ARCTIC NIGHT A MYTH

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6546, 20 November 1924, Page 6

ARCTIC NIGHT A MYTH

AN EXPLORER SAYS THERE IS NO REAL DARKNESS A good many of our illusions about the Arctic regions have been dispelled in recent years by explorers who have penetrated into the uncharted seas. The awful silence of the North, the darkness of the long Arctic night, the absence of life and movement —they are all a myth. Mr Harold Noice, a young man who was apprenticed to Stefansson eight years ago, and who has since become an explorer on his own account, may be regarded as a reliable witness in these matters, states the Daily Chronicle. He has written a book, “With Stefansson in the Arctic,” which records the first impressions of a traveller in the Far North.

“It was now 6th December, and here on Banks Island we were 3000 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Now or never the perpetual darkness should appear, but we saw none of it. Every day there were at least five hours of light that was sufficient for travelling purposes. We did not see the sun itself but it tinted the sky a beautiful red and pink as it circled round from east to west just below the southern horizon. As to the continuous, deathlike silence, it really isn’t there. In summer, when navigating through the icefields, there is the bumping and crashing of the boat against the ice, and cakes of ice are constantly overturning with a splash that can 'be heard for miles. Then there is the noise of innumerable birds —loons, ducks, swans, gulls, cranes, all trying to talk at once.”

A summer scene in an island 77deg. north, just after a snowfall that has been melted by the sun, is thus described: “Between me an the shore lead —where a mother eider duck and her young brood swim anl cluck contentedly—stretches a soft green carpet of grass and moss. Wild flowers, like tiny sweet peas, blue and pink and purple, bloom along the brook close by. White and yellow butterflies flutter about, while beetles and ants tumble in and out of the crevices in the moss wall.” There is no lack of food for the hunting and killing. Caribou, bear, oribos, wolf, and seal, besides birds and their eggs. “Our new discovery,” says the author, “which has been called Meighen Island, is the nestingplace for the rare Hutchin’s goose, and they could be heard cackling and honking everywhere inland. We had eggs for breakfast, eggs for lunch, and eggs at suppertime, boiled eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, north lati&de 80deg., and fresh eggs to eat!”