PIG FARM IN ARCTIC

Taranaki Daily News, 31 October 1935, Page 5

PIG FARM IN ARCTIC

DIXON ISLAND COALING STATION. Russia has just opened a new Arctic port and coaling station on Dixon Island, in the Kara Sea, midway between Nova Zembla and the estuaries of the Ob and Yenisei Rivers, says the Daily Telegraph. Thirty thousand tons of coal will be concentrated there for Soviet ships on the all-Arctic route from the White Sea through the Behring Straits to Vladivostok. The steamer Cheluskin, built specially as an Arctic liner, failed to do the round trip in 1933, and was Jost last year in the Behring pack ice. But the Russians have not abandoned this scheme for a regular all-Russian route to the Far East not threatened by Germans or Japanese. About 150 engineers and skilled workers now winter regularly on Dixon Island, which has a powerful electric plant and wireless broadcasting and wireless beam stations. It is connected with Lonely and White Islands, and with Cape Sterligoff by wireless telephone. Arctic dog teams are kept and bred there for Russian expeditions, and this year a pig farm has been opened—the first in the history of the Arctic. _ Dixon is becoming a sealing station of real importance, and is the port of call for ships bringing lumber, furs, and so on from the Soviet’s other new Arctie port, Igarka, on the Yenisei River.