AN ARCTIC EXPLORER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19254, 19 August 1924, Page 2

AN ARCTIC EXPLORER.

STEFANSSON IN WELLINGTON. , (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON. August 18. Dr Vilhjalmur .Stefansson is a passenger on board the Tahiti on his way from Australia to Canada, the country of his birth. He has completed a successful lecturing tour. Ho was to have lectured in New Zealand, but, cannot spare the time just now. Ho hopes, however, to return for that purpose in about a year’s time. It was in connection with his plans for the next trip, in which he desires to include a flying visit to (ho fiord country to see how the wapiti and moose presented by the late President Roosevelt are getting on. that he told a Tost interviewer on board the Tahiti that, one could hardly say of any country that it was uninhabitable. The reference was to the ragged fiords, and who shall say really, if the scheme for the utilisation of the vast water powers in that region matures, that hero will not bo another Norway? The mention of Norway brought up the question of the Norwegian whaling expeditions to the Antarctic in New' Zealand’s zone of the far south, and Dr Stefansson remarked with surprise that New Zealanders themselves had not thought it worth while to develop the whaling industry on those seas. While admitting the existence of a local whaling industry in Cook Strait, he said that if it paid an expedition to come all the way Horn Norway, it would surely pay to work from Now Zealnad. The visitor said that he had the same interest in the far south as he had in the far north, but ho was not prepared to sav that the Antarctic would never be inhabited. It was a mountainous country far different from the Canadian Arctic. Emphasising the healthiness of _ the “friendly Arctic,” Dr Stefansson mentioned iho case of the New Zealander, Diamond Jenness, who w T as his ethnologist %i the expedition of 1915, and of whom he spoke in the highest terms. Mr Jenness had contracted malaria in Now Guinea and was fa.r from well when ho wont noith with the Arctic expedition, but after a few months ho completely recovered his health and became as hard as nails and capable of great endurance. The secret of health in the Arctic, as of health in the desert, as the absence of noxious bacteria, which could not live either in a dry cold atmosphere or a dry hot one.’ Tlie visitor was asked as to tho prospects of the great oilfield discovered in the Mac kenzie River basin in the far north of Canada. Ho said that tho intention was to reserve tho field for the present, pending tho cheaper developments in Mesopotamia and Persia. Probably in about, 10 years’ time the opportunity would be ripe for developing the Mackenize field. As evidencing the northward trend of development, Dr Stefansson mentioned the historical fact that in tho negotiations with Franco which followed tho conquest of Canada in 1763, the British deemed Canada too cold, so that they wanted the little West Indian island of Guadeloupe instead. Tho French nreferred Guadeloupe, too. and it was only the representations of Benjamin franklin, on behalf of the British colonies of North America, that carried the day in favour of Canada, and even then the reasons were military and political, rather than economic, for all sides appeared to regard Canada as worthless except for fish and fur. To-day the real estate in Portage avenue, a single street in Winnipeg—a city only about 60 years of ago —was worth more than the whole of Guadeloupe. thus the climatic optimist won the day.