Still more: Not many years ago, in a particulary open season, the American whaler, Captain Keenan, reported that he saw a land northeast of Point Barrow. Peary, from Cape Thomas Hubbard, sighted distant peaks northwest. Such evidence is incontrovertible. The new continent seems already within our grasp! So much for the land-mass. Now for its probable inhabitants. Eric the Red discovered Greenland in 985 A.D. He brought back glowing tales of grassy fiords, long sunlit days, game-infested hills, ice-pans groaning under their burden of fat seals, bays teeming with fish. Vikings Prosper Colonization began at once. And so true did
Eric's bright tale prove that the Vikings greatly prospered. In the
archives at Bergen may be seen today the receipts for their princely
contributions in ivory and oil to the ill-fated
Crusades. |
An Adventure in the Icy Desert "With my own eyes I have seen in Greenland the ruined stone houses of the lost Norwegian colony", writes Commander Green. "With Donald B. MacMillan I have tried to reach the polar continent, believed to lie in the Polar Sea North of Canada." As an arctic explorer of wide experience, Commander Green - now aid to Admiral Williams, President of the Naval War College at Newport, R.I. - has made an exhaustive study of the fascinating possibilities of discovery of which he writes. Following his graduation from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, he joined the Crocker Land Arctic Expedition as engineer and physicist in 1913. He spent 3 ½ years in the polar regions. In the spring of 1914, with MacMillan and two Eskimos, he sledged more than 1,000 miles up across Ellesmere Land and out into the Polar Sea in search of land that tidal experts insist must lie in this million square miles of unexplored area. They also explored an unknown portion of Axel Heiberg's Land. The next year,
after their relief ship had become imprisoned in the ice of Smith Sound,
Commander Green, with two other members of the expedition, sledged south,
passing down the uninhabited portion of the Greenland coast and reaching
the Danish colonies five months later, in the spring of 1916. Reaching New
York by way of Copenhagen in the autumn, he joined the Atlantic Fleet on
regular duty. The following spring he became flag Lieutenant to Admiral
Rogers in command of the division of United States battleships attached to
the British Grand Fleet in European waters. |
Then, as in 1914, Europe became a shambles. Plague and war swept civilization. Pestilential disease ran a ghastly race with a horde of human murderers. Even the sea route north was forgotten... Lost Colony a World Riddle Dark ages passed, Nature bred again in men
the will to search her world for knowledge and for wealth. Greenland was
rediscovered. Hans Egede established the first modern settlement there in
1721. But the grim report he made was tragic beyond
belief: | |||
Washing in
Iceland, where hot springs and boiling mud abound. An engineering scheme
for steam heating the whole island by harnessing its steaming geysers has
been projected recently. It is no idle dream, says Commander Green, to
believe that Iceland has a geographic mate on the opposite side of the
Pole - a polar continent of mild climate and luxuriant vegetation warmed
the year round by hot springs and geysers. | |||||