THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN EXPEDITION TO , 1926-1927 [Extracts from a manuscript supplied by Prof. W. H. Hobbs, head of the Department of Geology, University of Michigan.] The present year is to be marked by an extraordinary revival of inter- est in the of the . One of the great Arctic explorers stated some weeks ago that he already knew of thirteen Arctic expedi- tions in preparation, some of them not yet made public. Much of the interest is adventuresome and even emotional, ... A number of expedi- tions have, however, for their main objective the exploration of the world's largest and most inaccessible unexplored area off the coast of Alaska in the direction of the North Pole. Effort should not be relaxed until this blank area upon the map of the world has been made known. The Greenland expedition of the University of Michigan differs from at least the greater number of the other Arctic expeditions of the pres- ent year in that its object is primarily the investigation of fundamental problems of science which can be satisfactorily solved only within the region which it is planned to explore. These studies, if they are success- fully carried through, will be of great practical as well as scientific importance. . . . The Holstensborg district within which the Expedition will establish its base is situated on Davis Strait near the Arctic Circle, in the widest section of the coast-land ribbon of Greenland. This section of land is about 100 miles in width and nearly twice as long, and except for a few fjords all the southern portion is almost a blank upon the map, though we know something of its characteristics in the area east of Holstens- borg. The inner half toward the ice-cap is glaciated, has gradual slopes, and is covered with thousands of lakes, . . . This vast area [the Greenland ice-cap] which in form most closely resembles the back of a watch, is, with the exception of the even larger but similar Antarctic ice-cap, the most perfect desert to be found any- where on the face of the globe. It is a desert waste at an average eleva- tion of nearly two miles above the sea, where one travels for days on end and sees only the level surface of the snow beneath and the sky above, and over this vast expanse no trace of life has been found. Such a snow- mantled ice surface has little in common with that of the frozen Arctic sea on which the late Amundsen and MacMillan expeditions attempted to land with seaplanes, . . . The surface of the ice-cap of Greenland except within a relatively narrow and steep marginal zone is almost as flat and even as a ball-room floor, and it stretches away for hundreds of miles. Lieut. Comm. Byrd of the last MacMillan expedition flew for about 40 miles in a Loening amphibian plane over the borderland of the ice-cap in northern Greenland, and he reported that except in the neighborhood of the edge he could have landed anywhere without difficulty. . . . The coldest place where temperatures have been measured throughout the year is located in , but it is certain that in the hearts of Greenland and the Antarctic the winter cold is much more intense, for even in the midst of summer the mid-Greenland air temperatures have been found to be more than 30 degrees below zero. The University of Michigan Expedition through setting up a weather station within the heart of Greenland, may be counted upon to make known winter tem- peratures far below any that are yet known. . . . The Expedition expects to establish for the period of at least a year four Greenland weather stations, all within the Holstenborg district, two of them on the ice-cap itself one hundred miles or more from its margin, and the other two outside, one of them at a level above 3000 feet so as to obtain full measure of the hurricane winds and the other deep down in a valley and correspondingly protected from the winds. The living conditions at all higher stations may be expected to be any- thing but agreeable. The experience of Sir Douglas Mawson's expedi- tion in the Antarctic, affords some indication of what may be expected. At his station weekly average wind velocities sometimes measured 90 miles per hour, and for an entire year 50 miles per hour. . . . The difficult post on the ice-cap has been undertaken by the veteran Danish explorer, Peter Freuchen, whose experience in Greenland ex- ploration and whose powerful physique taken together make him the most fit man for such a difficult undertaking. It was he who took charge of the isolated meteorological station Pustervig on the Danish northeast Greenland expedition of 1906-08, and he was later second in command on both the long arduous Arctic expeditions of . He has been governor of the Thule colony of in north Greenland, and his experience as a Greenland explorer extends over eighteen years. Freuchen's companion on the ice-cap will be Fred W. Bartlett, a graduate of the University of Michigan who specialized in geology. A problem of much promise, but with great difficulties to be met, is connected with the icebergs. Dr. , the Danish explorer of north Greenland . . . has pointed out that the proper place to attack the thorny problem of dealing with icebergs is near their birthplace on the borders of the ice-cap of Greeland. . . . Professor Howard T. Barnes will accompany the expedition in charge of this problem, and Mr. Vibert Douglas, who was a member of the last Shackleton expedition in the Antarctic and is now an instructor at Har- vard University, will be associated with him. Attempts will be made by the "seismo" method to sound the thickness of the ice-cap above its rock bottom, and measurements made with the interval of a year will be part of an attempt to learn at what rate the marginal portion of the ice-cap is moving. The expedition as a whole will be conducted by the head of the de- partment of geology at the University of Michigan and its personnel will consist of some twenty persons, mostly from the University, but with explorers and scientists from other universities, and from govern- mental bureaus. A member of the expedition with Arctic experience is Dr. Walter Koeltz, who accompanied the last MacMillan expedition as field naturalist. Dr. Charles F. Marvin, chief of the U. S. Weather Bureau, is loaning the expedition for the summer of 1926 the services of Mr. S. P. Fergus- son, and is supplying the meteorological equipment of the expedition so