, as we shall easily be able to do with the aid of airships. And when once we have seen it we shall wonder why it was that for so long we were blind to evidence which, as is shown in this book, has been before men's eyes for practically a whole century and over.

CHAPTER XIII

OTHER INTERESTING ANIMALS OF THE INTERIOR

The mammoth and mastodon, while giving us our chief evidence that there is habitable land within the interior of the globe, are not the only animals which may be studied in this connection. There are records of other animals living in that land whose like has never been seen on any portion of the outside globe, only their fossilized or semi-fossilized remains telling their story.

OBSERVATIONS OF ANIMALS

Robert B. Cook, writing in Knowledge for 1884, tells of the remains not only of mammoths but of hairy rhinoceros, reindeer, hippopotamus, lion, and hyena, found in northern glacial deposits, and he claims that these animals, which are not able to endure cold weather, must either have been summer visitors during the severity of the glacial period or have been permanent residents while the country had--as he thinks--a milder climate. But as the reindeer, lion, and hyena are present day forms of life and not as old as the mammoth (at least in the form in which we know them today and in which these remains show them to have been when they

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were alive), it is evident that these animals visited the spots where their remains were found not from southerly climates during early glacial epochs, but that they are remains of visitors from the land of the interior. Otherwise these present day forms would not be found alongside those of the mammoth which we have shown to be a present day inhabitant of the interior of the earth. Not knowing this, Mr. Cook has great difficulty in explaining the occurrence together of these forms which in his view are earlier and later forms of life. But when we see that they are really contemporaneous the difficulty vanishes.

THE "ARCLA," A HITHERTO UNKNOWN ANIMAL

That some of the animal denizens of the interior world are species quite unknown to us will not seem at all strange when we think of the conditions that obtain there, and if that were the case it would not be so very strange if at times a specimen of some kind of these unknown creatures wandered out over the lip, perhaps carried by a glacier, and was seen by some inhabitant of the far northern regions. As a matter of fact there is just such a case recorded by J. W. Buel in his survey of scientific and exploratory progress entitled "The World's Wonders". He quotes Captain Hall, who lived among the Eskimos for five years, who says that this and similar stories are worthy of credence because strange things

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that the Eskimos have told on other occasions have been verified afterwards.

It seems that the Eskimos often described to Captain Hall an animal which they, called the arcla: "but which is not mentioned in any book of natural history, nor did he ever see a specimen himself. . . ." The natives speak of this animal as being larger than the bear, and as very ferocious and as much more difficult to be killed. It has grayish hair, a long tail, and short thick legs, its forefeet being divided into three parts, like the partridge's, its hind feet are like a man's heels. When resting it sits upright like a man. A Neitchille Innuit, crawling into a hole for shelter, in the night, had found one asleep and quickly despatched it with his knife. It may be added here that Ebierbing, who was Hall's interpreter, now residing in the United States, confirms such accounts of the arcla, and says that the animal once inhabited his native country on Cumberland Sound.

CURIOUS ANIMALS IN THE FAR SOUTH

There is another curious fact that could be explained easily on the ground of our theory but that otherwise is very puzzling. When Nordenskiold was exploring the Antarctic regions he visited Patagonia, the most southern of inhabited lands. When there he explored a large cave in which he found a large piece of skin covered with greenish brown hair, and studded on the inner side with little knobs

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of bone. He identified it as the skin of a prehistoric animal called the mylodon, although along with the remains of the mylodon--for further exploration discovered no less than twenty specimens there were found many bones, teeth, and horny hoofs of a long extinct animal of the horse family, and as Mr. Edwin S. Grew says in his "Romance of Modern Geology" (where he recounts the episode), the whole thing is very puzzling (to the orthodox scientist, that is):

"It was supposed that the mylodon, like all the peculiar gigantic animals of South America, had become extinct as long ago as the mammoth or as the wooly rhinoceros. All these extinct South American animals were distinguished by peculiarly shaped teeth, and had no teeth at all in front. They are called, therefore, Edentata, and their representatives today are much smaller."

THE MYLODON

So there is no doubt that the animal which Dr. Nordenskiold discovered was a prehistoric form. But on the other hand there was a very remarkable circumstance:

"The skin was dry but sound. When it was placed in water it gave out a smell which, though unpleasant was very interesting, for it showed that the animal which had worn it could not have been dead thousands or even hundreds of years. It was in fact, evidently a piece of the skin of a mylodon, which had survived in this region until modern times.

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"Further explorations were made in the cavern by Dr. Moreno of La Plata, and other naturalists, and an immense quantity of bones was obtained, and more portions of the skin of the mylodon with the hair on. The cavern had been inhabited probably several centuries ago by Indians, for human bones and weapons were obtained.

"The remains of as many as twenty mylodons have been obtained from the cavern, and many of the bones are cut or broken in a way which leads us to suspect that the human inhabitants of the cave cut up the dead mylodons for food, and split their bones to obtain the marrow.

"Some of the mylodon bones, skulls, jaw-bones, leg-bones, etc., are smeared with blood and have pieces of cartilage and tendon attached. There are other evidences which go to show that the Indians may have kept the mylodons alive in the cave and fed them with hay brought from the outside.

"Besides the relics of the mylodon and of man the cavern has yielded bones and teeth, and many horny hoofs belonging to a kind of extinct horses; and this constitutes one of the puzzling things about this cave treasure . . . . . .

"The bones that were found are not buried in lime or any preserving stone; but lie in sand where one would expect them to have perished long ago if they had been of any great age. Yet side by side with them are the bones of a long extinct horse; and

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there is no tradition among the Indians today of any huge beast corresponding to the mylodon. . . . . . Possibly, though it does not seem very likely, the mylodon is still living in similar caverns in this region, as yet unvisited by man."

Now the above is very interesting in the light of our theory. The fact that the mylodon was not a relic of untold ages ago is beyond dispute: the relative freshness of its skin proves that, to say nothing of the fact that it was alive when Indians who knew how to domesticate animals were in the land--and that is very recent in the scale of time in which the mastodon and mylodon figure. But the fact that the bones of a long extinct horse-like animal were found alongside those of the mylodon, showing that the mylodon, an animal known to be very old and yet, in this case, proved also to be very recent, and the horse-like creature were contemporary. That means that the horse-like animal is not so old as we think.

Where, then, could either one of them have come from? Although the country has been explored since Mr. Grew's book was written no mylodons have been found as he suggests they might be. Evidently these were the remains of some specimens that in some way had wandered from the interior over the Antarctic polar lip and either through being caught on a floe or carried by a glacier they drifted on to some land which connects with Patagonia.

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[paragraph continues] That the Indians, whose bones were found in the cave, died on the same spot as that in which they had lived and where they kept these animals, might almost prove that they were among the last of their kind. Otherwise as soon as their supply of food was exhausted these Indians would have gone forth in search of more and their bones would not have been found beside their banquet board.

AN ESKIMO TRADITION

It may be well to add at this point that the Eskimos have a well defined tradition that the mammoth lives underground. Two writers in the Scientific American Supplement independently make this assertion, and while the Eskimos are wrong, of course, in thinking that a large animal like the mammoth could burrow like a mole, the very fact that they have this idea shows that they are accustomed to seeing the mammoth at intervals and then lose sight of it for some time, the animal suddenly appearing again. If we allow that the mammoth has its present habitat in the interior of the earth, it is quite easy to see how this idea arose.

CHAPTER XIV

THE AURORA

Every reader of this book has heard of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, and the Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights. Some readers may have visited Norway and gone far enough to catch a glimpse of this mysterious phenomenon. We say mysterious because scientists have never been able to explain it, although they usually try to do so by saying something indefinite about the earth's electricity and magnetism. We claim, on the basis of our theory, to explain definitely what causes the auroral lights: that the central sun, flashing its beams through the polar openings, is the cause. To enforce this claim we shall first describe. in the words of competent observers, just what these lights look like and how they behave. We shall then show--also on the best scientific evidence--that they are not and could not be caused by electricity or magnetism; we shall refute many fallacies on that subject. And then we shall give abundant evidence proving that the reflection of the rays of the central sun by the earth's atmosphere, modified by the conditions, cloudy or otherwise, of the atmosphere of the interior of the earth, is what causes these wonderful displays of light.

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WHAT THE AURORA LOOKS LIKE

We shall have more than one description of the aurora in the following chapter, but perhaps it will be interesting to start our enquiry from a rather old but very good book to which we have referred before. In Honorable Daines Barrington's "Possibility of Approaching the North Pole" he asks a correspondent about the aurora and is assured that it "is commonly seen most strong in the north and is very red and fiery."

IS IT CONTINUOUS?

Greely in his "Three Years of Arctic Service" says a number of interesting things. He remarks that there is always a feeble auroral light even when there is not a brilliant display. Soon after that remark we find him observing a perfectly circular aurora which he calls a mock sun. It had burning colors of blue, yellow and red with bars of white. A few days after, he witnessed an aurora which had a beautiful corona or crown of light around it. It had numerous and brilliant streamers. Then here is another description of an aurora:

"A beautiful and brilliant arch about three degrees wide, formed of twisted, convoluted bands of light, similar to twisted ribbons, extended from the south-west through the zenith to the north-eastern horizon. Occasionally, well-marked and clearly defined patches of light detached themselves, as puffs of smoke from a pipe, and drifted fading to the northwest.

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[paragraph continues] The arch seemed to be continually renewing itself from the southwest to fade at the opposite end. Perhaps a better idea of this peculiar formation may be conveyed by likening the display to an arch having the appearance of an endless, revolving screw. This formation was by no means infrequent, but I have never seen it elsewhere or known it to be described."

Again Greely writes:

"A particularly fine aurora, like a pillar of glowing fire, from horizon to horizon through the zenith, showing at times a decidedly rosy tint."

It will at once strike the reader how well these observations fit in with our theory that the aurora is the reflection of the beams of the inner sun coming through the polar orifice, when he remembers the extraordinary differences there will be in the conditions which from time to time modify those reflections. There may be clouds between the inner sun and the polar orifice, and these may be diffused or in heavy dense masses. The atmosphere may be moister or dryer at one time than another and this will modify the reflections. The earth's outer atmosphere may vary as well as its inner one. Hence all the differences which are described in the succeeding pages.

NANSEN DESCRIBES AURORA

Let us now take the testimony of Fridtjof Nansen on the subject of the aurora. In "Farthest North"

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he describes many appearances of this marvel. Here is part of one of his descriptions:

"A lovely aurora this evening. A brilliant corona encircled the zenith with a wreath of streamers in several layers, one outside the other; then larger and smaller sheaves of streamers over the sky. . . . . . . All of them, however, tended upward toward the corona, which shone like a halo. Every now and then I could discern a dark patch in its middle, at the point where all the rays converged. It lay a little south of the pole star, and approached Cassiopeia in the position it then occupied. But the halo kept smouldering and shifting just as if a gale in the upper strata of the atmosphere were playing the bellows to it. Presently fresh streamers shot out of the darkness out-side the inner halo, followed by other bright shafts of light in a still wider circle, and meanwhile the dark space in the middle was clearly visible; at other times it was completely covered with masses of light. Then it appeared as if the storm abated, and the whole turned pale, and glowed with a faint whitish hue for a little while, only to shoot wildly up once more and to begin the same dance over again. Then the entire mass of light around the corona began to rock to and fro in large waves over the zenith and the dark central point, whereupon the gale seemed to increase and whirl the streamers into an inextricable tangle, till they merged into a luminous vapor

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that enveloped the corona and drowned it in a deluge of light, so that neither it nor the streamers, nor the dark centre could be seen--nothing, in fact, but a chaos of shining mist."

OUR EXPLANATION

Now it is obvious that the real explanation of this phenomenon is to be found in those words which Nansen uses without seeing their real bearing on the problem: "it appeared as if the storm abated" and "the gale seemed to increase". As a matter of fact the light from the central sun was being reflected from the higher reaches of the earth's atmosphere and the reflection was interfered with by a violent storm in the interior of the earth. Clouds were rapidly being formed and being dissipated in that part of the interior near the polar, opening. Thus the rays of the central sun were one moment permitted to pass without obstruction; then the opening would be clouded up, at first perhaps by one dense cloud giving the central dark spot in the reflection of which Nansen speaks; then there would be a general filming over of the aperture and the result would be a diffused reflection.

Not only is it true that no other explanation fits the facts of the rapid changes without apparent cause, but Nansen himself acknowledges that he was quite ignorant of the cause of the phenomenon. He says:

"O thou mysterious radiance! What art thou and

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whence comest thou? Yet why ask? . . . . . What would it profit if we could say that it is an electric discharge or currents of electricity through the upper regions of the air, and were able to describe in minutest detail how it all came to be?"

NOT CAUSED BY ELECTRICITY

The reader will notice that Nansen does not commit himself to the popular view that the aurora is caused by electricity. In that he shows his wisdom, for we shall now deduce evidence to show that electricity has nothing whatever to do with the aurora.

If, as some people think, the earth's magnetism or electricity at the polar regions or around the earth's magnetic poles were the cause of the aurora, there would be a constant relation between its displays and the different instruments which have been constructed to tell the presence of magnetism and electricity--the compass would be affected and the electrometer would be affected. And there would certainly not be the irregularity about these displays that Nansen describes above. So now let us take the testimony of other observers. Payer who entered the Arctic circle on the "Tegetthoff" during the years 1872-1874, has a whole chapter devoted to the aurora. He says that it is very difficult to characterise the forms of this phenomenon, not only because they are manifold but because they are constantly changing. Sometimes there are brilliant

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bands and patches of light upon the sky, sometimes there are appearances like "glowing balls of light". He further says:

CLOUDS IN THE INTERIOR

"The movement of the waves of light gave the impression that they were the sports of winds, and their sudden and rapid rise resembled the uprisings of whirling vapors, such as the geysers might send forth In many cases the aurora much resembled a flash of summer lightning conceived as permanent".

Now that description precisely fits in with what we have described as the reflection of the light of the central sun, that light being by turns cut off in one part and then another, here and there a gleam breaking through, as the atmosphere of the interior changed. That the appearance was "the sport of winds," as Payer says, is literally true, only the winds were those shifting the clouds in the atmosphere on the inner side of the polar orifice. And it may be noted that a magnetic display could not be the sport of winds, for wind does not effect the ether in which medium along magnetic lines of force and electrical light from discharges work. If the aurora were caused by electrical lines of force discharging themselves in light, it would not be so capricious as described above. It would be a more or less steady appearance.

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WHAT PAYER HAS TO SAY OF THE AURORA

Payer goes on to say that often after a brilliant aurora there would be bad weather which certainly sounds as if the storm clouds from which it was reflected from the inner sun were breaking, or perhaps a storm starting in the interior was coming over the lip and running its course in the Arctic circle. He adds that none of the theories current at the time explain the phenomenon. He thinks, however, that vapors rather than electricity may play a part in the phenomenon, especially on account of its "indefinite form" which, as we have pointed out above,

is only explicable on our showing that the aurora is the reflection of the central sun and not due to any electrical discharge. A member of Payer's expedition, Lieutenant Weyprecht, describes one form of the aurora as an arch of light, looking as if "it were the upper limit of a segment of a circle and it is often thrice the breath of a rainbow. Often as it rises other arches follow it, all rising toward the zenith." Now we know that a rainbow is caused by the sun that lights the earth, and it is only natural that when the conditions are calm the reflection of the inner sun should also take this form--the circularity of the arch of the aurora simply being the reflection of the circular outline of that inner sun's diameter. Payer quotes Parry as saying that there was no magnetic disturbance when the aurora was

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seen. He, himself, is not able to make any connection between variations of the magnetic instruments and the presence of the aurora, although he tries hard to do so. As the final result of his observations he writes as follows:

"No pencil can draw it, no colors can paint it, and no words can describe it in all its magnificence. And here below stand we poor men and speak of knowledge and progress, and pride ourselves on the understanding with which we extort from Nature her mysteries. We stand and gaze on the mystery which Nature has written for us in flaming letters on the dark vault of night, and ultimately we can only wonder and confess that, in truth, we know nothing of it."

Now some day that will appear very pessimistic, for we are making progress in knowledge, and about this very subject. After the enthusiastic description which Payer gives of the beauties of the aurora, might it not have occurred to him that magnetic or electrical discharges could not produce such grandeur because electrical flashes are only bright when the electricity is at a very high tension. But as soon as the tension of the electricity in the atmosphere becomes great enough we have a thunder storm, and we all know just how bright the lightning flash is. But how about these marvelous colors, this sea of flames of which Payer says "is that sea red, white or green? Who can say?" And Payer admits that

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it is even impossible to tell whether the "rays shoot from above downward or from below upward." Such colors could not possibly be produced by electricity; they are the colors of the interior sun partly split up like the rainbow by their breaking up as they pass from stratum to stratum of the atmosphere at length to be reflected back to us.

But we have denied that these displays have any effect on the magnetic needle or the electrometer. Let us verify that assertion by evidence more powerful than Payer's. Greely says in the book from which we have already quoted that "it seems to be the experience here that the magnet is undisturbed during the prevalence of colorless auroras" although he did observe in a few cases he reports that magnetic storms took place at about the same time as there were auroral displays. In these cases, however, it is certain that the conditions which produced the stormy and colored appearance of the aurora due to its refraction through damp air--also produced the magnetic storms, just as in our own latitudes an electrical storm is accompanied by a great deal of moisture in the air. While in ordinary weather, the atmosphere being uniform throughout, the auroral reflection is uncolored because it is not broken up into a spectrum and at the same time in such uniformly dry air there is nothing to cause a magnetic storm. But it by no means follows, from the fact that Greely saw these magnetic storms upon one or

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two occasions, that they always accompany colored auroras, for as a matter of fact they do not, as our further testimony shows.

But there is one important preliminary point. If the aurora is a reflection of the inner sun, it will only be on the rare occasions when the whole polar orifice is covered with cloud--and how rare such a condition would be, even in the damp atmosphere of the interior--that the aurora will be absent. The sun is always there, the orifice is always there, and the earth's atmosphere above the polar regions will always be dense enough to reflect some light, though not of course dense enough to reflect the wonderful lights that it sometimes does. So, if our theory be true, there ought always to be some auroral light at the pole. And we have the testimony of the celebrated French astronomer, Camille Flammarion, that this is so. In one place in his book, "The Atmosphere", he says: "Nearly every night there is a more or less brilliant display of these auroral lights". And later in the same book he says: "This light of the earth, the emission of which toward the poles is almost continuous. . . . . ."

NOTHING TO DO WITH MAGNETISM

And now for the alleged disturbance of the magnet or other instruments. In Sargent and Cunning-ham's "Wonders of the Arctic World," which is a carefully written account of the earlier expeditions,

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it is recorded that during the Second Land Expedition of Franklin, enough observations of the aurora were made with specially designed instruments and recorded to establish the fact that no disturbances of the magnetic needle accompanied the displays. (Page 164.)

We may corroborate this testimony by referring to "Wonders of the Polar World", by Herman Dieck, M. A., another work in which the main results of polar exploration are summarized. Mr. Dieck quotes a description of an aurora seen by Greely's men, in which the arch form which we have already described was very prominent, and also the prismatic colors showing that the aurora was colored through the breaking up of sunlight, just as in the case of the rainbow. And he adds that there was no noise--this is important, as electrical discharges are always accompanied by a crackling noise--and there was no disturbance of the compass. Later, Lieutenant Greely set up an electrometer, an instrument which records the presence of very small amounts of electricity, but "to his astonishment" there was not a trace of electrical disturbance. Greely also noticed that there were no crackling sounds in connection with the display.

BRUCE ON THE AURORA

It is often the case that once the real explanation of anything is found out, we get corroborative evidence from the most unexpected sources, and the

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reader who turns to a very recent and most depend-able work in the Home University Library, that of William S. Bruce, leader of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, called "Polar Exploration", will find just such testimony. Professor Bruce says that the phenomenon occurs in other planets than our own and that it has been notably observed in Venus--which of course would be the case as the reader will remember that Venus occasionally shows us her central sun, and so we would naturally expect also to see its reflection in Venus' atmosphere. Professor Bruce also tells us that the early Norwegians held that the aurora was due to "fires which surround the sea to the north". Now that is very interesting because it suggests that perhaps these people had had in some way communication with the interior of the earth, and they might easily have thought that the central sun was some sort of fire. In fact some of them thought that the aurora was simply "a reflection of the sun when it is below the horizon" and that suggests that they had actually got far enough north to see the interior sun for a short time, perhaps, and that they afterwards saw its reflection in the sky in the form of an aurora, and remembering that they had just left the sun behind, they guessed that the two had this connection.

On the other hand, Professor Bruce quotes the observations of a British Antarctic Expedition to the effect that:

The central sun as it would appear to an explorer when he had reached the spot indicated by the letter ''D'' on the diagram, if the atmospheric conditions were favorable.

"The observations of atmospheric electricity taken during the displays reveal no special effect due to the aurora."

There are some other considerations which show that the aurora is really due to the interior sun. Dr. Kane, in his account of his explorations, tells us that the aurora is brightest when it is white. That shows that when the reflection of the sun is so clear that the total white light is reflected, we get a much brighter effect than when the light is cut up into prismatic colors. In the latter case the atmosphere is damp and dense--that being the cause of the rainbow effect--and through such an atmosphere one cannot see so much. Hence the display is not so bright as it is when the atmosphere is clear and the light not broken up.

THE NEARER THE POLE, THE BETTER THE DISPLAY

Again, if the aurora is the reflection of the central sun, we should expect to see it fully only near the polar orifice, and see only faint glimpses of its outer edges as we went further south. And that is precisely what is the actual fact of the matter. Says Dr. Nicholas Senn in his book "In the Heart of the Arctics":

"The aurora, which only occasionally is seen in our latitudes, is but the shadow of what is to be seen in the polar regions."

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And in "Earth, Sea, and Sky," by H. D. Northrop, we read:

"As we retire from the pole, the phenomenon becomes a rare occurrence, and is less perfectly and distinctly developed."

Regarding the two quotations just made a word of explanation is necessary. When Dr. Senn speaks of the aurora being only a "shadow" when it is seen some distance south he does not mean that it is a shade. He simply means that it is much fainter than when it is seen in the north. Now what is the reason of this? It is well known that certain laws of refraction of light cause a very bright rainbow to cast another rainbow, similar to itself at a distance from itself in the sky. Sometimes when the rainbow is very bright there is enough light being refracted so that two reflections are formed, and then the first reflection is paler than the original rainbow and the second reflection is still paler. Similarly, the auroral light is refracted in part so that a faint image of it or "shadow" is seen rather far to the south, sometimes as far south as the latitude of Illinois. But it is well known that no aurora or reflection of an aurora is ever seen at the equator, and as the aurora which is seen some distance from the north is only a shadow or reflection of the real aurora it is only occasionally, when the atmosphere happens to be right for it, that we see this phenomenon.

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THE DISPLAY IS CONTINUOUS

H. D. Northrop further notes that the light of the aurora is continuous during the Arctic night, and he says that the arch which we have already mentioned as being such a prominent feature of the aurora is only "part of a ring of light which is elevated considerably above the surface of our globe, and whose center is situated in the vicinity of the pole."

And that is precisely what we should expect when we remember that it is the reflection of the rays coming through the polar orifice which causes the phenomenon. Northrop points out that a person looking at this ring from a point very far north would imagine that the aurora was to the south of him simply because the ring was so far spread out overhead.

This point is corroborated by the author of "The Arctic World" who says the same thing about the aurora. Meanwhile we find that William Denovan in his scientific reference work, "The Phenomena of Nature", makes the statement that:

"In temperate regions the aurora does not present such grand forms as in the extreme north."

JUST LIKE THE SUN'S CORONA

The same author also makes another interesting point that supports our contention. It is that the corona or crown of light surrounding the sun is very like the light that the aurora gives us, and Nansen, in the second volume of his "Farthest North," speaks of an aurora in which there was a reflection that looked very like a corona. But, the reader may say, that is only a chance resemblance. It might be thought so, but exact observation confirms the idea that the light is the same in both cases. Taylor Reed, writing in Popular Astronomy for 1895, describes the spectroscopic observation of the sun's corona and compares the result with the examination of the earth's aurora. He says:

"Both have their beautiful streams. Each has a characteristic form in the neighborhood of the pole of its sphere. Apply the spectroscope to each and the analogy is continued. Each gives in the spectrum an unidentified bright line, with fainter companions. Each shows a faint continuous spectrum.

We cannot imagine what further proof than the above anybody could need. If the two sorts of light give precisely the same spectroscopic appearances they must come from precisely similar sources. That is to say, if the corona is light caused by a sun, the aurora must also be light caused by a sun. And that is what we claim.

OBSERVATIONS BY EARLIER SCIENTISTS

Let us, before concluding, however, give one or two more citations to show that the evidence already adduced is not only to be had in isolated instances but is agreed with by all observers at all times. In the first place, verification of the fact that Greely obtained

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no results when he set up his electrometer during a display of the aurora when he was on his northern expedition, will be found in the interview which he gave the Associated Press and which was published all over the country and 'is to be found in the Scientific American Supplement for September 6, 1884. Again, Nordenskiold gave a correspondent of the New York Herald an account of his explorations in the Arctic in the course of which he made this very important announcement:

"Whenever the sky was clear, and there was no sun or moon, he saw constant in the northeast horizon, and almost always in the same exact spot, a faintly luminous arc so motionless as to be susceptible of accurate measurement. This phenomenon, Nordenskiold concludes, comes from an actual aureole, or ring of light, surrounding the northern portion of the globe."

It is notable that Nordenskiold also says that there were no very brilliant displays that year. Evidently the weather was calm, there were no storms to make rapidly changing reflections, and as the air in the interior was probably laden with moisture the display was not brilliant. But the fact it was circular and steady shows that it was a reflection of a body that was also circular and steady, and reflected through a circular opening, and that body was no less than the interior sun.

It is interesting to note that the idea that the

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aurora is a reflection of sunlight is not confined to those old Norwegians we have spoken of. In an article translated from "La Lumiere Electrique" by the Scientific American Supplement for February 17, 1883, we are told that Descartes, Ellis, Frobisher, Franklin, Raspail and Wolfert, all thought that the aurora was from sunlight. They were near the truth, but they did not know what sun it really was that caused the light. In this same article we are told that the aurora is only seen at the pole and that any celestial light seen in the skies at lower latitudes---such as the zodiacal light is not due to the aurora at all.

In Nature, the volume of 1878, will be found an account of the eclipse of the sun as observed by the astronomer royal of Great Britain wherein it is stated that Professor Bass observed steadily for the whole period one part of the sun's corona, and he found that it pulsated in just the same manner as the aurora does.

THE AURORA AND THE ELECTRIC LIGHT CONTRASTED

And in conclusion we may repeat the observation of Payer, quoted also by W. J. Gordon in his book "Round About the North Pole", that it is impossible to discover whether the rays of the aurora shoot upward or downward. If those rays were electrical discharges they would all be going in the same direction, like the lines of force from a magnet. But

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the very fact that these rays are confused and seem to go now one way and now another, shows that they are light reflections which cross one another and appear and disappear as the reflecting surface--the upper layers of the atmosphere--varies. Thus we have one more item of the cumulative proof that the aurora is not a magnetic or electrical disturbance but simply a dazzling reflection from the rays of the central sun. And our next task is to see if there are not evidences of life in the land that is warmed by that sun. For if it warms continents and waters in the interior of the earth, if, as we have seen, birds have their feeding and breeding grounds there, if an occasional log or seed or pollen like dust is seen in the Arctic that come from some such unknown place as we have described, it ought to be possible to obtain enough evidence of such life as would prove up to the hilt the contention of this book.

CHAPTER XV

THE ESKIMO

Throughout this book there have been many references to the Eskimos who live nearer to the north polar orifice of the earth than any other people but who are not found near the south polar orifice. Of people in that region, people who in our opinion undoubtedly were Eskimos we shall have something to say in the next chapter. Or rather we will let other people say it--for the finding of people in the Antarctic was a unique occurrence which has never been explained before. It has simply been recorded and wondered at. Ours is the only explanation, and this chapter is the necessary preparation for that explanation. The question that this chapter will answer is, "Who are the Eskimos and whence do they come?" That it is necessary to pose the question is shown by what Nansen has to say on the subject. For Nansen tells in the second volume of his authoritative work, "In Northern Mists," all that has been previously discovered about the Eskimos and one is astonished to see that it all ends in a question mark. In other words only a little is known about the Eskimos, and as to their origin nothing is known.

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NANSEN ON THE ESKIMO

And yet the Eskimo must have come from somewhere to his present habitat, for as Nansen says "his world is that of sea-ice and cold, for which nature had not intended human beings"--implying, of course that the Arctic regions were not the original home of this race.

He goes on:

"As men of the white race pushed northward to the 'highest latitudes' they found traces of this remarkable people, who had already been there in times long past; and it is only in the last few decades that anyone has succeeded in penetrating farther north than the Eskimo, partly by learning from him or enlisting his help. In these regions, which are his own, his culture was superior to that of the white race, and from no other people has the arctic navigator learned so much.

A PUZZLE

"The north coast of America and the islands to the north of it, from Bering Strait to the east coast of Greenland, is the territory of the Eskimo. . . . . . Within these limits the Eskimos must have developed into what they now are. In their anthropological race-characteristics, in their sealing and whaling-culture, and in their language they are very different from all other known peoples, both in America and Asia, and we must suppose that for long ages, ever

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since they began to fit themselves for their life along the frozen shores, they have lived apart, separated from others, perhaps for a long time as a small tribe. They all belong to the same race; the cerebral formation, for instance, of all real Eskimos, from Alaska to Greenland, is remarkably homogenous; but in the far west they may have been mixed with Indians and others, and in Greenland they are now mixed with Europeans. They are pronouncedly dolichocephalic; but have short, broad faces, and by their features and appearance are easily distinguished from other neighboring peoples. Small, slanting eyes; the nose small and flat, narrow between the eyes and broad below; cheeks, broad, prominent and round; the forehead narrowing comparatively above; the lower part of the face broad and powerful; black, straight hair. The color of the skin is a pale brown. The Eskimos are not, as is often supposed, a small people on an average; they are rather of middle height, often powerful, and sometimes quite tall, although they are a good deal shorter, and weaker in appearance, than average Scandinavians. In appearance and also in language they come nearest to some of the North American Indian tribes."

VERY LIKE THE CHINESE

We shall find later, however, that other observers think the Eskimos are nearer in type to the Chinese than to any other race.

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Nansen admits that he is puzzled--in common with other enquirers, no two of whom agree--over the origin of the Eskimo race. The central point of their culture, he says, is seal-hunting, "especially with the harpoon, sometimes from the kayak in open water and sometimes from the ice. We cannot believe that this sealing, especially with the kayak, was first developed in the central part of the regions they now inhabit; there the conditions of life would have been too severe, and they would not have been able to support themselves until their sealing culture had attained a certain development. Just as in Europe we met with the 'Finnish' sea-fishing on a coast that was connected with milder coasts further south, where seamanship was first able to develop, so we must expect that the Eskimo culture began on coasts with similar conditions. . . . . ."

Dr. Nansen then discusses the various possible mild coasts on which the Eskimo might have learned his sealing and navigation, but he cannot come to any satisfactory conclusion and says that the question will have to be left open.

The fact that the question cannot be settled in any other way naturally impresses us with the probability that it will be settled through the application of our theory. The coasts near the polar orifice on the inner side of the earth would afford the ideal conditions for the earliest habitat of the Eskimo race,

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and, as we shall see later, there are other facts which make us certain that the Eskimo race as we know it today is an overflow from settlements on the borders of the polar orifice. Not only shall we show later that there has actually been communication between the Eskimos of the north and the Antarctic region--we shall show that that uninhabited part of the world has been visited by Eskimos or similar people coming through the interior of the earth--but many things in Eskimo history and tradition point to their coming from the interior.

THEY CAME FROM THE NORTH

First, however, let us note that Nansen lists quite a number of scientists all holding "various views as to the origin of the Eskimo", which, however, are all different from the idea set forth by Nansen that they must have come from a milder climate than their present one. Nansen notes that on the American Arctic islands the Eskimos no longer live as far north as they once did--as where older traces of them are found. It is evident in this case that they began north and gradually made their way south. But that beginning was not only north but was in the interior. And in many other cases we shall see that the farther north one goes the more one sees traces of Eskimos and we shall also find it true that all their traditions point to the north, and even to a condition of things which can only be explained on

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the theory that they once lived in a land of perpetual sunshine--which the interior of the earth is.

As further illustrating scientific ignorance about these people, we may see further what Nansen has to say:

HOW THEY TRAVEL

"How early the Eskimo appeared, and came to the most northern regions, we have as yet no means of determining. All we can say is that, as they are so distinct in physical structure, language and culture from all other known races except the Aleutians, we must assume that they have lived for a very long period in the northern regions apart from other peoples. It would be of special interest here if we could form any opinion as to the date of their immigration into Greenland. It has become almost an historical dogma that this immigration on a larger scale did not take place until long after the Norwegian Icelanders had settled in the country, and that it was chiefly the hordes of Eskimos coming from the north that put an end, first to the Western Settlement and then to the Eastern. But this is in every respect misleading, and conflicts with what may be concluded with certainty from several facts; moreover, the whole Eskimo way of life and dependence on sealing and fishing forbids their migration in hordes; they must travel in small scattered groups in order to find enough game to support themselves

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and their families, and are obliged to make frequent halts for sealing. They will, therefore, never be able to undertake any migration on a large scale."

The above strengthens our position very materially, for all the migrations of peoples with which history deals have been on a large scale, whole tribes staying together and moving in concert along definite routes. But if the Eskimos had come to the north from more southerly climates or even if they had come from so far away as China, or from the wilds of North America, they must either have come up all together--which Nansen tells us is impossible--or they must have scattered themselves over a much wider territory than they now occupy. In other words large numbers of them have become "lost" as far as any particular route is concerned. Nansen gives a map of their present and past distribution in his book, and it practically proves alone, without further evidence, that the Eskimos came from the north, for they only occupy the north coast of America, and the islands to the north of it, from Behring Strait to the east coast of Greenland, and that marks the limit of their territory. Now how could small groups at different times, starting out at points far away from this, all converge to that one small field of distribution? Why did not many of them stop at favorable parts on the way? Why did they not mix with and modify other tribes whom they met on the way, leaving traces that the anthropologist

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could note and trace down? No, the map of the distribution of the Eskimos shows that they came from the north, from over the lip of the polar orifice, and settled upon the first suitable land that they reached.

That the Eskimos left the interior of the earth very early perhaps when the northern climate was milder than it is now and therefore more attractive to them--seems probable. Nansen says:

"There can be no doubt that the Eskimo arrived in Greenland ages before the Norwegian Icelanders. The rich finds referred to among others by Dr. H. Rink, of Eskimo whaling and sealing weapons and implements of stone from deep deposits in North Greenland show that the Eskimos were living there far back in prehistoric times."

And in a note appended to this statement Nansen adduces evidence to show that in those prehistoric times the Eskimos lived more to the north than they do at the present time--a very significant thing to admit, seeing that it points to a northern and not a southern origin and starting point.

But the Eskimos had learned a number of things, that is to say they were not a new tribe emerging from savagery but had a history behind them, when they did take up their abodes on the northern shores of the outer world. Nansen remarks that they: "must have had at the time of their first immigration much the same culture in the main as now,

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since otherwise they would not have been able to support themselves in these northern regions."

THEIR MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION

He further tells us that:

"Their means of transport were the kayak and the woman's boat in open water, and the dog-sledge on the ice. Their whaling and sealing were conducted in kayaks in summer, but with dog-sledges in winter, when they hunted the seal at its breathing-holes in the ice, the walrus, narwhale and white whale, in the open leads, and pursued the bear with their dogs. In winter they usually keep to one place, living in houses of stone or snow, but in summer they wander about with their boats and tents of hides to the best places for kayak fishing."

That sounds as though it were the pursuit of seals, whales, etc., which gradually brought the Eskimos out of the interior polar regions into those of the exterior in the first place, and as Nansen goes on we see that he constantly emphasizes the fact that they moved further south. And although it was more temperate after they had passed the very cold region which is just south of the polar inland sea, they "no longer found the same conditions of life as before, the ice was for the most part absent, the walrus became more difficult in the open sea, and winter fishing from the kayak was not very safe."

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POORER HUNTING IN THE SOUTH

That quotation answers any reader who may wonder why the Eskimos emigrated from the interior in the first place, where the climate is mild, out into the regions of North Greenland where it is harder. The answer is that the Eskimo is by nature a hunter and fisher, just as some tribes of the earth are naturally agricultural and stay fixed in one spot while others are nomads and roam. The Eskimos were hunters and fishers of whale, narwhale, seal, etc., and they pursued their prey gradually over the polar lip. As long as they had sought these creatures in open water they had great difficulty in catching them. When they came to an ice-bound region, which they would do after they had come down past the region of warm currents and open sea around the poles, they found it easier to catch their prey. When they went too far south, so that the sea became warm and open again, they could no longer do this so easily, and so, as Nansen points out they remained in the localities where the winter meant ice:

"Southern Greenland, therefore, had no great attraction, so long as there was room enough further north."

In other words the Eskimo who came too far south found out what we have seen that the polar explorers from our own countries found out--a greater abundance of life further north.

That the Eskimo came from the interior of

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the earth, that is to say, from a location which they could not easily explain to the Norwegians who might have asked them where they originally came from, is shown by the fact that the early Norwegians regarded them as a supernatural people, a species of fairy. When we remember that in the efforts of these Eskimos to tell where they came from they would point to the north and describe a land of perpetual sunshine, it is easy to see that the Norwegians who associated the polar regions with the end of the world, certainly not with a new world, would wonder at the strange origin thus indicated. They would. naturally assume that these were supernatural beings who came from some region under the earth--as that was always considered to be the abode of fairies, gnomes, and similar creatures.

EARLY NORWEGIAN IDEAS ON THE ESQUIMAUX

And according to Nansen this is precisely what happened. He says:

"I have already stated that the Norse name 'Skraeling' for Eskimo must have originally been used as a designation of fairies or mythical creatures. Further-more there is much that would imply that when the Icelanders first met with the Eskimo in Greenland they looked upon them as fairies; they, therefore, called them 'trolls,' an ancient common name for various sorts of supernatural beings. This view persisted

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more or less in after times. Every European who has suddenly encountered Eskimos in the ice-covered wastes of Greenland, without ever having seen them before, will easily understand that they must have made such an impression on people who had the slightest tendency toward superstition. Such an idea must, from the very beginning, have influenced the relations between the Norsemen and the natives, and is capable of explaining much that is curious in the mention of them, or rather the lack of mention of them, in the sagas, since they were supernatural beings of whom it was best to say nothing."

Nansen then goes on to tell us that when these Skraelings were mentioned in Latin writings the word was always translated by "Pygmaei" which meant "short, undergrown people of supernatural aspect"--that is like fairies; and it was precisely that sort of being who had always, in the middle ages and as far back as classical times, been supposed to inhabit Thule--Thule being the ultimate land beyond the north, being in fact, no doubt a conception really based on what is the actual fact, as proved in this book. It is seldom that there is not a basis in fact for the myths and ideas of antiquity, and this belief in a land beyond the poles inhabited by a strange people was very widely distributed. In fact Nansen tells us that from St. Augustine the knowledge of these pygmies "reached Isidore; and from him the knowledge was disseminated over the whole of mediaeval

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[paragraph continues] Europe partly in the same sense, that of a more or less fabulous people from the uttermost parts of the earth; and partly in the sense of a fairy people. Supported by popular belief in various countries, the latter meaning soon became general. Of this Moltke Moe gives a remarkable example from the Welshman, Walter Mapes (latter half of the twelfth century) who in his curious collection of anecdotes, etc., (called 'De Nugis Curialium'), has a tale of a prehistoric king of the Britons called Herla. . ."

EARLY NORWEGIAN LEGENDS

Nansen then goes on to repeat the tale which represents this king as meeting with Skraelings or Eskimos, and being taken by them beneath the earth. Of course in the form in which it is given by this Welsh-man of the twelfth century it is only a fairy tale. But may there not be a basis in truth for such a tale? It is remarkable how many early legends represent people as going under the earth or into an utterly strange realm, and when we remember what feats of navigation the early Norsemen could perform--we must remember that they first discovered America it looks as if they might have penetrated to the interior and so made a basis in fact for these very frequent tales of people finding a supernatural realm and staying there for a long time but at last coming back. In this connection we may mention the fact that the early Irish had a legend of a land far beyond the

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sea where the sun always shone and it was always summer weather. They even thought that some of their early heroes had gone there and returned--never to be quite satisfied with their own country again.

A thirteenth century Norwegian authority is quoted by Nansen to show that the Eskimos were known then as a supernatural people, small in stature, who "have a complete lack of the metal iron; they use the tusks of marine animals for missiles and sharp stones for knives."

And Nansen adds:

"The curiously correct mention of the Skraelings' weapons must be derived from a well-informed source, and the statement established the fact that the Norsemen met with the Eskimos of Greenland at any rate in the thirteenth century."

We may also add that the fact that the Norsemen knew them as well as this and yet thought that they were supernatural people who "when these are struck while alive by weapons their wounds turn white without blood"--the fact that they really knew them and yet had ideas like that about them, shows that they did not regard them as ordinary human beings. And only the fact that the Eskimos came from some strange land, thought to be supernatural, would account for such strange ideas being held.

The early Norsemen did, however, wonder where these people could possibly come from, and Nansen

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tells us that whenever they went north they took particular notice of any abandoned Eskimo dwellings that they might happen to see. He says further:

"In an account of the voyage to the north, about 1276, we read that at the farthest point north there were found some old Skraeling dwelling places, while farther south, on some islands, were found some inhabited ones. In agreement with this it is stated of the men who came from the north in 1266 that they saw no 'Skraelingja vistir' (dwelling places) except farther north than in Kroksfjardarheidr, and therefore it is thought that they must by that way have the shortest distance to travel wherever they came from. Thus we see that the Skraeling? were found in and in the neighborhood of Kroksfjord but on the other hand not in the extreme north where only old sites left by them were found."

THESE IDEAS ARE SIGNIFICANT

In other words, one first met the Skraelings, then as one went farther north one met their deserted dwellings, showing that their progress was from the direction of the north. And Nansen adds in a footnote that these ancient observations are quite in conformity with later researches and therefore to be given full credence.

TRACES FOUND AT SEA

Nansen also gives us another remarkable fact, a piece of direct evidence of the Eskimos' having

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lived in the interior of the earth. He mentions the finding "out at sea" in 1226 of "pieces of driftwood" shaped with "small axes"--which he thinks may mean stone axes--and adzes (the Eskimo form of axe) and these pieces of wood had "wedges of bone imbedded in them."

Now we have already seen that driftwood from the interior of the earth is a common phenomenon in the Arctic regions. That they were not from a point near land is shown by the fact that the Norwegians who found them were much impressed and spoke of them in a way which showed that they thought the discovery something very much out of the common and something "not due to Norsemen."

Nansen also quotes an archbishop in 1520 who refers to the Eskimos as being very unlike other peoples, coming, as he says, from "the north-northwest of Finmark" and he seems to think that they live in underground houses--which again may be a reminiscence of the idea of their living under the surface of the earth or in its interior.

FRESH IMMIGRATION FROM THE NORTH

And Nansen also says that these Eskimo settlements were not only increased by the tribe growing but by "fresh gradual immigration from the north"--which clearly points to further additions from the interior of the earth.

That the present day Eskimo is not quite like

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the type described above, Nansen attributes to Scandinavian intermixture after Norwegian communication with the Greenland colonies had been cut off in the fourteenth century--due to internal troubles in Norway--and the larger race had been forced to amalgamate with the smaller Eskimos from whom they had previously kept aloof. So the Eskimo race as we know it today is not the same in physical appearance as the race that ordinarily came out of the interior of the earth.

DR. SENN ON ESKIMO AND CHINESE LIKENESS

We have mentioned that the Eskimo has been compared in appearance and type to the Chinese. The authority who does this is the late Dr. Nicholas Senn, professor of surgery at the University of Chicago, who has made an Arctic trip and written some very interesting things about it. He says:

"The Mongolian type of the Eskimo is pronounced" and again: "The affinity of the Eskimo for the Chinese was well demonstrated by the actions of a little Eskimo girl that Mrs. Peary took home with her in 1894. The first thing that attracted her serious attention was a Chinaman she saw on the street, while the many new things she saw in the great city of New York that usually interest children made little impression on her."

Now it is quite possible that the Eskimos are not descended from any tribes driven out of China as that

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might imply, but that the Chinese as well as the Eskimos originally came from the interior of the earth.

ESKIMOS HAVE OWN IDEA OF ORIGIN

That they originally came from a land of constant sunshine, from a country away past the northern ice-barrier is the tradition of the Eskimos themselves, and it is a tradition which must be given full weight, for it could not have arisen among them in the first place without good cause. On this point Dr. Senn says:

"When questioned"--as to the land of their origin--"they invariably point north without having the faintest perception of what this means."

Naturally the Eskimos do not know that the earth is hollow and that ages ago they lived in its interior, but they have clung to that one simple fact--they came from the north. Dr. Senn denies that they have any characteristics in common with the North American Indian and thinks that they are the remnant of "the oldest inhabitants of the western hemisphere." In this attributing of great antiquity to them he may be right--at least he there agrees with Nansen. But the interior of the earth and not the western hemisphere is evidently the place of their original abode.

THEIR FAITH IN THIS ORIGINAL HOME

As for the land of perpetual sunshine, the Eskimo, of course, does not remember that as something he himself has seen, for it is very questionable if any of

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the Eskimos of the present generation have ever penetrated to the interior. But it is a well known fact that every race has its idea of a "golden age" or paradise which is generally composed of the elements which are handed down in its stories and myths as being characteristic of its earliest home. Thus the Eskimo legends handed down generation after generation, tales of the interior land with its ever shining sun, and what could be more natural than when the Eskimo came to build in fancy a paradise for himself and his loved ones after they should die, that he should reconstruct this first home of which he had heard only in dim legends? That, at any rate is just what he has done. Dr. Senn, discussing their religion, says:

"They believe in a future world. . . The soul descends beneath the earth into various abodes--the first of which is somewhat in the nature of a purgatory: but the good spirits passing through it find that the other mansions improve till at a great depth they reach that of perfect bliss, where the sun never sets, and where by the side of large lakes that never freeze, the deer roam in large herds and the seal and the walrus always abound in the waters."

That paradise might serve as almost a literal description of the land in the interior of the earth, and the way in which the Eskimo indicates a preliminary purgatory before it can be reached may well be the reflection of a memory handed down in the tribe of

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the great hardships and difficulties of the ice barrier between that wonderful home and the present situation of the Eskimo on the southern side of that great natural obstacle.

It is also interesting to note that when the Eskimo first saw Peary's effort to get further north than the great ice-cap of Greenland beyond which they themselves had no ambition to explore--they immediately thought that the reason for his trying to get further north was to get into communication with other tribes there. That idea would hardly have occurred to them if it were not for the fact that they had traditional or other evidence of people in the supposedly unpopulated north.

With such a weight of evidence all pointing one way it is very hard to resist the conclusion that in the Eskimo we find a type, changed now and mixed with other types, but still something of a type of human being that has inhabited or very likely still inhabits the interior of the earth. We can certainly find no origin for them that explains their present situation. And their legends admit of no other explanation either. For those legends certainly point to the same sort of land as every chapter in this book has pointed to--a land of perpetual sun and mild climate, a land corresponding to the "Ultima Thule" of ancient legend and that may sooner than the skeptic expects, be opened up once more to those who go properly equipped to seek it.