In the Arctic

While learned British scientists expatiated at Southampton a new Ice Age that will drive civilization to the earth's poles for warmth, (see above), Commander Donald B. MacMillan and his aids steamed homeward along the shores of Greenland from their attempted exploration of the Polar Sea by air, (TIME, June 22 et sec.) Their work had been of a kind which, if the prophets are right, will be rated by future generations--if not with the exploits of Columbus and Magellan-- certainly with those of Hinton (Atlantic-crossing aeronaut), Leigh, Wade and Nelson (globe-fliers) and Eckener (Atlantic crossing dirigible pilot).

Headwinds buffeted the Bowdoin and Peary as they sought to leave Etah harbor. They got only to Igloo-da-Houny, across Booth Sound. MacMillan made a last flight in one of the Navy amphibian planes, to see Dog-Driver E-took-a-shoo, a friend, bringing him back to the anchored Bowdoin by air. Next day another start toward Baffin Bay was made, through blinding fog and raging blizzard. In Murchison Sound, the Bowdoin grounded her oaken keel on a rock ledge and stuck fast. The Peary sidled alongside to pass a towline and 34 steel drums of gasoline were heaved into the seas of seething slush to lighten the stranded hull. Nearby, a cruising iceberg burst with a dull report, setting up a monstrous wash which swept the Bowdoin off her perch. On southward steamed the ships. The elements relented. Dread Melville Bay, frigid storm-pocket of that Greenland Coast, lay unexpectedly calm and free of ice. Still skirting shore, the ships made for Disko Island (their coaling station on the way north), the Peary leading the way with MacMillan aboard. The latter discussed with Commander Byrd the likelihood of repairing one of their two disabled planes and making exploration flights over Baffin Island and Labrador before steaming on down to Maine.

The Naturalist of the expedition, Dr. Walter N. Koelz, radioed his first report to the National Geographical Society. Gray jellyfish, he told about; snails with wings; a fish like the bullhead, with ventral suckers for attaching itself to rocks while feeding; rare arctic birds in little-known summer plumage; land plants which eschew stems to snuggle next the ground and escape the wind; sea kelp, whose writhing shapes even Eskimos often mistook for animal life; carpets of wildflowers, luxuriant timothy, gaudy mosaics of lichen, orange and purple, on the black rock cliffs; the maniacal laughter of sky-filling clouds of dovekies (little auks.)

Maude. At Nome, Alaska, the schooner Maude made port after an absence of two years, then headed out again for San Francisco where her owner, Explorer Roald Amundsen of Norway, had instructed that she should be sold (TIME, Aug. 24). From Nome were relayed some of the adventures that had befallen the Maude during the months when she lay locked in ice-floes off East Cape, Siberia, first trying to drift up over the Pole, then trying to get home.

The first year out, an assistant engineer had died. They wrapped him in a Norwegian flag and laid him in a gigantic mausoleum, a cave carved into an iceberg.

An Eskimo sailor had deserted in mid-Arctic, taking a gun and scoop shovel. Signal lights were left out for him and after several days mushing in the icepack he returned, sadder, wiser.

Pictures, both motion and still, showed the Maude 15 or 20 feet out of water, hanging on ice-hummocks listing 40 after mighty movements of the pack. Stoutly girded, round-bottomed as a watermelon, armored with wooden walls a yard thick, the Maude had slid or crashed back to the water again without mishap every time, though on some occasions blasting powder was required for the relaunching.

Through continuous winter nights, with the mercury often at 70DEG below Zero, Captain Oscar Wisting* and his men kept up their scientific journals (soundings, air currents), shot vagrant polar bears that came near and even aboard, published a newspaper, tuned their radio to far-off stations, resolutely fought off solitude.

-A comrade of Explorer Amundsen's on his dash to the South Pole in 1911.