Newspapers / Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, … / July 1, 1923, edition 1 / Page 28
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That’s What Captain Donald B. MacMillan Wants to Know as He Heads an Expedition Into the Arctic Regions to Observe the Ice Pack That Slowly But Surely Is Hurling Itself on Modem Civilization / A SECOND Ice Age threatens the world! Or so, at any rate, Captain Donald B. MacMillan, noted Arctic explorer, be lieves, backing up the sincerity of his belief by organizing another expedition to the polar regions in order to make a record of how far encroaching glaciers have advanced since observations were last made. A little band of determined men, un der MacMillan’s command, set sail in June from Wiscasset, Me., for the Arctic in quest of data concerning what appears tcv be a possible end of the world. It is to be brought about, says science, by the slow, relentless, south ward march of the great polar ice cap, that with resistless might is moving downward toward civilization at a speed often as great as ninety feet in a single day. . “There has been tremendous glacial activity all along the coast since 1850,” he says. “The land is fairly buried in ice, which is flowing over and around the headlands and filling all the fiords. On my expedition last year I obtained good sight for longitude, latitude and azimuth at all salient points.” THE advance of the polar ice cap is apparently invincible, according to MacMillan’s previous observations. While great masses of ice break off and disappear into the warmer seas, still the main body of the ice pack moves majestically southward Undisturbed by such trivial losses. “There is a sheet of ice covering an area of 500,000 square miles, rising to a height of 9000 feet above sea level in some places and moving southward at the rate of from one inch to ninety feet a day,” says the captain. ‘Entire valleys have been filled and mountains engulfed by the ice,” Captain MacMillan points out, “while groups of islands once known to explorers have been absorbed into the pack.. Actual comparison of observations has shown that where in 1850 there was a valley, today there is a glacier twenty-five miles wide. “In many places in the Arctic, where previously there was no ice, today one finds huge glaciers frequently ten miles in width. And all are moving steadily southward, and each year sees the ice cap^dvanced.” The polar glacier is an enormous cap, or cupola, rising above the surrounding lands; it is the dominant feature far and wide. Whether or not it has been aug mented or diminished in area has con cerned physical geographers for more than twenty-five years. No definite in formation with regard to this question has yet been obtained, though general conclusions have been reached. For instance, there is good evidence to show that in the Arctic regions in the eighteeenth century and in part of the nineteenth an important extension of glaciers occurred. In Spitzbergen, har bors which whalers had often visited in the seventeenth and early in the eight eenth centuries were filled later with gla ciers, so- that they could no longer be used by shipping. The advance of gla ciers in Iceland is said to have covered places that had formerly been the sites of farms and churches. It is a little hard to realize that at present glaciers cover about 4,485,000 square miles, or more than one and one half times the area of the United States. ACCORDING to scientists, man at present has no adequate means of coping with such a return of the ice, should it occur. What would we^do if the invincible mass continues its formidable advance? In the glacial period the climate had grown to be essentially arctic. Within the continental areas enormous ice sheets formed, which moved southward, filling river and lake basins, covering ^ mountains and burying lowlands beneath « - . mi a vast sea of ice. j One field of ice extended over Canada . and the northeastern part of the United ? States. Its northern limits have notf yet been defined, but on the east it| reached the Atlantic Ocean, and south--, ward it advanced well into New Jersey,® Pennsylvania and the States between, the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. New Eng-i|; land, New Y6rk, and the region of <thq| Great Lakes were completely covered by' the ice sheet. In the White Mountains the rocks bear evidence of having tbeeri|/ striated and polished almost to the sunn • mits of the highest elevations, and theft| same phenomena have been recorded for^i the Adirondack? and Catskills, showing.;: that the ice in places was several thou-j| sand feet thick, j$f. i Entire valley* . are being f filled and H ft mountains* engulfed . • m by ice, says Captaif'v MacMillan,0 while islandi are being absorbed * into the |T pack p r- «• In the Ice Age of long ago primitive man’s problem was to get food, and he was compelled to cope >vith the half-starved animal life that had as hard a time as man himself eking out an existence on the barren icy wastes. Above is shown Captain MacMillan in his arctic dress The mountains of Western. North America were also the scenes of great glacial activity, of which the snow fields of the present day are but wasted relics. The Old World seems to have been hit as hard as the New in that first Age of Ice; An ice sheet covered the whole of Northern Europe; it filled up the basin of the Baltic on its way from Scandi navia to the plains of North Germany, •and it crossed the North Sea to the Scottish highlands, whence it _moved northward and westward into tKeAtlan ' . X tic. The whole of England north of the Thames, as well as Scotland and Ireland, was buried beneath the ice, which at tained a thickness in some localities of BOQO feet. On the Continent the sheet spread over Scandinavia, Denmark, Holland and parts kA Germany, Belgium and Russia, find comprised an area of about 800,000 square miles. South of the limits of this ice cap were smaller snow fields and glaciers. The present Alpine glaciers are Copyright. 1923, by j public Ledger Company /S the world again to be en crusted under a ponderous mass of ice as it was in the pre historic days many thousands of years ago? Science says a second Ice Age is inevitable, un less some means can be devised to thwart this crushing climatic catastrophe, More than fifty thousand sqdare miles of the earth’s surface already is covered by the huge ice pack of the north. In some place it towers to a height of 9000 feet above sea level. It is moving southward at the rate of 90 feet every day. In the glacial period ice extended over Canada and the northeastern part of the United States. The mountains of the West still speak of ,its ravages. The old world Was equally hard hit. All of England was buried, m some places with ice 5000 feet thick, while 800,000 ■ square miles of northern Europe were buried under millions of tons of ice. ' The first Ice Age lasted approxi mately 500,000 years. '■ Is a second Ice Age impending? That’s what MacMillan is attempting to find out this summer. shrunken remnants of the field that covered Switzerland during this period. In the Southern Hemisphere the gla ciers of Patagonia were once enlarged so as to extend across the peninsula to the Atlantic shores, and New Zealand was overrun by the ice. rpHIS generation, therefore, need have **■ no immediate concern about the sec ond Age of Ice that may be advancing slowly and steadily, but unless some one interests himself in the matter, there is at least a chance that, our great-grand children may find themselves facing a peril that cannot .be overcome. So thinks the dark-eyed captain of the gallant Bowdoin, now out upon his ad venture for humanity. Man cannot live upon the polar ice cap, “Mac” insists, as he stresses the im portance of the expedition—even the Eskimos are not found in those snowy wastes. “You must remember,” he says, lean ing against the newly polished brass rail of his tiny ship, “that the soil up there is but seven inches in depth. Be low that is nothing dbut rock. There is no oil, no coal, nothing. of any com mercial value. The summers are very short, .and the winters long and Intensely cold.” And yet the lure of the North has laid its magic hand . upon this adventurer. No matter how often he suffers, frozen feet in that cruelly cold country, no mat ter if the bitter winds cut through hi? furs and turn his face black with frost —though he has been lost in desolate waste places, and wanted for food, and fire many a time—MacMillan loves it. “It is fascinating, living in , frozen fields,” he say's. “Every day is interest ing, and there is no monotony even in the long winter months.”
Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, N.C.)
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July 1, 1923, edition 1
28
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