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National Geographic : 1922 Aug
Contents
THE ARCTIC AS AN AIR ROUTE OF THE FUTURE If you get into trouble, you would rather that it happened in daylight than in dark ness. In stories of sea tragedies, the stop page of the engines, the failure of the light plants, and the plunging of the whole ship into inky darkness are often the most ter rifying features. Just when a crisis brings the need of swift and pertinent action, every effort is thwarted because no man can see what to do or what others are doing. Under the perpetual sun of the polar summer, we shall always be free from at least this attribute of southern tragedy. ICE-FLOES AS LIFE-RAFTS On the polar route, although the sur face of the sea may not be more than half covered by substantial cakes of ice, there would be a reasonable certainty of landing on one of them. Were there a forced landing in open water, it would presumably not be more than a few miles from the nearest ice-floe, which could be reached by such life-rafts or other devices as a dirigible would naturally carry on a transatlantic voyage in southern latitudes. Thus, the presence of stable ice-floes in the polar ocean is the fourth great advan tage of this route. The temperature on the ice-floes in summer is usually warm enough for com fort, when one is dressed in spring or fall (medium) clothing; occasionally it is un comfortably warm. This latter fact will not seem at all surprising to mountaineers who have suffered from the summer sun on the slopes of snow-clad mountains. It may be said that it would not be any fun to be forced to land on an ice cake; but it would be a great deal more fun than having to land among tumbling and breaking seas in the mid-Atlantic. One effect of scattered floes is that even in a gale there are no heavy seas. Indeed, if the ice is abundant, no swell is noticeable in the heaviest gale, and the waves on the patches of open water are onlysuchasonemayfindonapondora small lake. If S. O. S. calls containing, as they always do, position as to latitude and longitude are sent out while the dirigible or plane is descending to the ice or imme diately after the landing, the party would have days or weeks, and even months, for opportunities of rescue. Some of the enthusiastic advocates of air travel say that we shall eventually have in mid-Atlantic huge rafts - floating islands, in effect-that will be rescue sta tions for aircraft in distress. While that device may not be impractical, it will at least be difficult and expensive. On.the polar route, Nature has already provided a sprinkling of rafts far greater in number and far more stable than any such artificial rafts can ever be. If not a fifth great advantage, at least a contributory merit of the polar route will be "The Midnight Sun" and kindred marvels, which can be exploited from the tourist point of view by the air liners of the future no less than they are by the tourist boats of today. The transpolar route will become more important decade by decade. In Siberia we have as yet only one great trunk rail way. It does, however, tap and make ac cessible many of the mighty rivers that flow north, and there are great steamers on these rivers that make the Arctic locally accessible. The Trans-Siberian Railway runs in large part through the wheat belt of Asia, and the potential cereal belt extends far north of it. We shall, accordingly, have eventually the development of other great east and west railways and of many spurs running north and south. Tomsk, Ya kutsk, Irkutsk, and the rest of the cities we have heard of, and many of which we have never heard, will be growing into Chicagos and Winnipegs and Calgarys. CENTERS OF POPULATION WILL MOVE NORTHWARD The centers of civilized population in Siberia and in Canada alike will be con tinually moving north, and there will be more and more occasion for the use of the polar route. To people little acquainted with the Arctic, as most of us are, and misin formed, as nearly all of us are, there ap pear to be many arguments against the polar route. Few of these rest on any reality. Indeed, where we imagine posi tive difficulties, there may be positive ad vantages. Take, for instance, the matter of summer temperature. 211
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