River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1913-10-16
NEW CONTINENT IS
GREAT DISCOVERY
IT is PREDICTED THAT THIS WILL
BE GREAT LAND
FIND.
GEOGRAPHERS DISCUSSING 1T
Few of Them Doubt Stories That the
Attic Is Not a Sea-General
Greeley Forecasted a
New World.

Washington, Oct. 14.-Members of
the national geographic society say
that the reported Russian discovery
of continent 500 miles north of Asia
will be the last great discovery of
land. They pronounce it the most inn
portant discovery within the Arctic
circle in the last century.
The reports f ON st. Michaels, Alas
ka, that Commander Whisky in COM
mand of the Russian government
steamers Taimyr and Waygatch had
arrived there and announced the dis
covery of a body of land, extending
covery of a body of land as large as
Greenland, extending beyond latitude
81 north and longitude 102 east came
as distinct surprise to the members
of the SO -iety.
NO News of Expedition.
1t was known that the Russian gov
eminent for years had pursued a sur
vey in the Siberian ocean, but no
word had reached them of q regular
exploring expedition into the frozen
North. The eXpanse north of Canada,
Alaska and Siberia has long been re-
garded as an inviting field for investi-
cation, however, and the Canadian
government sent Vilzhalmar Stefans-
son into the area last summer ON a
three years expedition.
Major General A. w. Greeley, Arc
tic explorer and scientist, thinks some
error must have been made in describ-
ing the location of the newly found
continent, though he was not inclined
to doubt that discovery had been
made. The general said that on Dec.
IS, 1894, the Fran, in which DR.. Nan
sen drifted in the Arctic regions, was
in latitude $3.50, longitude 104, just
a little north of where the southern
extremity of the land reported discov-
cred is said to be.
DR.. Nansen Became SkepticaI.
DR.. Nansen's party saw no land and
so confident was he that none exist
ed in the vicinity of his vessel that
he has argued since that the surround
ing portion of the Arctic ocean is a
deep basin, that unexplored land about
the size of Greenland does exist with
in the Arctic circle, north of Alaska
and eastern Siberia, is distinguished
from Western Siberia where the Rus
slams are said to have discovered land
has been the theory of scientists for
years.
DR.. Roland B. Harris of the coast
and geodetic survey years ago put
forth the so-called Harris theory that
large area of undiscovered land was
located within the circle. His con-
tention was based on tidal observation
by polar explorers, including Rear Ad-
miral Peary, who was assigned by
President Roosevelt to make tidal OBJ
servations on his last trip to the Arc
tic regions for DR.. Harris benefit.
Observations of Harris.
DR.. Harris observed that at Point
Barrow the flood stream of the tide
came from the West and not from the
North, as the hypothesis of an extend
ed and deep polar basis would indi-
cate. The tidal hours at Arctic points
also led him to believe that a large
body of land interrupted part of the
flow from the North. DR.. Harris is
now in Bermuda on vacation.
General Greeley arrived at the same
conclusion about land to the westward
of Grinnell Land, but by a different
method. His opinion was based on
the prevalence in the Arctic ocean
of large numbers of fiat topped ice
bergs. The fiat topped bergs were
found to be of enormous size, some
of them ten miles long, several miles
wide, and hundreds Of feet high. Gen
eral Greeley considered the important
point about them to be that they often
showed parallel lines Of ice forma-
ton, the result of compressed snow
falls of several years.
Such structural forms he had
learned were not found ON bergs from
known Arctic lands, although common
in the Antarctic regions. The general
further reasoned that such bergs could
only be formed on level land of con-
siderable extent, and chat as they did
not come from Spitzbergen, Green
land or Grinnell Land, they must have
come from an unknown land.