CONCLUSION
Atthe request of friends I have turned away briefly from other work to take up the threads of the past and write this book.
That other work which has been demanding my attention has a very pronounced bearing on polar exploration, and in fact upon all exploration.
Five years ago at the annual dinner of the Explorers’ Club I ventured the prophecy that in a few years the polar regions would be reconnoitered and explored through the air. The last three years of warfare abroad have forced the development of the aeroplane to such a degree that the time is now very near when aeroplanes will have such extended radius of certain flight as will make the preliminary reconnaissance of the unknown areas in the north and south polar regions a matter of a few weeks instead of several years.
The sheltered inlets of Bowdoin and McCormick Bays in Whale Sound, Greenland, are readily accessible every summer to a ship like theRooseveltand an ice master like Bartlett. In these inlets during August there are days and days of brilliant, calm, warm weather, with temperature above the freezing point, and it is continuousdaylight throughout the entire twenty-four hours all through the month.
Four hundred miles due north—four hours’ aeroplane flight—is Cape Columbia, the most northerly point of the North American world segment, and less than 500 miles from the pole.
A squadron of aeroplanes starting from Bowdoin or McCormick Bays would reach Cape Columbia in a few hours with the whole panorama of Grant Land and the American gateway to the pole passing beneath, could alight on the firm level “glacial fringe” at Cape Columbia, unload their supplies and gasoline, and the supporting machines be back at their base in less than a day.
From Cape Columbia it is less than 1400 miles in a straight line directly across and over the pole to Cape Chelyuskin on the Siberian Coast, the most northern point of Eurasia. To Wrangel Island across Crocker Land and the entirely unexplored region between the pole and Bering Strait it is about 1500 miles.
From Cape Columbia to Spitzbergen, it is 900 miles, to Franz Josef Land less than 1000 miles, and to Point Barrow about 1400 miles.
The present average speed of aeroplanes is about 100 miles per hour. By the time this meets the reader’s eye continuous flights of 1000 miles or more will be a matter of record. In the near future, continuous flights of 2000 miles will be made.
A squadron of aeroplanes with base at Cape Columbia, flying in pairs and making simultaneous trips could with good fortune make the reconnaissance indicated above in two weeks, then return to Bowdoin or McCormick Bays and take their ship home.
From the base in Bowdoin or McCormick Bays a week of successive flights northeast, east and southeast, would clear up all the interior features of the great island continent of Greenland.
In the South Polar regions with a base at McMurdo Sound in Ross Sea, south of New Zealand,—the favorite base of Scott and Shackleton,—a flight of 1800 miles across and over the South Pole would reach the known portion of Weddel Sea on the opposite side, and flights of 2000 miles would command the entire Antarctic continent.
In the very near future the biting air above both poles will be stirred by whirring aeroplane propellers, and when that time comes the inner polar regions will quickly yield their last secrets.
Looking forward to this certain materialization, it is a source of satisfaction that the two last great physical adventures, the winning of the North Pole and the South Pole,—the feats which clinched and made complete man’s conquest of the globe,—were accomplished without the aid of such modern devices and inventions.
It seems entirely fitting that these tests of brute physical soundness and endurance which have engagedthe attention of the world for several centuries, should have been won by brute physical soundness and endurance, by the oldest and most perfect of all machines—the animal machine—man and the Eskimo dog.