Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/588

 Conquering the Poles by Airplane

Shall we be able to skim to the north pole by airplane? Read Admiral Peary's prediction

��"TN the very near future," says Rear- I Admiral Robert E. Peary in a new book, "Secretsof Polar Travel" (Cen- tury Company), "the biting air above, both the earth's poles will be stirred by whirring airplane propellers. The last three years of war abroad have advanced the development of the airplane to such a degree that the time is now very near when airplanes will have such extended radius of flight as will make the pre- liminary reconnaissance of the unknown areas in the north and south polar regions a matter of a few weeks instead of several years."

The idea that aviators can now prob- ably cover the ground to the poles in only two or three days' actual flight is fascinat- ing. The old way takes two or three years and is attended with many hard- ships. Admiral Peary tells many inter- esting features about the country which polar explorers will encounter.

Arctic and Antarctic Are Unlike

"North polar and south polar regions are very unlike. Few people appreciate the differences. The north pole is situated in an ocean some fifteen hundred miles in diameter, surrounded hy land. The south pole is on a continent twenly- Ijve hundred miles in <liameter surrounded l)y water. At the north pole I stood upon the frozen siirface of an ocean more than ttro miles in depth. At the south pole, Amundsen and Scott stoo<l upon the surface of a great snow plateau more than two milr.i ahorc xca level. The lands that surrounfl the north polar ocean have com- paratively abundant life. Musk-oxen, reindeer, polar bears, wolves, foxes, .\rctic hares, ermines, anrl lemmings, together witii insects and flowers are found within live hundre> ield without great difficulty to the airi)Ian<'."'

Greenland, Peary suggests, should be- long to the United States if it can be purchased. Like Alaska it is a valuable property intrinsically because of coal and mineral deposits. Also its bays and harbors are of strategic value. But the

��expression "cold as Greenland" is all too true. Probably the coldest regions in the world are atop of its mountains of ice far inland during the long Vvinter nights, when neither sunlight nor the tempering winds of the ocean reach the region.

Greenland Is Buried in Snow

"The interior of (ireenland," says Admiral Peary, "is so cold that it gets virtually no rain, and the snow does not have a chance to melt in the long summer day. So the snow has ac- cumulated century after century until it has filled the valleys, and not only leveled them with the tops of the qiountains, but the highest of these mountain-tops have been gradually buried hun- dreds and even thousands of feet deep in ice and snow. Today the interior of Greenland, with its fifteen hundred miles in length and some seven hundred miles in maximum width, rising from four thousand to nine thousand feet or more above sea-level, is simply an elevated and un- broken plateau of compacted snow.

"On this great frozen Sahara of the North the wind never ceases to blow. It invariably radiates from the center of the ice-cap outward, blowing perpendicularly to the nearest portion of the coast land, except when storms of unusually large proportions sweep across the country. So regular are the winds of these regions, and so closely do they follow the rvde of perpendicularity to the coast, that it is always easy to determine the direction of nearest land."

Over such country as this will the air- planes fly. In south polar regions much the same conditions will exist, except that aviators must fly at greater altitudes because a continent rises high beneath them. Many geographical facts about polar regions are as yet undetermined. Those last lands unreached by man may be about to yield their secrets.

What the lands may contain is problem- atical. New races of men, perhaps, new and valuable hunting-grounds for fur- bearing animals, possibly, new coal de- posits, new ore supplies; no one is sure just what until explorations are made. Alaska was considered a barren region until its vast mineral and other resources were discovered. Similarly we may be mistaken in our concept of north-polar regions and of the south-polar continent. If Rear-Admiral Peary's ideas take shape airplanes will find out.

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