ICELAND IN NAME ONLY

Taranaki Daily News, 18 July 1929, Page 6

ICELAND IN NAME ONLY

SUMAIKH HEAT IX ARCTIC. According to Mr. Vithjalmur Stefansson, the noted Canadian explorer, Iceland is Iceland in name only, as the average January temperature is only one degree colder than in Milan (Canada). As a child in his home in North America he had often walked to school on days which were as cold as any he encountered in the Polar regions, writes a correspondent in the London Daily Telegraph, “On my first journey’ to the Arctic.” he continued, “I did not escape the summer heat. A hundred miles after I had passed the Arctic circle the temperature was over 80 degrees. The Eskimos were standing at the river edges perspiring, and wagging bandana handkerchiefs around their heads to keep the mosquitoes and flies away. “That was not a special show which the Lord had put there for my benefit. The Eskimos have been perspiring there for thousands of years.”

The snowfall at the North Pole was extremely light, and many times less than that in the north of Scotland, he continued. Our school text books still said that the vegetation of the Arctic was mosses and lichens, yet on the north coast of the northernmost island of the world could be found 120 species of flowers, including primroses, daisies, and bluebells, and 30 varieties of ferns.

“As to the belief that the Eskimos life in snow houses, out of 14,700 Eskimos in Greenland less than 300 have ever seen a' snow house. More than half have never heard of a snow house unless they have been to school. “One of the things that everybody wants to see is an Eskimo drinking oil. I once saw an American with his wife and daughter offer a boy a dollar to show them how he drank oil. The Eskimo drank a spoonful of something that looked like oil, made a wry face, and ran away with the dollar. That is the only Eskimo I ever saw drinking oil. “Why does everyone believe these things? We explorers are to blame. We have hot been trying very hard to undeceive the public. If the Arctic is a terrible place, then explorers are heroes, and it pays to be a hero. The greatest hero factory of the world has always been the Far North. “Now, -however, when they have found gold and petroleum and other things in the Arctic, ordinary men with wives and families are beginning to go there, and the American Government is even sending school teachers to Alaska. That is spoiling the explorers’ game.”