THE VANISHING CONTINENT

Otago Witness, Issue 3764, 4 May 1926, Page 10

THE VANISHING CONTINENT

NORTH POLE POSSIBILITIES.

By

PAUL TYNER,

in Chambers’s

Journal.

Readers of an older generation will remember the sensation created about fifty years ago by tile appearance in the Atlantic Aiontnly of wuat later came to be regarded a a fanciful tale, but what at tne time was taaen for a cfironcle of Arctic much as tile ® a .'- xcr Story of Edgar Allan Poe, first pllonsned in the Mew. York Sun, and later known as “The Moon Hoax,” was mistaken for an actual report of a journey to tne moon. The story m the Atlantic was called “Dims s Hole, ' and purported to be tne log of a certain Captain Sio»«, sKipper of a lankee whaler driven out of tier course hy head winds, and landing at the Morth Poie, where he found an immense depression in the earth's surface like a great crater. Travelling by a gentle descent into the interior of the earth, he found himself m a country with an ideal climate and of great beauty aiul fertility. Most remarkable of all, he discovered that the inhabitants of this land were possessed of a civilisation and culture in many respects far beyond that attained m the world known to us ,* and he cited traditions to the effect that they were the descendants of the people of the lost continent of Atlantis. This old sailer’s yarn that stirred our grandfathers is revived by certain speculations in which modern geographers are indulging concerning possible discoveries tiiat may be made by aeroplane expeditions in the polar regions. In fact, the belief seems to persist among Arctic explorers that somewhere in the region of the North Pole, to the west or the northwest of Axel Heiberg Land, there lies an island of more than a million square miles in area. Relatively speaking, this land is as yet unkriv u as was the continent o! America t-o Columbus when he set sail from Spain in quest of a western passage to the Indies. Its discovery may bring as big surprises to the denizens of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America in our day, as the surprises which the Spanish Conquistadores came upon in the discovery of the Mexico of the Aztecs, and the Peru of the Incas. This land may prove to be the home of a people unknown to the ethnologists, and of flora and fauna as yet uncatalogued. Or it may te a dreary waste of ice and snow, with no inhabitants but polar bears and seals. One of the avowed objects of Amundsen’s gallant dash to the north was a firm determination to settle definitely the vexed question as to whether or not there is land at the Pole. Evidence on the subject is largely inferential. On the assumption that this large area of land does really exist, it had been christened “Crocker Land,” a name given to it by Peary when he first sighted what he regarded as its giant peaks and headlands in 1906. Donald MacMillan went over the route traversed by Peary, and he also sighted “peaks and headlands,” but he pursued them they vanished. So “('rocker Land” was declared to he a myth, and erased from the map. Vet, strange to say, when MacMillan was again in the Arctic in 1914, both he and his second-in-coijimand again saw the mystic peaks on the horizon. Using notes of Peary’s observations, MacMillan was led to locate this elusive region as approximately 120 miles from Cape Columbia on the coast of Grant Land. He penetrated to a point thirty miles beyond this, finding nothing but broken ice. He would have pushed on, but his party was already worn out by hardship, and their dogs could go no further. Some time later, MacMillan visited this region anew, steering the Santa Maria to the spot whence Pearv had sighted the isle of mystery, and, once more, the peaks and headlands frowned through the Arctic haze. Then a gale blew up, and, as before, this wraith of a lest land vanished from sight. i>ut on this expedition MacMillan found other indications of the existence of an enormous tract of solid earth. There were, among other things, certain variations in the tides which no other hypothesis could explain. So, under the spell of the polar lure, Captain MacMillan returned once more to the Arctic in s. rch of the vanishing continent. This time he was confident of success in solving the mystery, tor he was much better equipped than on any earlier expedition, having with him two hydroplanes of a new type, each capable of ten hours’ continuous flight, and having a range of 1000 miles. These hydroplanes were also equipped with runners for transit across tlie ice, should they be compelled for any reason to descend. His pilots were experienced naval aviators, and it was planned to establish a dependable airbase on Axel Heiberg Land, with which the hydroplanes and MacMillan’s shinbase, 200 miles to the south-east, would be in constant touch by wireless. Uiere is reason to believe that certain atmospheric conditions, prevailing during most of the summer season, are analogous to the desert conditions that give rise to mirages in the Sahara. Even old travellers across the wastes are often misled into believing these strangely vivid pictures of distant islands with waving palmtrees and trickling fountains to be veritable oases. The psychological factor must also be taken into account. Men often actually ?ee the thing they intensely desire to see, or at least create in the mind’s eye evanescent cloud-forms of the things they have mentally imaged. Friends of the late Dr Cook, who knew him well, and who are inclined to be more charitable perhaps than the rest of the world in their judgment of that explorer, insist that he died in the firm belief that he had discovered the North Pole, and that the vivid accounts of hit

experience, which later came to be set down as fairy stories, were at least honest hallucinations produced by his suffering and hardships, and due to this peculiar e*-ect on men s minds of the far northern atmosphere. Between Amundsen and MacMillan, however, it cannot now be long before the world will have the satisfaction of a final determination of the vexed question as to whether or not “Crocker Land” is merely a spectral illusion of the Arctic wastes or another actual island continent like Australia. Peary planted the American flag in the ice £ fße Ographic pole, s ,y with some idea that *«£ W£s tiius adding to the territory already under the Stars and Stripes. But if under the ice, and for any considerable distance in the neighbourhood of the North Pole, the Arctic Ocean flows, ami the idea of a vast *x)lar continent proves pure illusion, his action can have no politioa] significance. In these days, oceans are still international highways, and cannot he annexed by any one nation as its exclusive domain. When Balboa, “silent upon a peak in Darien,” gazed upon the waters of the Pacific “with a wild surmise,” he took possession cf that ocean with its coasts and islands in the name of their most Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile. Blit the “Freedom of the Seas” was not a familiar commonplace of International Law in those days. In fact, there wasn’t anv international law. Should there, on the other hand, prove to be land at the North Pole, the question as to whether it shall belong to the United States may become a subject of very practical discussion. The question of territorial jurisdiction over the as yet hypothetical land at the Worth Pole, indeed, seems to have arisen officially, and threatens to become a “question” between the Governments of Canada and the United States. Only a few months ago the Dominion Parliament at Ottawa adopted an amendment to the North-West Territories Act, under ' ich all foreigners entering the hinterland will b£ required to take out Dominion licences. Mr Stewart, the Canadian Minister of the Interior, in moving the amendment, said Canada wished to assert her ownership over the \'.iole northern archipelago, because explorers like Amundsen and MacMillan “might discover land in the northern por‘■lon of Canada,” and a question of sovereignty would arise, as Captain MacMillan had, in fact, announced his intention cf planting the Stars and Stripes on any land he might discover at the Pole. Canada claimed, the Minister added, all land right up to the North Pole and including it, whether it proved to be part of the continent of North America or separate islands. Washington despatches then averred that the American Government intended to resist this claim and to assert its own sovereignty anv newly-discovered land iri the Arctic circle that may be taken possession of in the name of the great republic by an American citizen. The threatened dispute may give an entirely T :-w turn to the more or less apocryphal “Annexationist Agitation” of which we have been hearing from time to time. Early in October of 1924 reports were received from Spitsbergen of the arrival at Svalbard of the British Arctic Expedi-' tion, which left Liverpool in June for the bar North' under Commander Frank Worsley, one of the veterans who accom panied Captain Scott and Sir Ernest dhackleton to the Antarctic. With him was Mr Grettir Algarsson, the Canadian explorer. One of the objectives of the expedition was to ascertain, if possible, the true position of Gillisland, another piece of elusive land, which has puzzled geographers for centuries. During a desperate attempt to penetrate the ice-pack in which their ship, The sland, was caught on the way back from branz Josef Land, Commander Worsley sighted, as he thought, in latitude 80 degrees 30 minutes north, the phantom land first reported more than 200 years ago But this mystery of the Far North i»/ S y et *° for Commander Worsley states, “The solid pack and the sea which was freezing around the ship however, forced us to retreat without hnally settling the problem ; but on three occasions the refraction mirrored the shadowy shape of land in that direction.” During the three months oi adventurous voyaging in the Arctic, the expedition vessel, when running before a gale through Hinlopen Straits, sailed a distance of thirty miles over what was marked as dry land on the Admiralty chart. Soundings to the east of the icepack, sixty miles farther north, proved the existence of an unbroken submarine plateau at a depth of about 120 fathoms between Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land. Inese two experiences would suggest a probable solution of the great mysterv. A considerable body of land, the survey of which was authentic enough a few years ago to be placed on official charts by the British Admiralty, has been submerged, disappearing from the surface without trace. Thereafter soundings show a submarine plateau of considerable dimensions 120 fathoms below the surface. There are also reports from Norway of recent and marked changes m the coast of that country, and of the submergence of other islands. These t ’ngs are regarded in certain quarters as evidence of a shifting of the earth’s poles very similar to that which the geologisKknows must have taken place in a past age. as shown by glacial deposits and formations in the American notthwest and other regions. There are, indeed, investigators who believe that what are now equatorial regions of the earth were at one time the P'lar regions, and what are now the Poles were on the Equator; it is even suggested that the “Garden of Eden” was situated at or near the present North Pole. May it not be that the persistent •legends of the cataclysmal submergence of the continent of Atlantis will be shown to have scientific foundation? And is there not a probability of further tremen-

dous changes in the conformation of our planet? As Herodotus puts it, “Change is the order of the world’s progression. Where now are mountains and valleys the sea flowed in vast expanse; and where the ocean is now there were once untains and valleys and populous cities and mighty empires.” It is to be noted that although Commander Worsley did not succeed in adding Gillisland to the British Empire, he planted the British flag o£ rtCTthbrool? Island, after J <ttY trjg s Q rV eved the bay ***iUGr Cupe Barents, naming it Cohen Bay, “after one of the principal supporters Of the expedition.” Tne name “Wandek Island”—also in honour of a generous subscriber to the expedition—was given to an island lying south of Cutger’s Reef. It may be assumed that the British flag was also hoisted on this island, although the incident is net mentioned in the brief first report. Both Amundsen and MacMillan have now established bases for the departure of air-craft parties to pass acyosg the Pole to Alaska during thfc pVesfint spring.