0
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1925
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
PAGE ELEVEN
with both living and dead, stated that
Donald MacMillan Tells Why Men Go North the distinguished body of which h
Donald Ma nT lsW yM nG ot happened to be the head, had called
up the denziens of the ends of the
earth and had informed them of our
Noted Explorer Who Speaks Here Tuesday Tells of the Strange Hold of the Arctic fithurearrino.The king and queen
wit npronunceable names had re-
+ 7 plied to the message expressing their
on the Men Who go There. An Account of Some Romantic Episodes delight at the prospect of our visit
mn the anes of Various explorersand ing anounced their intention of be-
in Lvesof 'arius xpioersingout on the ice to meet its. The
president of the society added a fiot-
note stating that he was prominent
(Editor's Note: The following arti- - ---------- - - - - ----- of light into the land of darkness and lawyer of the city and requested
cle, written by Captain Donald B revealed lands and peoples as they Peary not to publish the fact of his
MacMillan, is reprinted by permission N o M arriag or D ivor'e are. having received these letters since
from The Shield of Theta Delta Chi Let us discuss for a few moments such might Jring him too much pub-
- if December, 1924.) srom the Literary Digest of October 11, 1924, comes this startling some of the more modern theories, licity.
-- bit o infcrmiation regarding the Eskimos, quoted from an interview those of our own time, prior to the It is needless to state that these
During the past fourteen yeara 'th Cta MacMillan published at that time. discovery of the pole. letters were not considered a neces-
h,,;:. there is one question that I have been For years scientists persisted in sary part of our sledge equipment.
called upon to answer more than any "They are polygamous and polyandrous. There is no ceremonial the belief of an open Polar sea. Dr. Another letter was of interest, in
other. It is: "Why do you go?' narriage or divorce. If one man has a daughter and another a son Ellis Kent Kane claimed to have seen that the author expressed surprise
'1T'hJ average man's conception of the they agree that they shall marry. The young people have nothing to pit. Dr. Isaac Israel Hayes believed that Peary had never conceived the
North is so forbidding that lie is say about it. There is no courtship. There is no ceremony. And fin it. Strong and scientific reasons idea of taking {a portable sawmill
naturally puzzled to know the reason when they tire of each other they take other mates. It is a mark of were advanced for it. Due to the with him, erecting it at the edge of
fr the expeditures of thousands friendship for a man to trade his wife to another. They trade mate centrifugal force exerted by a spin- the Polar sea, sawing out his timber,
diltars and the loss of lives. Draw- fori days, weeks, months, years and sometimes, always. It seems to ning world upon its axis, theoretically building a covered shed over the ice
Sa ag upon his imaglgation and the be mutuallysatisfactory. One man told me that he had a perfect wife all drift ice should be thrown away to the pole and by this method pro-
harrowing accounts of our early ex- from the poles toward the equator. tecting his men from the severity of
porers, the reader pictures a great except that she did not like to be traded. For many years man believed that the weather.
S white land swept by drifting snows, "Of course family life becomes dreadfully involved. The children if le would only persist in going on! e added that he knew no reason
d ien< b bitiig winds, void of all always go with the mother. Thus a man loses one family and acquires over the ice pack at the periphery of why hot soup could not be piped from
himal and plant life, a dead world another over night. But they love children-so much so, in fact, that the Arctic Ocean, finally he would be the land and thus obviate the neces-
revolving beneath *a long summer's the only unhappy couples in the Arctic are those who have no chil- rewarded by the sight of blue water ity of hauling heavily loaded sledges
SUn and wrapped in the death-like dren. It is aoi; ile, however, for a man to marry his own daughter 'over which he could joyfully .sail to over the rough ice of the polar basin!
stillness and sulitude of the long win- withicut knowing it." the pole. Old Captain John Knight Scientists believed that necessacily
ter night. What good or enjoyment ireceived his orders from the King of the polar basin was shallow. One
can possibly be derived from a visit ~ --~-~"-" ---"--England to sail to the pole itself but well known author and authority
to such a land? Is the purpose of ar not to remain. He must return at stated that undoubtedly there was a
expedition a search for mere adven- once and 'report the good news! large amount of land at the pole, and
tire, for valuable minerals, for lands Peary, with this imaginary sea dom- that he believed our great icebergs
rich in reseources, for scietific knowl- inating his thoughts, conceived the had their origin upon the shores of
edge, or purely geographical-that is, a unique plan of fitting his boat with this land-and so on down the cen-
an accurate plotting of all lands ip- runners. He trudged sturdily over turies man has conjectured, the
on the surface of the world? the ice for days and days, until, trained scientist has theorized as to
Undoubtedly the Norsemen were weary legged and despairing of fur- the actual conditions in the far North.
our first Arctic explorers. Those I ther progress, he reluctantly turned To substantiate or refute the above,
hardy mariners more than a thousand his face southward, defeated. what has the explrer found? What
years ago dared to turn the prows The British North Pole expedition cntribution has he made to add to
of their open boats northward through of 1875, elaborately equipped and our knowledge of this little wo d in
scattered ice floes to the Land of the 177 costing more than half a million, still which we live? Let me touch upon
Midnight Sun. Eventually, they be- - .had faith in this mythical sea and a microscopic part of what he has
held stretching out before them that started bravely northward from the done.
apparently limitless and impenetrable shores of Grant Land, pulling their When Peary disappeared up over
field of ice and wondered what there boat through and over the pressure the Greenland ice cap in 1892, no one
was beyond. Man has wondered ever ,fridges of the polar basin. One by knew' how far north the continent of
since, and will continue to won- -y-.xone they dropped from scurvy and the Greenland extended. Many believed
der just as long as there is a moun- exertion brought on by their heavy to the very pole itself, and even on
tamn th't obstructs his vision or a -load. Fortunately, one man had suf- across the top of the world, nearly to
point of land around which he cannot ficient strength to summon relief, the shores of Siberia, Wrangell Island
see'else all would have perished. being its northward and southern ex-
From the earliest times various For several years there existed in tension. When he returned, months
conjectures have been rife as to what this country a "hollow Earth club," later, he had defined the limits and
nian would' find at the top of the men who believed and urged that our -he altitude of the great Greenland
world if he evei' succeeded in attain- earth was not an oblate spheroid, but Icntinental ice cap, and area of 500,
ing that 1listant point, which many # xa cylinder in hape. By sailing 000 square miles attaining a height of
of our best students of Arctic his-' northward and then inward, man 10,000 feet, a great ice Sahara, which
tory deemed impossible. In the days imight reach the interior of the earth. graded down in thickness until the
tf antiquity there were poetical and There he would find a great race of day came when he stepped down from
mythical conceptions galore. Such - people living as comfortably and as the ice into a rolling country of
are always supplied where ignorance ' prosperously as we ourselves on the bumble bees, butterflies, flowers ad
rules. One popular and generally ac- exterior of the world. The aurora or herdsc of muskoxen!
at repted belief was that in the North northern lights, they explained, were Three years later tie rounded the
dwelt a very happy people, Hyper- the reflection of prairie fires in the most nor hern end of this great land,
boreans by name, and so far north interior of the cylindrically shaped placing it o the maps of the world
that they dwelt beyond the terrible world! This belief was revived sev- a being located 380 miles from the
cold north winds in a land of sun- - enteen years ago with the publica- pole.
shine and warmth. Strange to say, tion of "The Phantom of the Poles," Within ten degrees of the pole we
these people lived in woodls andl by William Reid. I quote from the fcund coal seams twenty-five to
groves and not in houses. War, sick-k_ book as follows: thirty-five feet in thickness, and in
ness and even old age wee unknown!] "The earth is hollow. The poles these deposits more than 600 fossil
Thio life was one long existence of I}so long sought are but phantoms. plants. Looking at those great bar-.
song and dancing. Some even hadI There are oenings at the northern ren hills of the far North one can
the power of flight and journeyed and southern extremities. In the in- hardly conceive that at one time they
around the world on an arrow. Here w teror are vast continents, oceans, were covered with a luxurant growth
there were marvelous floating temples, mountains and rivers. Vegetable and of trees, that less than 600 miles
borne through the air by wings :and animal life are evident in this world, from the pole a temperate and ever
rich in offering; here a wonderful and it is probably peopled by races warm climate prevailed, in fact that
island of which the Boreada were yet unknown to the dwellers upon of Virginia and Pennsylvania today.
kings. The priests were giant broth- I REFUGEE IHARBOR the earth's exterior." But such is true, as evidenced by the
ers, twelve feet in height. When thle That such beliefs, ludicrous and fossils found among the sandstones
sacred songs were sung great clouds Bowdoin on the Rocks of Refugee Harbor, North Greenland otherwise, were existent in the and shales some 2,000 feet in thick-
of swans came from the mountains,i Little Anks or Dovekies in Harbor of Etah. minds not only of the ignorant, but ness. There, for a certainty, grew
lit upon the temple and joined in the Bowdoin in Winter Quarters at Refugee Harbor in those of the most highly educated the poplar, fig, sassafras, magnolia,
sacred mist. MacMillan' Cabin on Board the Bowdoin. Iis evidenced by the fact that there oak, walnut, laurel, beech, spruce,
There were many variations of this is a book found in nearly all of our elm, dogwood, cassia, eucalyptus, cin-
Hyperborean legend. Beyond Ea- ybest libraries, entitled "Paradise namon, ilex, buckthorn, tulip, cypress,
'7borderd b.y immrense trees. The dust and sweetly perfumed; the rivers geu eqoa
rp, Asia and Africa, which were is- fruits of the former turn hack the run in beds of gold and instead of ' ound; the Garden of Eden at the hazel and five of the genus Sequoia,
fut ods surrounded by oceans, lay an wheels of li f, and one ass: grad- pebbles they ifoll dan diealre North Pole." This book was written or redwoods of California.
immense land inhabited by huge ani- -ay from old age to early manhood prcious stones." by a president of one of our great What tremendous changes through
imals and veritable giants, who lived nally f .on ( aAmerican universities, a great educa- the aeons as this little world of ours
to double our age. There were two andrdies in infanrc e ho ets In the sixth century we read of the tor, and scientifically, most interest- goes speeding through space, for In1
races, the warlike and the pious. The nf of te l i iorthernmost people, the Assedon- ing. these same hills, 1,200 feet above the
rmer numbered no less than two oo sians, the one-eyed, long-haired Aris- Prior to our sailing away from New crushed ice of the Polar Sea we find
]illion and were even born armed. With the years the legends change. I maspains who dwelt at the mouth of York in 1908 with the north pole as clamshells! Proof that one time that
They could be killed by stones and Froi those of the Celts we learn that tme cave of the North Wind. Here, our objective, Commander Peary re- land was all ocean bottom.
w~bod but not by iron. Gold and sil- amber originates from the tears of also, were the Griffins, lion-like mons-- ceived a packet of letters from a learn- When Greenland and Ellesmere
ver were there in abundance and Apollo, which he shed in thousands tens with wings and beaks of eagles, ed society with a long name, hav- Land were covered with forests and
}these metals were no more highly when he left alluring Ileaven and guarding the gold of the earth. We ing its headquarters in one of our those now ice-filled waters were blue
~iprized thami iron. There oii the hor-I visited the holp hicophe of the far read also of the goat-footed people western cities. To our surprise andl and fiee as the waters of our owen
4 ers of their land was a land whose North. amnd people who slept for six months delight they proved to be our letters coast, where was that mathematical
name signifies "without return," and The CGreeks write of the northern of the year. of introduction to the people of the point known as the North Pole? Was
there was the "Chiasma" or great country as follows: "This land is not And so on one may read of the north pole. 1the earth at a different inclination to
gulf, neither darkness or light, but a too cold, not too warm, free from myths and traditions of the north ( The president of the society, the the sun's rays or did warm ocean cur-
veil of mist. There were two streams, disease; care and sorrow are un- down through the centuries as the ex- practice of which was to sit in the rents flow northward and over the
tone of gladness and one of sorrow, known there; thie earth is without plorer groped beyond the known world dark and see things and communicate top of the world?
i
The northern part of North Amer-'
ica was at one time covered with two
million square miles of ice, and re-
mained covered for some 25,000. The
cause of this? No one really knows.
And will it happen again? Why not,
if it happened so many times in the
past? Greenland is today covered'
with an ice cap 500,000 square miles
in area. Here conditions may be
studied and are being studied to help
the geologist in his conclusions as to
the cause of the great ice age and the
probability of its return. With in-~
terest we note that all glaciers in
North Greenland and in Ellesmere
Land are again. advancing and have
musk oxen, even in the darkness of
the winter night, fat and in good con-
dition, living upon frozen grass in
wind swept areas -nd inder but a
few inches of snow. Snow falls de-
pend upon humidity or the amount
of moisture in the -' which can
hardly be detected d1ng cold win-
ter months.
There also we found herds of
white caribou, white wolf, droves of
arctic hare, white and blue foxes,
limming, ermine, polar bears, seals,
white whales, narwhal and walrus.
Hardly a lake that did not contain
certain quantities of charr, even
1within ten de.' PP x of thp S nth nlp
Ladaeaan dacn n hv rLI. U L LuIUA'L po e.
been during thespast seventy years. Life in the waters is enormous, more
Since all glaciers in the Alps and abundant even than, in tropical
Alaska are retreating geologists canabdntenthn roca
I Aara a r tr eoits cnwaters, but not equal to the number
hardly credit our observations. of southern, species in variety.
When Peary reached the Pole what i The sum total of the facts brought
did he find? An open Polar sea, lback by the Arctic explorer, filling
shallow water or a great land as tp some of the blank pages in the
Isome predicted? No, a vast mass of lives of the birds and Animals of
drift ice moving from the norther N; .:? America, the facts pertaining
shores of Siberia across the top of oti physical and meterological
the earth, and flowing south betweencondi- :s at the top of the world,
Spitzbergen and Greenland. No land t .:Ls relating to the geology, the
is at the Pole and never has been physiography, the topography of that
at that point, as was proved by the part of our globe, the knowledge of
fact that he dropped a lead through I the ways and customs of the natives
a crack in the ice to a depth of 9,000 who have lived there for thousand;
feet and found no bottom. of years, all of inestimable value,
One surprise after the other awaits justify the expenditure of money
the Arctic explorer. Six months of which leads to the accumulation of
continual sunlight works wonders. !knowledge upon which no one can
Even at the edge of the polar seas place a value, for it is beyond dol-
the snow disappears from the land lars and cents.
Every valley is a rushing river in I To that question, alp-o, I often reply,
July. Grass clothes the hills, and "Arctic literat. e E justifies the
yellow, blue and white flowers are expenditure of every cent." Perhaps
sprinkled upon, every sunny slope, , the most stirring tale of all is found
The botanist reports over 700 varie- in the annals of Captain Scott. There
ties beyond the Arctic circle. The we have the most pathetic picture in
hirds return in May, literally millions all Arctic and Antarctic history, that
of them, some even to within 400 of Captain Scott and his men standing
miles of the pole itself to build their at the South pole with their faces
nests, lay their eggs and care for black with frost. They had walked
their young. The, we find eggs never the whole distance of 700 miles had
before seen by man and priceless in pulled their sledges up over the great
value. Antarctic ice cap to a height of 10,000
3
I
And there, to the surprise of the feet.
naturalist, we find great herds of (Continue
RECREATIGO
and
GRANGER'S
The grinding routine of academi
requires a certain amount of re
The question "What to do an
to go,? is answered in several wa
answer is:. Dance at Granger's.
better recreation can be found th
ed on Page Sixteen)
N
c studies
creation.
id where
ys. One
What
an a few
hours of dancing in such a pleasant at-
mosphere and in such an accommodating
place as Granger's Academy?
Dancing every Wednesday
Friday, and Saturday Nights ;
Music by
BILL WATKINS AND HIS
GRANGER EIGHT
*
IL RANGERS AiCAIDENY
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First Mortgage
money on Ann Ar=
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one half value.
Expense paid.
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