The New York herald., 1922-01-01

M/ Friendly Arctic" just as the
Christmas cold wave struck
the city. II took more than the title
to reassuro us ss we came in shiver-
way straight from Medicine Hat. We
considered this title of Mr.. Stefans-
sons to DO mild pleasantly of his at
first. And then, as we grew warmer.
and read on into the book. we discov-
cred to our amazement that he was
trying to convince us that all we had
ever read about the silence and the
fearful cold and the absence of ami
mate things was nothing more than
the purest tosh.
The dirty Eskimos. whom we had
pitied since child. were really, we
learned, a jolly lot of people for whom
existence is hardly more exacting than
it Is for the natives of the Filbert
Islands.
We found Mr.. Stefansson eagerly
endeavoring to clear his readers mind
of all the popular conceptions of the
frozen circle. He is particularly in
slstent that we should realize how
noisy the Arctic really can pc.
Nothing" he writes, lis more char
acteristic of the Arctic as 1t has been
imagined to be than it's silence. But
it will appear just how silent a sum-
mer must be where the air is con.
tinually filled with the hum of the
bluebottle fly. ubiquitously waiting to
deposit it's larva. and the buzz of the
mosquitoes, lowering in clouds to suck
the blood of man or beast. There are
the characteristic cries of the plovers
and the snipes and the various sand
pipers and smaller birds, the squawk
ing of ducks, the cackling of geese, and
the louder though rarer cries of the
crane and the swan. And especially
the night is resonant Gf you are of
a nervous temperament you will say
hideous) with the screaming of looms,
in it's nature somewhere between the
scream of demented woman and the
yowling of cats on a back fence.
The treeless plains of North Dakota
when l was boy were far more
silent than ever the Arctic has been
in my experience
when the ice is being piled against
a polar coast there is high pitched
screeching as one cake slides over
the other, like the thousand times
magnified creaking of rusty hinge.
There is the crashing when cakes as
big rs a stone wall. after being tilted
on edge, finally pass beyond their
equilibrium and topple down upon the
ice; and when extensive foes, perhaps
six or more feet in thickness, grad
ually bend under the resistless pres
sure of the pack until they buckle up
ana snap there is a groaning as OF
supergiants in torment and boom
ing which at distance of mile or
two sounds like cannonade.
""1'ne eternal polar silence writes
the voet in his London attic" (Here
We ,,ause TO insert that the explorer
appears TO have as quaint and ro-
manti, d notion of the poet as he says
the po,i has IF the explcrer) But
shackl,tun's men, as quoted in his
book "Sruth," now and again COM
mence theii diary entries with the
words din din, DIM Robert Service
some distance HOuLH OI Tic AIStiS I'll Sio
in a small house in the city Of Daw-
son. wrote much of the Arctic silence.
But we Of the far north never forget
the boom and screech and roar of the
polar pack"
The greatest shock we expect to
experience in bookshop Will come
when we pitk mp boUk on polar ca
ploration which II less thar three
inches thick We USED 10 think that
the size of these VOLUMES WAS the
natural resull Of continued Isolation
In those empty. silent spaces. The H.
ltision OF which Mr.. Stefansson shat
t.rs. We supposed the explorer set
down every thing he thUugni Of In his
notebook In order 10 keep from biting |
hiInsei1 for food.
We are assured by Mr.. Stefansson. |
however, thst, II one has no Objection |
to eating meat three times day all /
In. ycai round, and nothing else, II Is
possible to live of the Arctic country.
I'ha, L. what he did in the expedition
Of Isl3-ISiS, Of which this book tells
the story
Although THE Friendly Arctic" is
a. long a. other books Of its kind, it's
worm exploration from cover TO cover.
We mean 10 do as much.