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A Proposed North Polar Expedition Author(S): Roald Amundsen and Colin Archer Source: the Geographical Journal, Vol

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A Proposed North Polar Expedition Author(S): Roald Amundsen and Colin Archer Source: the Geographical Journal, Vol A Proposed North Polar Expedition Author(s): Roald Amundsen and Colin Archer Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Apr., 1909), pp. 440-456 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1777218 Accessed: 26-06-2016 02:12 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 157.89.65.129 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 02:12:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 440 A PROPOSED NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION. what Dr. Stein said of the same maps in his lecture, March 8, before the R.G.S. -with Sir Thomas Holdich's criticisms. Dr. Hassenstein worked out those maps, and Dr. Stein found the ruins near Lop-nor and the end of Keria-darya by help of them, so they have, anyhow, had more occasion to be familiar with them than Sir Thomas Holdich. And since then my methods of topographical survey and astro- nomical determination have improved considerably. I hope nobody will be so extremely childish as to suppose that I do not under- stand the difference in exactitude between the first mapping of a pioneer in an absolutely unknown country and the careful detailed work of a general staff or a Survey of India. But I cannot understand how two such things can ever be com- pared by any serious man. And I cannot understand how anybody canll be so absurd as to blame me, or "regret," as it is called, that I did not introduce trigonometrical mapping in the blanks of the map of the Bongba country. With the same right somebody may blame me for not having started some gold-mining companies, and built some cathedrals on my way through Bongba. To Sir Thomas Holdich t,iangulation seems to be all. There are some other sciences a traveller in an unknown country has to serve. As 1 could not possibly do everything myself, being alone, I had to do as much as I could and as the length of the days allowed. It was my wish to take three native assistants with me, and I should have paid them myself, but the British Government refused me them. So if Sir Thomas Holdich has to blame anybody, it is rather the British Government. To possess a preliminary sketch-map of a country is better than to have no map at all. I have been able to follow and draw the principal geographical and orographical lines of Bongba, and I have several geological profiles from Bongba, together with specimens of rock with dip and fall-a science which has been utterly neglected by most of the British travellers mentioned by Sir Thomas Holdich. There have been thousands of British officers in India during the last hundred years, but not one of them has ever tried to enter Bongba, a country of which Sir Thomas Holdich positively says that the conditions of travelling did not exclude triangula- tion work. Is it really possible that they and their chiefs could take so little interest in a country which was situated so close upon the Indian frontier? So, as to Bongba, and whatever the value of my maps may be, I suppose I have done more for our knowledge of this province than all those thousands of officers put together and, inclusive, Sir Thomas Holdich. A child of a primary school in Sweden will understand that there is work enough to do in Bongba for generations of topographers and geologists-in those two sciences there is still a good deal to do even in England, Scotland, or Sweden, I suppose. But the very first traveller who, under exceptionally difficult conditions, enters an unknown country and brings home with him the first knowledge of it, should be the very last to be blamed for his work. A PROPOSED NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION.* By ROALD AMUNDSEN. " BY far the most important task left for geographical research to perform in the Arctic Regions is the exploration of the extent, depth, and character of the polar basin. A great part of this work could be accomplished by drifting through the unknown part of the polar basin -as the Fram Expedition did in 1893-96-north of the _ram's route." * Royal Geographical Society, January 25,1909. This content downloaded from 157.89.65.129 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 02:12:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A PROPOSED NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION. 441 These words were spoken by Prof. Nansen in his lecture before the Royal Geographical Society in London on April 29, 1907. There can scarcely be anydifference of opinion on this question. The great polar basin is still lying there with its many unsolved problems, and seems to challenge us; and in our own minds we know perfectly well that we shall not give up until all these problems are solved. Nansen's drift in the Fram was an epoch-making event in the history of North Polar research. It showed us clearly and distinctly the only way in which the exploration of the polar basin could be accomplished-so clearly and distinctly that I have often and often been astonished that not one of the many who have since endeavoured to penetrate the mystery has profited by its teaching. But that is not all. It raised the veil that covered the Great Unknown, and showed us how much there was to be done. Side by side with the important results of this great expedition-perhaps, indeed, in front of the results-is the expe- rience gained by the leader of the expedition. It was while drifting across the Polar sea that Prof. Nansen's eyes were opened to the numerous great defects that attached to the old methods of observation in use in the field of oceanic research. Since his return in 1896, he has contributed greatly to the creation of precise methods that have raised this branch of science from a more or less close approximation to a very high degree of accuracy. If you take a map of the world and glance at it, you will at once be struck by the proportion of land to water. While the mass of known land only amounts to one quarter of the Earth's surface, the remaining three quarters consist of sea. In order to put this in a still clearer light, I will mention a few figures. The entire surface of the Earth measures 196,740,000 square miles in area, of which 141,011,000 square miles is sea, and 55,729,000 square miles land. The unknown region round the North Pole amounts to 1,930,000 square miles. The extent of the Polar sea is about 5,790,000 square miles; that is to say, seven times larger than Greenland and twenty times larger than the Scandinavian peninsula. The North sea has an area of 193,000 square miles, or thirty times less than the Arctic ocean. The highest measured mountain, Mount Everest, is 29,002 feet in height, while the greatest observed deep, Nero deep, near the island of Guam in the Pacific ocean, is 51,615 feet (5269 fathoms, or about 6 miles). It will be clearly apparent from these figures how small the amount of land is in comparison to the sea. It is, therefore, astonishing that men have not given more attention to oceanic exploration than has been the case. If you look at a list of the various exploring expe- ditions that have been undertaken in past years, you will soon see that only a very small number of them have had oceanic research as tlieir object. It is a significant fact, too, that when "discoveries" were This content downloaded from 157.89.65.129 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 02:12:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 442 A PROPOSED NORTH POLAR EXPEDITION. mentioned, it was always land that was meant, never sea; and an expedition that returned without knowledge of new lands, but only reported new seas, was considered to have yielded only negative results. That this was the case with the earlier expeditions is quite under- standable. The hope of gain and power was the motive force, and this could naturally only be gratified on dry land. No one saw the importance of the great ocean. It thus happened that most of the land was discovered and made known in a comparatively short time. But with the growth of culture, the exploration of the ocean came to be looked upon as quite as great a necessity as that of the land. The interest in the unknown depths of ocean increased greatly when the Atlantic cable came to be laid. And since the middle of last century, several large expeditions of this kind have gone out. Among the most important of these may be mentioned the Challenger Expedition, 1872-76, under Sir Wyville Thomson and Sir John Murray, and the Norwegian North Atlantic Expedition in the Voringen, under Profs.
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