“Via Arctic” Safest Route to Europe, Says Famous Explorer

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 798, 19 October 1929, Page 18

“Via Arctic” Safest Route to Europe, Says Famous Explorer

ILI-IJALMUR STEFANSSON, in America, recently received a wireless message from Commander Byrd sent out from a corner of

the Ross shelf-ice in the Antarctic. Stefansson has been official adviser to Sir Hubert Wilkins in all of tire latter’s Polar expeditions, and unofficially often receives requests for suggestions from the leaders of expeditions ipto the frigid zones. Byrd’s difficulty, it seems, is in the use' of tents. In cold atmospheres bed-rolls can be kept dry only in snow houses.

The younger generation may be well-advised to tuck that bit of information away for reference and probable use in case of forced landings on the. air routes of the future. For Stefansson dreams and prophesies of commercial air-trails over the world’s top to Europe and the Orient. “A glance at the map of the northern hemisphere,” says Stefansson, “is convincing proof that the route is shorter. I contend that it is safer. the Arctic Ocean is the safest ocean in the world.” The foregoing statement has been one of the theses of the explorer’s recent series of lectures . in the universities pf Oxford and Cambridge. On the face of it Stefansson’s remark is absurd. Perhaps it is less absurd, however, than the prophecy of 50 years ago that men would fly; and Stefansson would suggest that the absurdity is due only to the set of our minds from the study of geography texts which continue to falsify “the friendly Arctic.”

“For example,” he says, as he picks up a western school text in geography, “it is commonly reported that the Eskimos drink oil for food. That is a phenomenon- that I have yet to see. But this book says that Eskimo children drink quantities of animal oil to quench their thirst. It might pay an enterprising refreshment concern to carbonate cod-liver oil and sell it at the Aklavik soda fountains.” In defence of liis stand on the safety of the Arctic Ocean Stefansson points out that there is no other part of the world, let alone an ocean, containing so many safe landing places for airplanes. Sir Hubert Wilkins on Polar flights was forced down three times and landed safely on the ice-fields. In ),he second place, the longest necessary overwater flight on some of the important Arctic routes of the future is shorter

than some of the standard hops on the larger continents today. in the third place, if you do have a forced landing in the Arctic you can usually walk to shore.

People who have tried walking to shore from the middle of the Atlantic will appreciate the last point. A New York-to-Paris flight is spectacular, Stefansson thinks, but if as much time, effort and money had been spent in establishing routes over the top of Canada, commercial flying to Europe would now be in regular operation. He does not make his startling statements in any bombastic way, but as plain matters of fact. The explorer is one of the most unassuming of men who have national achievements to their credit.

It is difficult to think of this softvoiced, mild-mannered man of the drawing-room and the lecture-plat-form as the Stefansson of more than eleven years of Arctic exploration and hardship. Stefansson, of course, will not admit that travel in the Arctic is a hardship. “Nothing that we enjoy,” he says, “can be termed a hardship. So many people ask me about the cold and. the dangers of freezing; but anyone who has lived

in the Arctic. thinks no more of a frost-bite than people of the south think of a sun-burn. As a matter of fact, they are very similar. A bit of frost, and the- skin turns red. A little more frost, and the skin blisters. I have never suffered from frost more than I have from sunburn.”