Previous Page
    Add to this the array of evidence geologists adduce on the basis of terrific volcanic activity along a well-defined line leading up the North Pacific, through the Japanese archipelago, and the fiery Aleutians, and onward toward the Pole. This seismic axis plotted on the globe nearly bisects the unknown area of the Polar Ocean. Further, were this line swung through 180 degrees, it would touch Iceland, one of the most fiercely volcanic spots on earth. Another significant fact.
    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.
    The last ship known to have returned to Norway from her arctic colonies arrived in the year 1410. We read that it brought a rich cargo; that its report was of happy, thriving Norsemen back north; of health and growing independence despite their rigorous environment.

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:
    The Norwegian colony, 10,000 people - perhaps 100,000 - had, to a man, mysteriously disappeared!
    "The greatest riddle in the history of the world," it has been called - the baffling mystery of the lost Norse colony.
    Where did they go?
    Where didn't they go is a question more easily answered. Not to sea in ships, for they had but one or two; and Greenland, lying above the tree-line, gave them no timber for building more. Not slain by Eskimos, for Eskimos are the most peace-loving people in the world, knowing nothing of the art of war. Not, like Europe, swept by some dread germ of awful virulence, for germs don't thrive in polar regions.
    What then?
    Examine the Eskimo tradition: It paints in vivid terms the White Men swarming suddenly north to a wonderland the natives long had known. Because of evil spirits, no Eskimo had ever dared this trail.

Next Page

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.