Evening star., 1923-10-22
ARCTIC ISLE HELPS
KEEP WORLD WARM
Coal Supply Under Heavy Ice
Crust Plentiful and of
Good Quality.

Spitzbergen, where favorable wealth
er during the past summer permitted
the making of important surveys
never before possible, has a unique
interest because it is one of the few
arctic or antarctic lands that are
being made to yield up minerals to
the temperate zones, according TO
bulletin from the local headqua--
ters of the National Geographic So
ciety.
THE northern tip of Alaska. TO
which few government officials
push each summer. may seem all
too close to the north pole for the
average dweller of the warmer re-
gions of the earth to live In unless
he is pursuing scientific investiga-
tions." says the bulletin. I'm Spitz-
bergen. however, which is 600 miles
closer to the top of the world. sew
eral hundred ordinary men of Eu-
rope and America are making their
homes the year round while they
strip coal from beneath the ice-cov-
cred mountains. It Is excellent coal,
too, and there is every reason to be-
lieve that the mining operations will
grow steadily.
Formerly "No-Man's Land
The discovery early in the TWEEN
tieth century that SpitZbergen's coal
underlies large areas brought it back
to the worlds attention and made
sovereignty over 1t well worth claim
ing after it had been abandoned for
generations as a sort of no-u1an'S
land. BarentS. a Dutchman. diScov-
cred Spitzbergen in 1895. according
to the usual records; but the Nor
W
visited the islands at earlier dates.
Henry Hudson. searching for a north
ern passage to the orient in 1907,
learned of the vast number of whales
Spitzbergen's waters became for a
time the worlds greatest whale fish
:'The Dutch were foremost in this
development. BY the time Of Amer
ica's revolutionary war, whalers from
the Netherlands had taken about
500 100000 worth of whale products
from the region. Catches become 90
great in the early years of the ex-
ploitation that the ships were en-
barrassed to haul the blubber home.
Arctic "Summer Town."
"A thriving summer town. Smeer-
enberg. was established and -four
an anomalous community. a Dutch
town in the frozen Arctic, with its
shops, drinking places and bakeries,
in addition to the oil refineries. coop
erage establishments and smithies Of
the whaling industry. When the
whales In the immediate neighbor-
hood of the islands were destroyed
and the whalers had TO go farther
afield for their catches, Smeerenberg
dwindled away. About the only re-
minder of this one time thriving
Dutch community is the cemetery OF
thousand or more graves in the
cheerless, frozen earth.
In 1920 a treaty signed by most
of the leading European nations AMI
the United States recognized the SOW
ereignty of Norway over Spitzbergeh.
The islands have an area roughly OF
$4,000 square miles. about that of
West Virginia. Its lofty, needle-like
peaks are mantled almost from bot
tom to top in perpetual snow, and
between are huge glaciers. One great
ice e-river, the Queen Maud Glacier, is
fifty miles wide.
THE ill-starred expedition of the
Swedish explorer. Andree. who hoped
to reach the north pole by balloon.
took to the air from SpitZbergen IN
1897. The fate of the members Of
the expedition was never learned. A
few message buoys dropped the day
of the start were found near Spitz-
bergen. No later word was re-
ceived." ..--.-.