The Rush to the Arctic

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12406, 27 March 1926, Page 11

The Rush to the Arctic

Vast Unexplored Regions to be Ifraversed

Raw Meat and Blubber as Diet

THE most interesting of tho 'several Arctio expeditions planned for this year are undoubtedly the German exploration of Harris Land; the Storkersen (Norwegian) effort to cross the Pole from the New Sierbia Islands to Cape Columbia: the non-stop American night from Point Barrow, in Alaska, to Spitsbergen; and the French effort to reach the Pohj by means of motor sledges. Both tho American and" the German expeditions will traverse the vast unexplored region which runs from some distance off the Alaskan coast right up to the Pole. It is called Harris Lund, although there is no definite proof as yet that it is land.

xiir: .:.t*g=>(K=>o< Lsx=>o<crx)< THE GERMAN ATTEMPT The Americans, however, are not likely to touch it unless their all-metal machine has to come down; but the Germans hope to explore it thoroughly and systematically. They will devote four years to the work, during which period they will be absolutely cut off from civilisation. Their leader, Dr. Krueger, lecturer in geology at the Technical High School, Darmstadt, has been spending several weeks with the Eskimos in Greenland in order to discover the best means of carrying through this tremendous task of exploration with the least possible impedimenta. With him was Dt. Klute. professor of geography at Giessen University, who will be second in command.

These two have decided that the only practical means of making the expedition a success is to live like the Eskimos.

For this purpose the entire complement will first proceed to Etah, the settlement on the north-west coast facing Ellesmere Land, and live there for twelve months, working, hunting, eating, and sleeping exactly as do the Eskimos. FIT AS THE SEALS Their diet will gradually change from that of civilisation to the raw meat, the blubber, and the frozen fish of the native. They will hunt and catch this food for themselves, and their clothing will be made from the hides of the animals they kill. They will live in igloos or ice-huts; their craft will be tho kayaks of the neighbourhood, and on land they will use the native, dog-drawn sledges. There is a most* valuable precedent to show that the German professors are wise in their determination to prepare themselves in this fashion. When the late Sir Ernest Shackleton and his comrades were left stranded on the ice floes of the Antarctic after the pressure had reduced their ship, the Endurance, to matchwood, they gradually became inured to the terrible conditions which followed, so that when • eventually they existed under a couple of unturned boats on Elephant Island, they withstood for months rigours which none other could have faced for a dav.

Writing on this subject, Captain Frank Hurley says: On the drifting ice we increased our powers of resistance tc cold, and accustomed our bodies to assimilate the blubber and seal penguin meat upon which we had largely subsisted. Had we not been thus toughened during those five weary months wo certainly could not have faced the appalling boat journey. No men, ship wrecked and sudden]v confronted with such a voyage amid tbe ice, could have withstood its hardships—they mud have perished. The human body’s adaptability is marvellous. We had grown almost as fit to endure the climate as the very seals themselves.” He tells us, however, that the blubbery diet made them • fat and lethargic, while the least exertion produced a profound muscular weariness, so the Germans must find some means of circumventing this drawback.