By JAMES CHURCH ALVORD FROM his brood, from his nestes which tassel out the crest Of blue Virginia mountains. Swinging on tilted wings He glides along the glitter of the air, A white head silvered like an evening star, a glare Of greedy beak. Remorseless, noiseless, he hangs against the sun, Then all the little creatures flock and whimper round their dams. Shake braggart horns up to the sky Or down across the lambs. The woodlands hush their chatter and their song. The robins creep into thick cedars where along The branches they are lost in shadows and hunched with waxwings, jays, And cardinals, a shivering throng. The brown hare huddles on the brown floor of the fallen leaves, His round eyes tremulous with tears. The squirrel breathes Even the gaunt rattler on his ledge of clay, Snoozing away the sultry morning, flats down his dumpy body in dismay, Until his striped and mottled ugliness fades into rock-tints THE Sledge-Traveling By ROBERT E. PEARY HE essence of successful arctic exploration may be stated as the transformation of the minimum amount of food into the maximum number of miles. In the struggle for the north pole it means such refinement of methods and equipment as will enable the last stage of the journey over the frozen surface of the polar ocean to be made with the provisions that can be carried upon the sledges when starting from the most northern land. The sharp difference and antithesis between the north-pole and the south-pole struggles must be borne clearly in mind. In the latter the fixed character of the surface of the antarctic continent permits the establishment of depots en route as often as may be desired, while in the former the movement of the sea ice renders impossible the establishment of depots, and compels the carrying of everything on the sledges continuously. There are two distinct kinds of sledgetraveling in polar regions, sledging on the surface of the polar sea, and sledging over the inland ice of Greenland and the interior of the antarctic continent, each differing widely from the other. The former has been practised for a hundred years. The latter is of much later origin, and my first experience and training in arctic sledging was in this field. My knowledge of conditions to be encountered in overland sledging was gained on numerous short trips in Greenland and two long journeys of twelve hundred miles each across northern Greenland's ice-cap-the "inland ice." To the average reader the expression "inland ice" suggests a surface of ice. This idea is erroneous. Greenland is a great glacial country, with an area of 740,000 or 750,000 square miles, fully four fifths of which are covered by the inland ice, the only portion of it that could be called land being a ribbon of mountains, valleys, and deep fiords along the coast. This narrow strip of land is for the most part from five to twenty-five miles wide, but there are several places where it is sixty or eighty. The interior of Greenland, or the inland ice, is so cold that it gets virtually no rain, and the snow does not have a chance to melt in the long sunlit day. So the snow has accumulated century after century until it has filled the valleys, and not only leveled them with the tops of the mountains, but the highest of these mountain-tops have been gradually buried hundreds and even thousands of feet in ice and snow. To-day the interior of Greenland, with its fifteen hundred miles in length and its seven hundred miles in maximum width, rising from four thousand to nine thousand feet or more above sea-level, is simply an elevated and unbroken plateau of compacted snow. On this great frozen Sahara of the North the wind never ceases to blow. It invariably radiates from the center of the ice-cap outward, blowing perpendicularly to the nearest portion of the coast land, except when storms of unusually large proportions sweep across the country. Such a regular thing are the winds of these regions, and so closely do they follow the rule of perpendicularity to the coast, that it is always easy to determine the direction of nearest land. A sudden change in the wind indicates the presence of large fiords, and the crossing of a divide can be detected by the area of calm or by the changeable winds which prevail there, which are followed by winds blowing from the opposite direction. Sweeping along the most direct path to THE ROOSEVELT the coast and with more or less velocity, the wind always carries with it a flying mass of snow, which, on reaching the mountains, settles in the valleys or goes swirling over the cliffs into the sea. When there is only a light breeze the snow is very fine, and flies only a few feet in the air; but the stronger the wind, the coarser the whirling snow becomes, and the greater the depth of its current. In blizzards on this desert of snow this drift surpasses in fury the sand-storms of the Sahara, the snow rising in the air hundreds of feet in hissing, roaring, blinding torrents which make it almost impossible for one to breathe, and which bury anything stationary in a short time. It penetrates like water, and on stepping into the drift, its surface is very nearly as tangible and sharply defined as that of a pool of water of like depth. The continuous transportation of vast quantities of snow by the wind is a most important factor in retarding the increase in the depth of the ice-cap, and in my opinion is a factor equaling possibly the effects of evaporation, melting, and glacial precipitation combined. Only investigations carried on for a period of years can definitely determine whether this snow deposit is increasing or decreasing as the years pass. In the interior of this "great ice," as in the center of the antarctic continent, hundreds of miles from the oceans, elevated a mile or two into the During the winter months the whole surface of the inland ice is covered with a layer of fine, dry snow. The noonday sun of the late spring causes the snow along the edge of the ice to become soft, and the freezing of this at night makes a thin crust. As this layer of crust creeps into the interior with the approach of summer, the snow on the edge of the icecap turns to slush and finally melts, forming pools and streams which eat into the ice, opening up old crevasses and new ones as well. This condition likewise extends into the interior in the wake of the crust, and the summer heat and eroding streams working on the border of the cap make it so rough as to be in places quite impassable. In traveling into the interior the mountains along the coast soon disappear under the landward convexity of the ice-cap, and the surface, which near the coast is composed of many hummocks, gradually changes into long, flat swells, which in turn merge into a gently rising plain and finally into a flat surface. In my journey across the ice-cap of northern Greenland in 1891 I was continually turned from my course on the upward march by the numerous crevasses and steep slopes which occur along the edge of the inland ice. These crevasses sometimes cover a tract several miles wide, and are usually marked by peculiar icemounds several feet in height. Covered with a light crust, the crevasses are difficult to detect, and one must be constantly on the alert to avoid getting into OVER A PRESSURE RIDGE them. At times it is necessary to reconnoiter for hours before safe snow-bridges across these treacherous places can be found, and on several occasions I have nearly lost all our provisions and dogs when the sledges have broken through. Determined to avoid such conditions on the downward trip, I traveled well inland. Here, however, deep, soft snow makes sledge-traveling difficult; so on my second journey across Greenland in 1895 I chose an intermediate route, hoping to avoid crevasses and slopes and slippery ice as well as soft going. This route proved to be by far the best one, the snow being much firmer, and the distance a few miles. less than by either of the other two routes. In addition to the wind, there is another peculiarity of the inland ice which adds to the difficulties to be encountered in this work. That is the extreme intensity of the continuous sunlight, which can be realized only by those who have experienced it. This continuous brilliancy is intensified a hundred fold by the reflection from endless fields of glistening, sparkling snow, unrelieved by a single object. The strongest eyes can stand such a blinding glare only a few hours without protection. We always wore heavy smoked glasses, and when in camp often found it impossible to sleep without still further protecting our eyes by tying a narrow band of fur about them to ex clude the light. Only when a storm is brewing does this intense light become subdued. At such times, however, the sky and snow take on a peculiar gray, opaque light which is even more trying than the sunlight. To direct a course across unbroken fields of snow with absolutely nothing to guide or fix the eye is a task which requires experience. To force a team of dogs towing a heavy |