Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/345

Rh POLAR REGIONS 329 general distribution, which are found far north in all the arctic areas, arc three species of Ranunculus, a poppy (Pajmver nudicaulc}; the Drabct alpina and five other species, the 11 my a alpina, lady s- smock (Cardamine pratensis), eight species of saxifrage, two of Potcntilla, two of Arenaria, the moss campion (Silene acaulis), the dandelion, a Stdlaria, the Dryas odopctala, Cerastium alpinum, Epilobium latifuliiim, crowberry, dwarf willow, and rushes and grasses of the genera Juncus, Carex, and Poa. The most ubiquitous of all is the Saxifraga oppositifolia, which is considered the com monest and most arctic of the flowering plants. All the arctic seas team with the lower forms of animal life. The invertebrate animals have been enumerated and reported upon in full detail by the naturalists to whom the collections of the various expeditions have been entrusted. The fishes, birds, and mammals of the north polar region have also been studied and carefully described within the discovered areas, though the subject is far from having been exhausted. The human race is found to exist along the whole fringe of European, Asiatic, and American coast-line within the Arctic Circle, and to have spread up the shores of Boothia, and up both sides of Davis Strait and Baffin s Bay. Living mainly on sea animals, the inhabitants of the polar regions rarely wander from the coast. Spitzbergen, Franz-Josef Land, and Nova Zembla are uninhabited, except that occasional summer visits are made to the southern shores of the latter group of islands. The Laps are the denizens of the European polar regions, and the Samoyeds succeed them along the shores of the Kara Sea and on the Yalmal peninsula. These Laps and Samoyeds possess herds of reindeer, and during the winter they withdraw from the coast. In Siberia there was once a coast population, but it has retired into the interior or died out, and inhabitants arc not met with until the encampments of the Tchuktches are reached, from the Kolyma to Behring Strait. A very complete account of this interesting people has been given by- Baron Nordenskib ld in his narrative of the voyage of the &quot;Vega.&quot; The Eskimo race extends over the whole of Arctic America and along the Greenland coasts, the warlike Indian tribes preventing them from retreating inland, and forcing them to find a precarious living or starve on the shores of the polar sea. Differing in size and physical development, the individuals of the different tribes all have flat broad faces, black coarse hair, high cheek bones, low foreheads, short fiat noses, and narrow eyes sloping upwards from the nose. Their hands and feet are small. Vast tracts of country, including the archipelago to the north of America, are not inhabited, yet there are traces of Eskimo encampments along the whole line of coast from Banks Island to Baffin s Bay. This may have been the route by which Greenland was first peopled, and it suggests a continuation of land along the same parallel, from Banks Island to the Siberian coast. Yet it may be that the wanderers found their way northwards from America by Prince of Wales Strait. The most remarkable tribe is that named Arctic Highlanders by Sir John Ross in 1818, and they are the most northern people in the world. Their stations range along the Greenland coast from 76 to 79 N., a deeply indented coast-line of gigantic cliff s broken jy deep bays, with numerous rocks and islands. They have no canoes, but dogs and good sledges, and they attack the walrus at the edge of the ice with spears. They are separated from the Eskimo of Greenland farther south by the glaciers of Melville Bay. In Danish Greenland the original Eskimo were probably intermixed in blood with the old Norse settlers, and since the -time of Hans Egede the number of half-breeds has increased. In 1855 the half-breeds were calculated at 30 per cent, of the inhabitants of Greenland, and the two classes have since blended almost imperceptibly, so that there arc now no full-blooded Eskimo. The population of Danish Greenland in 1870 was 9588, distributed among 176 winter stations. There are a few scattered families on the east coast of Greenland. SOUTH POLAR REGION. The soutli polar region, unlike the northern region, is almost covered by the ocean, the only extensive land being far to the south. It was of course entirely unknown to the ancients and to the early navigators of modern Europe, although a theory prevailed among geographers that a great continent existed round the south pole, the &quot;Terra Australis Incognita.&quot; Lope Garcia de Castro, the governor of Peru, sent his nephew Alvaro Mendafia in search of it, who sailed from Callao in 1567. Another expedition under Pedro Fernandez de Quiros left Callao in 1605, and discovered land in April 1606, which he called Australia del Espiritu Santo, now known to be one of the New Hebrides group. These were the first regular expedi tions in search of the supposed southern continent. The first ship that ever approached the Antarctic Circle was one of a fleet which sailed from Rotterdam under the command of Jacob Mahu as admiral in June 1598. She was called the &quot;Good News,&quot; a yacht of 150 tons, with Dirk Gerritz as her captain. She was separated from the rest of the fleet in Magellan s Strait in 1599, and was carried by tempestuous weather far to the south, discover ing high land in 64 S. This appears to have been the land afterwards named the South Shetlands. Gerritz and his crew were eventually captured by the Spaniards at Valparaiso. In 1671 La Roche discovered South Georgia, a solitary island in the South Atlantic, but north even of the latitude of Cape Horn. Where so little is known, and where there is so little land, the discoveries within a few hundred miles of the Antarctic Circle come to be spoken of as south polar. In this category is Kerguelen Island in 48 41 S., as it is at least a good base whence south polar discovery may start, though its latitude in the southern is almost the same as England in the northern hemisphere, on a meridian nearly half way between the Cape and Australia. Its discovery is due to the gallant but unfortunate Frenchman whose name it bears, Yves J. Kerguelen. He sighted it on January 17, 1772, on the same day that his countryman Marion discovered the island named after himself, on a meridian nearer the Cape. Captain Cook, in his third voyege, visited Kerguelen Island, and Robert Rhodes in 1799 mapped a considerable portion of its coast. The Sandwich group, south-east of South Georgia, was discovered in 1762. Captain Cook in January 1773 sailed southwards from the Cape of Good Hope in the &quot; Resolution &quot; with the &quot;Adventure&quot; in company, and, after passing much ice, crossed the Antarctic Circle on the 17th, in longitude 39 35 E. In the same afternoon they sighted thirty-eight icebergs to the southward besides much loose ice ; and in 67 15 their progress was stopped. Cook did not think it prudent to persevere in getting farther south, and bore up for New Zealand, In December 1773 another attempt was made to discover the supposed southern continent, by steering southwards from New Zealand. On the 20th Cook again crossed the Antarctic Circle in 147 46 W., and came amongst a cluster of very large icebergs with loose ice in 67 5 S. He got clear of them and after standing farther east he reached a latitude of 69 45 S. in 108 5 W., and still shaping a southerly course he reached 70 23 S. on January 29, 1774. Next day he came to icebergs forming an impenetrable barrier. He counted ninety-seven, which looked like a range of moun tains, with closely packed ice round them. Cook s farthest point was in 71 15 S. on the meridian of 106 54 W. Captain Cook discovered islands in 53 to 54 30 S. in January 1775, which he named Sandwich, Willis, Pickersgill, and Georgia Isles, in about 32 W. In 27 45 W. he reached land which he named the Southern Thule, because it was the most southern land that had ever yet been discovered. It is in 59 13 S. In the South Atlantic ice was met with as far north as 51. In this second voyage Captain Cook made the circuit of the southern ocean in a high latitude, twice crossing the Antarctic Circle. He established the fact that, if there was any extensive south polar land, it must be south of the parallels along which he sailed. The Russian expedi tion under Bellingshausen in 1820 also sailed over a great many degrees of longitude in a high latitude, but only discovered two islets, Petra and Alexander. These islands were farther soutli than any land then known. Auckland Island was discovered by Captain Bristow in 1806, and Campbell Island by Hazleburgh in 1810, both south of New Zealand, but far to the north of the Antarc tic Circle. In 1818 Mr William Smith of Blyth redis covered the land known as South Shetland. His work XIX. 42