On our own hemisphere, and separated from our own coasts by only a
few days’ journey on our own element, there remains a blank circle of
unexplored country above 800 miles in diameter. We have tried to cross
it, and have not succeeded. Nothing further need be said in reply to
those who ask, “Why should we start another Arctic Expedition?”
The records of previous attempts to penetrate this area of geographical
mystery prove the existence of a formidable barrier of mountainous
land, fringed by fjords or inlets, like those of Norway, some of which
may be open, though much contracted northward, like the Vestfjord that
lies between the Lofoden Islands and the mainland of Scandinavia. The
majority evidently run inland like the ordinary Norwegian fjords or the
Scotch firths, and terminate in land valleys that continue upwards to
fjeld regions, or elevated humpy land which acts as a condenser to the
vapor-laden air continually flowing towards the Pole from the warmer
regions of the earth, and returning in lower streams when cooled. The
vast quantities of water thus condensed fall upon these hills and table
lands as snow crystals. What becomes of this everlasting deposit?
Unlike the water that rains on temperate hill-sides, it cannot all
flow down to the sea as torrents and liquid rivers, but it does come
down nevertheless, or long ere this it would have reached the highest
clouds. It descends mainly as glaciers, which creep down slowly, but
steadily and irresistibly, filling up the valleys on their way; and
stretching outwards into the fjords and channels, which they block up
with their cleft and chasmed crystalline angular masses that still
creep outward to the sea until they float, and break off or “calve” as
mountainous icebergs and smaller masses of ice.
These accumulations of ice thus _formed on land_ constitute the chief
obstructions that bar the channels and inlets fringing the unknown
Polar area. The glacier fragments above described are cemented together
in the winter time by the freezing of the water between them. An open
frozen sea, pure and simple, instead of forming a barrier to arctic
exploration, would supply a most desirable highway. It must not be
supposed that, because the liquid ocean is ruffled by ripples, waves,
and billows, a frozen sea would have a similar surface. The freezing
of such a surface could only start at the calmest intervals, and the
ice would shield the water from the action of the wave-making wind,
and such a sea would become a charming skating rink, like the Gulf
of Bothnia, the Swedish and Norwegian lakes, and certain fjords,
which, in the winter time, become natural ice-paved highways, offering
incomparable facilities for rapid locomotion. In spite of the darkness
and the cold, winter is the traveling season in Sweden and Lapland.
The distance that can be made in a given time in summer with a wheeled
vehicle on well-made post roads can be covered in half the time in a
_pulk_ or reindeer sledge drawn over the frozen lakes. From Spitzbergen
to the Pole would be an easy run of five or six days if nothing but a
simply frozen sea stood between them.
This primary physical fact, that arctic navigators have not been
stopped by a merely frozen sea, but by a combination of glacier
fragments with the frozen water of bays, and creeks, and fjords, should
be better understood than it is at present; for when it is understood,
the popular and fallacious notion that the difficulties of arctic
progress are merely dependent on latitude, and must therefore increase
with latitude, explodes.
_It is the physical configuration of the fringing zone of the arctic
regions, not its mere latitude, that bars the way to the Pole._
I put this in italics because so much depends upon it—I may say that
all depends upon it—for if this barrier can be scaled at any part we
may come upon a region as easily traversed as that part of the Arctic
Ocean lying between the North Cape and Spitzbergen, which is regularly
navigated every summer by hardy Norsemen in little sailing sloops of
30 to 40 tons burden, and only six or eight pair of hands on board; or
by overland traveling as easily as the Arctic winter journey between
Tornea and Alten. This trip over the snow-covered mountains is done
in five or six days, at the latter end of every November, by streams
of visitors to the fair at Alten, in latitude 70°, 3½ degrees N. of
the Arctic circle; its distance, 430 miles, is just about equal to
that which stands between the North Pole and the northernmost reach of
our previous Arctic expeditions. One or the other of the above-named
conditions, or an enclosed frozen Polar ocean, is what probably exists
beyond the broken fjord barrier hitherto explored; a continuation
of such a barrier is, in fact, almost a physical impossibility; and
therefore the Pole will be ultimately reached, not by a repetition of
such weary struggles as those which ended in the very hasty retreat of
our last expedition, but by a bound across about 400 miles of open or
frozen Polar ocean, or a rapid sledge-run over snow-paved fields like
those so merrily traversed in Arctic Norway by festive bonders and
their families on their way to Yule-time dancing parties.
Reference to a map of the circumpolar regions, or, better, to a globe,
will show that the continents of Europe, Asia, and America surround the
Pole, and hang, as it were, downwards or southwards from a latitude of
70° and upwards. There is but one wide outlet for the accumulations
of Polar ice, and that is between Norway and Greenland, with Iceland
standing nearly midway. Davis’s and Behring’s Straits are the narrower
openings; the first may be only a fjord, rather than an outlet. The
ice-block, or crowding together and heaping up of the glacier fragments
and bay ice, is thus explained.
Attempts of two kinds have been made to scale this icy barrier. Ships
have sailed northwards, threading a dangerous course between the
floating icebergs in the summer, and becoming fast bound in winter,
when the narrow spaces of brackish water lying between these masses
of land ice become frozen, and the “ice-foot” clinging to the shore
stretches out seaward to meet that on the opposite side of the fjord or
channel. The second method, usually adopted as supplementary to the
first, is that of dragging sledges over these glacial accumulations.
The pitiful rate of progress thus attainable is shown by the record
of the last attempt, when Commander Markham achieved about one mile
per day, and the labor of doing this was nearly fatal to his men. Any
tourist who has crossed or ascended an Alpine glacier with only a
knapsack to carry, can understand the difficulty of dragging a cartload
of provisions, etc., over such accumulations of iceberg fragments and
of sea-ice squeezed and crumbled up between them. It is evident that we
must either find a natural breach in this Arctic barrier or devise some
other means of scaling it.
The first of these efforts has been largely discussed by the advocates
of rival routes. I will not go into this question at present, but only
consider the alternative to all land routes and all water routes, viz.:
that by the other available element—an aerial route—as proposed to be
attempted in the new Arctic expedition projected by Commander Cheyne,
and which he is determined to practically carry out, provided his own
countrymen, or, failing them, others more worthy, will assist him with
the necessary means of doing so.
To reach the Pole from the northernmost point already attained by our
ships demands a journey of about 400 miles, the distance between London
and Edinburgh. With a favorable wind, a balloon will do this in a few
hours, On November 27, 1870, Captain Roher descended near Lysthuus, in
Hitterdal (Norway), in the balloon “Ville d’Orleans,” having made the
journey from Paris in fifteen hours. The distance covered was about
900 miles, more than double the distance between the Pole and the
accessible shores of Greenland.
On November 7, 1836, Messrs. Holland, Mason, and Green ascended from
Vauxhall Gardens, at 1.30 P.M., with a _moderate breeze_, and descended
eighteen hours afterwards “in the Duchy of Nassau, about two leagues
from the town of Weilburg,” the distance in a direct line being about
500 miles. A similar journey to this would carry Commander Cheyne from
his ship to the North Pole, or thereabouts, while a fresh breeze
like that enjoyed by Captain Roher would, in the same time, carry him
clear across the whole of the circumpolar area to the neighborhood of
Spitzbergen, and two or three hours more of similar proceeding would
land him in Siberia or Finland, or even on the shores of Arctic Norway,
where he could take the Vadsö or Hammerfest packet to meet one of
Wilson’s liners at Trondhjem or Bergen, and thus get from the North
Pole to London in ten days.
Lest any of my readers should think that I am writing this at
random, I will supply the particulars. I have before me the “Norges
Communicationer” for the present summer season of 1880. Twice every
week a passenger excursion steam packet sails round the North Cape
each way, calling at no less than twenty stations on this Arctic face
of Europe to land and embark passengers and goods. By taking that
which stops at Gjesvaer (an island near the foot of the North Cape)
on Saturday, or that which starts from Hammerfest on Sunday morning,
Trondhjem is reached on Thursday, and Wilson’s liner, the “Tasso,”
starts on the same day for Hull, “average passage seventy hours.” Thus
Hammerfest, the northernmost town in the world, is now but eight days
from London, including a day’s stop at Tromsö, the capital of Lapland,
which is about 3 degrees N. of the Arctic circle, and within a week
of London. At Captain Roher’s rate of traveling Tromsö would be but
twenty-three hours from the Pole.
These figures are, of course, only stated as _possibilities_ on the
supposition that all the conditions should be favorable, but by no
means as _probable_.
What, then, are the _probabilities_ and the amount of risk that will
attend an attempt to reach the Pole by an aerial route?
I have considered the subject carefully, and discussed it with
many people; the result of such reflection and conversation is a
conviction that the prevalent popular estimate of the dangers of
Commander Cheyne’s project extravagantly exaggerates them on almost
all contingencies. I do not affirm that there is no risk, or that the
attempt should be made with only our present practical knowledge of
the subject, but I do venture to maintain that, after making proper
preliminary practical investigations at home, a judiciously conducted
aerostatic dash for the Pole will be far less dangerous than the
African explorations of Livingstone, Stanley, and others that have been
accomplished and are proposed. And further, that a long balloon journey
starting in summer-time from Smith’s Sound, or other suitable Arctic
station, would be less dangerous than a corresponding one started from
London; that it would involve less risk than was incurred by Messrs.
Holland, Mason, and Green, when they traveled from Vauxhall Gardens to
Nassau.
The three principal dangers attending such a balloon journey are: 1st.
The variability of the wind. 2d. The risk of being blown out about the
open ocean beyond the reach of land. 3d. The utter helplessness of
the aeronaut during all the hours of darkness. I will consider these
seriatim in reference to Arctic ballooning _versus_ Vauxhall or Crystal
Palace ballooning.
As regards the first danger, Vauxhall and Sydenham are in a position
of special disadvantage, and all the ideas we Englishmen may derive
from our home ballooning experience must tend to exaggerate our common
estimate of this danger, inasmuch as we are in the midst of the region
of variable winds, and have a notoriously uncertain climate, due to
this local exaggeration of the variability of atmospheric movements. If
instead of lying between the latitudes of 50° and 60°, where the N.E.
Polar winds just come in collision with the S.W. tropical currents, and
thereby effect our national atmospheric stir-about, we were located
between 10° and 30° (where the Canary Islands are, for example),
our notions on the subject of balloon traveling would be curiously
different. The steadily blowing trade-wind would long ere this have led
us to establish balloon mails to Central and South America, and balloon
passenger expresses for the benefit of fast-going people or luxurious
victims of sea-sickness. To cross the Atlantic—three thousand
miles—in forty-eight hours, would be attended with no other difficulty
than the cost of the gas, and that of the return carriage of the empty
balloon.
It is our exceptional meteorological position that has generated the
popular expression “as uncertain as the wind.” We are in the very
centre of the region of meteorological uncertainties, and cannot
go far, either northward or southward, without entering a zone of
greater atmospheric regularity, where the direction of the wind at a
given season may be predicted with more reliability than at home. The
atmospheric movements in the Arctic regions appear to be remarkably
regular and gentle during the summer and winter months, and irregular
and boisterous in spring and autumn. A warm upper current flows from
the tropics towards the Pole, and a cold lower one from the Arctic
circle towards the equator. Commander Cheyne, who has practical
experience of these Arctic expeditions, and has kept an elaborate log
of the wind, etc., which he has shown me, believes that, by the aid
of pilot balloons to indicate the currents at various heights, and by
availing himself of these currents, he may reach the Pole and return
to his ship, or so near as to be able to reach it by traveling over
the ice in light sledges that will be carried for that purpose. In
making any estimate of the risk of Arctic aerostation, we must banish
from our minds the preconceptions induced by our British experience
of the uncertainties of the wind, and only consider the atmospheric
actualities of the Polar regions, so far as we know them.
Let us now consider the second danger, viz., that of being blown out
to sea and there remaining until the leakage of gas has destroyed the
ascending power of the balloon, or till the stock of food is consumed.
A glance at a map of the world will show how much smaller is the danger
to the aeronaut who starts from the head of Baffin’s Bay than that
which was incurred by those who started from Vauxhall in the Nassau
balloon, or by Captain Roher, who started from Paris. Both of these had
the whole breadth of the Atlantic on the W. and S.W., and the North
Sea and Arctic Ocean N. and N.E. The Arctic balloon, starting from
Smith’s Sound or thereabouts, with a wind from the South (and without
such a wind the start would not, of course, be made), would, if the
wind continued in the same direction, reach the Pole in a few hours;
in seven or eight hours at Roher’s speed; in fourteen or fifteen
hours at the average rate made by the Nassau balloon in a “moderate
breeze.” Now look again at the map and see what surrounds them. Simply
the continents of Europe, Asia, and America, by which the circumpolar
area is nearly land-locked, with only two outlets, that between Norway
and Greenland on one side, and the narrow channel of Behring’s Straits
on the other. The wider of these is broken by Spitzbergen and Iceland,
both inhabited islands, where a balloon may descend and the aeronauts
be hospitably received. Taking the 360 degrees of the zone between the
70th parallel of latitude and the Arctic circle, 320 are land-locked
and only 40 open to the sea; therefore the chances of coming upon land
at _any one_ part of this zone is as 320 to 40; but with a choice of
points for descent such as the aeronauts would have unless the wind
blew precisely down the axis of the opening, the chances would be far
greater. If the wind continued as at starting, they would be blown to
Finland; a westerly deflection would land them in Siberia, easterly in
Norway; a strong E. wind at the later stage of the trip would blow them
back to Greenland.
In all the above I have supposed the aeronauts to be quite helpless,
merely drifting at random with that portion of the atmosphere in
which they happened to be immersed. This, however, need not be the
case. Within certain limits they have a choice of winds, owing to the
prevalence of upper and lower currents blowing in different and even in
opposite directions. Suppose, for example, they find themselves N. of
Spitzbergen, where “Parry’s furthest” is marked on some of our maps,
and that the wind is from the N.E., blowing them towards the Atlantic
opening. They would then ascend or descend in search of a due N. or N.
by W. wind that would blow them to Norway, or W.N.W. to Finland, or
N.W. to Siberia, or due E. back to Greenland, from whence they might
rejoin their ships. One or other of these would almost certainly be
found. A little may be done in steering a balloon, but so very little
that small reliance should be placed upon it. Only in a very light
wind would it have a sensible effect, though in case of a “near shave”
between landing, say at the Lofodens or Iceland, and being blown out
to sea, it might just save them.
As already stated, Commander Cheyne believes in the possibility of
returning to the ship, and bases his belief on the experiments he made
from winter quarters in Northumberland Sound, where he inflated four
balloons, attached to them proportionately different weights, and sent
them up simultaneously. They were borne by diverse currents of air in
_four different directions according to the different altitudes_, viz.,
N.W., N.E., S.E., and S.W., “thus proving that in this case balloons
could be sent in any required direction by ascending to the requisite
altitude. The war balloon experiments at Woolwich afford a practical
confirmation of this important feature in aerostation.” Cheyne proposes
that one at least of the three balloons shall be a rover to cross the
unknown area, and has been called a madman for suggesting this merely
as an alternative or secondary route. I am still more lunatic, for
I strongly hold the opinion that the easiest way for him to return
to his ship will be to drift rapidly across to the first available
inhabited land, thence come to England, and sail in another ship to
rejoin his messmates; carrying with him his bird’s-eye chart, that
will demonstrate once for all the possibility or impossibility of
circumnavigating Greenland, or of sailing, or sledging, or walking to
the Pole.
The worst dilemma would be that presented by a dead calm, and it is not
improbable that around the Pole there may be a region of calms similar
to that about the Equator. Then the feather-paddle or other locomotive
device worked by man-power would be indispensable. Better data than we
at present possess are needed in order to tell accurately what may thus
be done. Putting various estimates one against the other, it appears
likely that five miles an hour may be made. Taking turn and turn about,
two or three aeronauts could thus travel fully 100 miles per day, and
return from the Pole to the ship in less than five days.
Or take the improbable case of a circular wind blowing round the Pole,
as some have imagined. This would simply demand the working of the
paddle always northwards in going to the Pole, and always southwards in
returning. The resultant would be a spiral course winding inwards in
the first case, and outwards in the second. The northward or southward
progress would be just the same as in a calm if the wind were truly
concentric to the Pole. Some rough approximation to such currents may
exist, and might be dealt with on this principle.
Let us now consider the third danger, that of the darkness. The
seriousness of this may be inferred from the following description
of the journey of the Nassau balloon, published at the time: “It
seemed to the aeronauts as if they were cleaving their way through
an interminable mass of black marble in which they were imbedded,
and which, solid a few inches before them, seemed to soften as they
approached in order to admit them still further within its cold and
dusky enclosure. In this way they proceeded blindly, as it may well be
called, until about 3.30 A.M., when in the midst of the impenetrable
darkness and profound stillness an unusual explosion issued from the
machine above, followed by a violent rustling of the silk, and all the
signs which might be supposed to accompany the bursting of the balloon.
The car was violently shaken. A second and a third explosion followed
in quick succession. The danger seemed immediate, when suddenly the
balloon recovered her usual form and stillness. These alarming symptoms
seemed to have been produced by collapsing of the balloon under the
diminished temperature of the upper regions after sunset, and the
silk forming into folds under the netting. Now, when the guide rope
informed the voyagers that the balloon was too near the earth, ballast
was thrown out, and the balloon rising rapidly into a thinner air
experienced a diminution of pressure, and consequent expansion of the
gas.
“The cold during the night ranged from a few degrees below to the
freezing point. As morning advanced the rushing of waters was heard,
and so little were the aeronauts aware of the course which they had
been pursuing during the night, that they supposed themselves to have
been thrown back upon the shores of the German Ocean, or about to enter
the Baltic, whereas they were actually over the Rhine, not far from
Coblentz.”
All this blind drifting for hours, during which the balloon may be
carried out to sea, and opportunities of safe descent may be lost, is
averted in an Arctic balloon voyage, which would be made in the summer,
when the sun never sets. There need be no break in the survey of the
ground passed over, no difficulty in pricking upon a chart the course
taken and the present position at any moment. With an horizon of 50 to
100 miles’ radius the approach of such a danger as drifting to the open
ocean would be perceived in ample time for descent, and as a glance
at the map will show, this danger cannot occur until reaching the
latitudes of inhabited regions.
The Arctic aeronauts will have another great advantage over those who
ascend from any part of England. They can freely avail themselves
of Mr. Green’s simple but most important practical invention—the
drag-rope. This is a long and rather heavy rope trailing on the ground.
It performs two important functions. First, it checks the progress of
the balloon, causing it to move less rapidly than the air in which it
is immersed. The aeronaut thus gets a slight breeze equivalent to the
difference between the velocity of the wind and that of the balloon’s
progress. He may use this as a fulcrum to effect a modicum of steerage.
The second and still more important use of the drag-rope is the very
great economy of ballast it achieves. Suppose the rope to be 1000 feet
long, its weight equal to 1 lb. for every ten feet, and the balloon
to have an ascending power of 50 lbs. It is evident that under these
conditions the balloon will retain a constant elevation of 500 feet
above the ground below it, and that 500 feet of rope will trail upon
the ground. Thus, if a mountain is reached no ballast need be thrown
away in order to clear the summit, as the balloon will always lift its
500 feet of rope, and thus always rise with the up-slope and descend
with the down-slope of hill and dale. The full use of this simple and
valuable adjunct to aerial traveling is prevented in such a country as
ours by the damage it might do below, and the temptation it affords to
mischievous idiots near whom it may pass.
In the course of many conversations with various people on this
subject I have been surprised at the number of educated men and women
who have anticipated with something like a shudder the terrible cold to
which the poor aeronauts will be exposed.
This popular delusion which pictures the Arctic regions as the abode of
perpetual freezing, is so prevalent and general, that some explanation
is demanded.
The special characteristic of Arctic climate is a cold and long winter
and a short and _hot summer_. The winter is intensely cold simply
because the sun never shines, and the summer is very hot because the
sun is always above the horizon, and, unless hidden by clouds or mist,
is continually shining. The summer heat of Siberia is intense, and the
vegetable proportionately luxuriant. I have walked over a few thousand
miles in the sunny South, but never was more oppressed with the heat
than in walking up the Tromsdal to visit an encampment of Laplanders in
the summer of 1856.
On the 17th July I noted the temperature on board the steam packet
when we were about three degrees north of the Arctic circle. It stood
at 77° well shaded in a saloon under the deck; it was 92° in the “rōk
lugar,” a little smoking saloon built on deck; and 108° in the sun on
deck. This was out at sea, where the heat was less oppressive than on
shore. The summers of Arctic Norway are very variable on account of the
occasional prevalence of misty weather. The balloon would be above much
of the mist, and would probably enjoy a more equable temperature during
the twenty-four hours than in any part of the world where the sun sets
at night.
I am aware that the above is not in accordance with the experience of
the Arctic explorers who have summered in such places as Smith’s Sound.
I am now about to perpetrate something like a heresy by maintaining
that the summer climate there experienced by these explorers is quite
exceptional, is not due to the latitude, but to causes that have
hitherto escaped the notice of the explorers themselves and of physical
geographers generally. The following explanation will probably render
my view of this subject intelligible:
As already stated, the barrier fringe that has stopped the progress of
Arctic explorers is a broken mountainous shore down which is pouring
a multitude of glaciers into the sea. The ice of these glaciers is,
of course, fresh-water ice. Now, we know that when ice is mixed with
salt water we obtain what is called “a freezing mixture”—a reduction
of temperature far below the freezing point, due to the absorption of
heat by the liquefaction of the ice. Thus the heat of the continuously
shining summer sun _at this particular part of the Arctic region_ is
continuously absorbed by this powerful action, and a severity quite
exceptional is thereby produced. Every observant tourist who has
crossed an Alpine glacier on a hot summer day has felt the sudden
change of climate that he encounters on stepping from _terra firma_ on
to the ice, and in which he remains immersed as long as he is on the
glacier. How much greater must be this depression of temperature where
the glacier ice is broken up and is floating in sea-water, to produce a
vast area of freezing mixture, which would speedily bring the hottest
blasts from the Sahara down to many degrees below the freezing point.
A similar cause retards the _beginning_ of summer in Arctic Norway and
in Finland and Siberia. So long as the winter snow remains unmelted,
_i.e._, till about the middle or end of June, the air is kept cold,
all the solar heat being expended in the work of thawing. This work
finished, then the warming power of a non-setting sun becomes evident,
and the continuously accumulating heat of his rays displays its
remarkable effect on vegetable life, and everything capable of being
warmed. These peculiarities of Arctic climate must become exaggerated
as the Pole is approached, the winter cold still more intense, and
the accumulation of summer heat still greater. In the neighborhood
of the North Cape, where these contrasts astonish English visitors,
where inland summer traveling becomes intolerable on account of the
clouds of mosquitoes, the continuous sunshine only lasts from May 11
to August 1. At the North Pole the sun would visibly remain above the
horizon during about seven months—from the first week in March to the
first week in October (this includes the effect of refraction and the
prolonged summer of the northern hemisphere due to the eccentricity of
the earth’s orbit).
This continuance of sunshine, in spite of the moderate altitude of
the solar orb, may produce a very genial summer climate at the Pole.
I say “may,” because mere latitude is only one of the elements of
climate, especially in high latitudes. Very much depends upon surface
configuration and the distribution of land and water. The region in
which our Arctic expedition ships have been ice-bound combines all the
most unfavorable conditions of Arctic summer climate. It is extremely
improbable that those conditions are maintained all the way to the
Pole. We know the configuration of Arctic Europe and Arctic Asia,
that they are masses of land spreading out northward round the Arctic
circle and narrowing southward to angular terminations. The southward
configuration and northward outspreading of North America are the same,
but we cannot follow the northern portion to its boundary as we may
that of Europe and Asia, both of which terminate in an Arctic Ocean.
Greenland is remarkably like Scandinavia; Davis’s Strait, Baffin’s
Bay, and Smith’s Sound corresponding with the Baltic and the Gulf of
Bothnia. The deep fjords of Greenland, like those of Scandinavia, are
on its western side, and the present condition of Greenland corresponds
to that of Norway during the milder period of the last glacial epoch.
If the analogy is maintained a little further north than our explorers
have yet reached we must come upon a Polar sea, just as we come upon
the White Sea and the open Arctic Ocean if we simply travel between 400
and 500 miles due north from the head of the frozen Gulf of Bothnia.
Such a sea, if unencumbered with land ice, will supply the most
favorable conditions for a genial arctic summer, especially if it be
dotted with islands of moderate elevation, which the analogies of
the known surroundings render so very probable. Such islands may be
inhabited by people who cannot reach us on account of the barrier wall
that has hitherto prevented us from discovering them. Some have even
supposed that a Norwegian colony is there imprisoned. Certainly the
early colonists of Greenland have disappeared, and their disappearance
remains unexplained. They may have wandered northwards, mingled with
the Esquimaux, and have left descendants in this unknown world. If any
of Franklin’s crew crawled far enough they may still be with them,
unable to return.
In reference to these possibilities it should be noted that a barrier
fringe of mountainous land like that of Greenland and arctic America
would act as a condensing ground upon the warm air flowing from the
south, and would there accumulate the heavy snows and consequent
glaciers, just as our western hills take so much of the rain from the
vapor-laden winds of the Atlantic. The snowfall immediately round the
Pole would thus be moderated, and the summer begin so much earlier.
I have already referred to the physical resemblances of Baffin’s Bay,
Smith’s Sound, etc., to the Baltic, the Gulf of Bothnia, and Gulf of
Finland. These are frozen every winter, but the Arctic Ocean due north
of them is open all the winter, and every winter. The hardy Norse
fishermen are gathering their chief harvest of cod fish in the open
sea around and beyond the North Cape, Nordkyn, etc., at the very time
when the Russian fleet is hopelessly frozen up in the Gulf of Finland.
But how far due north of this frozen Baltic are these open-sea fishing
banks? More than 14 degrees—more than double the distance that lies
between the winter quarters of some of our ships in Smith’s Sound
and the Pole itself. This proves how greatly physical configuration
and oceanic communication may oppose the climatic influences of mere
latitude. If the analogy between Baffin’s Bay and the Baltic is
complete, a Polar sea will be found that is open in the summer at least.
On the other hand, it may be that ranges of mountains covered with
perpetual snow, and valleys piled up with huge glacial accumulations,
extend all the way to the Pole, and thus give to our globe an arctic
ice-cap like that displayed on the planet Mars. This, however, is very
improbable, for, if it were the case, we ought to find a circumpolar
ice-wall like that of the antarctic regions; the Arctic Ocean beyond
the North Cape should be crowded with icebergs instead of being
open and iceless all the year round. With such a configuration the
ice-wall should reach Spitzbergen and stretch across to Nova Zembla;
but, instead of this, we have there such an open stretch of arctic
water, that in the summer of 1876 Captain Kjelsen, of Tromsö, sailed
in a whaler to lat. 81° 30´ without sighting ice. He was then but 510
geographical miles from the Pole, with open sea right away to his north
horizon, and nobody can say how much farther.
These problems may all be solved by the proposed expedition. The
men are ready and willing; one volunteer has even promised 1000_l._
on condition that he shall be allowed to have a seat in one of the
balloons. All that is wanted are the necessary funds, and the amount
required is but a small fraction of what is annually expended at our
racecourses upon villainous concoctions of carbonic acid and methylated
cider bearing the name of “champagne.”
Arrangements are being made to start next May, but in the meantime many
preliminary experiments are required. One of these, concerning which I
have been boring Commander Cheyne and the committee, is a thorough and
practical trial of the staying properties of hydrogen gas when confined
in given silken or other fabrics saturated with given varnishes. We
are still ignorant on this fundamental point. We know something about
coal-gas, but little or nothing of the hydrogen, such as may be used
in the foregoing expedition. Its exosmosis, as proved by Graham,
depends upon its adhesion to the surface of the substance confining it.
Every gas has its own speciality in this respect, and a membrane that
confines a hydrocarbon like coal-gas may be very unsuitable for pure
hydrogen, or _vice versâ_. Hydrogen passes through hard steel, carbonic
oxide through red-hot iron plates, and so on with other gases. They
are guilty of most improbable proceedings in the matter of penetrating
apparently impenetrable substances.
The safety of the aeronauts and the success of the aerial exploration
primarily depends upon the length of time that the balloons can be kept
afloat in the air.
A sort of humanitarian cry has been raised against this expedition, on
the ground that unnaturally good people (of whom we now meet so many)
should not be guilty of aiding and abetting a scheme that may cause the
sacrifice of human life. These kind friends may be assured that, in
spite of their scruples, the attempt will be made by men who share none
of their fears, unless the preliminary experiments prove that a balloon
cannot be kept up long enough. Therefore the best way to save their
lives is to subscribe _at once_ for the preliminary expense of making
these trials, which will either discover means of traveling safely,
or demonstrate the impossibility of such ballooning altogether. Such
experiments will have considerable scientific value in themselves, and
may solve other problems besides those of arctic exploration.
Why not apply balloons to African exploration or the crossing of
Australia? The only reply to this is that we know too little of the
practical possibilities of such a method of traveling when thus
applied. Hitherto the balloon has only been a sensational toy. We
know well enough that it cannot be steered in a predetermined _line_,
_i.e._, from one _point_ to another given _point_, but this is quite a
different problem from sailing over a given _surface of considerable
area_. This can be done to a certain extent, but we want to know
definitely to what extent, and what are the limits of reliability and
safety. With this knowledge, and its application by the brave and
skillful men who are so eager to start, the solution of the Polar
mystery assumes a new and far more hopeful phase than it has ever
before presented.