3,500 MILES IN THE ARCTIC

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6545, 18 November 1924, Page 7

3,500 MILES IN THE ARCTIC

EXPLORER’S LONG TRAMP Three thousand five hundred miles on foot across frozen land and frozen sea, the discovert of two new lands, meals of boiled sealskin and ox-hide, wading for miles through icy lakes of water above a solid sea-top, and finally to be “marooned” on an Arctic island and dramatically rescued—with the thermometer sometimes down to 50 below zero, and blizzards blowing —such are some of the features of Harold Noice’s book “With Stefansson in the Arctic.” N Noice, who was commander of the relief expedition to Wrangel Island last year, was nineteen when he went in the whaler that discovered the “lost” Stefansson on Banks Island in 1915—Stpfansson, the head of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, who, when his ship was crushed in the ice, calmly set off northward ho! with two companions across the frozen Beaufort Sea, intending to live on what he could find. SLEEPING IN SNOW HUTS The Avorld gave him up for dead, while he was in fact discovering Borden Island. Noice joined Stefansson, and this Book is the record of two years’ exploration with Stefansson hundreds Of miles north of the Arctic Circle, living mainly on seal and caribou, and sleeping in snow huts. By the time he was 21 Noice had done more than 2200 miles by sledge and dog team. He had been the first man to set foot on Meighen Island — away north of where Franklin and his crew perished. Stefansson took possession of this land in the name of the King on behalf of the Dominion of Canada. This was on Juno 15th, 1916. There Were three men on the trip. The return from Meighen Island took them across an area previously reported as land, but this supposed land they found “buried under some hundred fathoms of salt water.” They found themselves “out at sea on nearly impassable ice.’ ’ “Next year—l9l7—Noice went with Stefansson still further north across the frozen seaw-about level with the top of Greenland—and the little party 'barely escaped disaster. ENCASED. IN ICE FOR 70 YEARS a wonderful thing happened. They came to Dealy Island, off Melville Island, and saw a pole sticking up from a pyramid of rocks * Near it was the depot left in 1853 by Captain Kellett, of the Franklin Search Expedition. “Great oaken barrels, three tiers deep, stood cased in snow and ice. We opened some of the barrels. Some contained heavy woollen sweaters; others fine baass-buttoned, scarlet-col-oured, and satin-lined broadcloth peajackets; others had brightly-coloured, fancifully designed mittens. There were barrels of long leather sea-boots, felt shoes, and knitted underwear.”