stefansson-wrangel-09-24-001-002

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nature of the polar regions.

By 1920 Fred Maurer, one of the veterans of my third
expedition, had been through the war and through enough
of the succeeding peace to be tired of it. He was again,
like all northern travellers, eager for the Arctic, with
its winters exhilarating as a cold shower-bath, its pure
air that stimulates beyond even the intoxication of the
middle heights of the Alps; eager too for discovery and
adventure. Maurer kept begging that I should lead
another expedition North.

Lorne Knight, a veteran of even longer polar service,
was tired of the cities and forests of Oregon, and kept
begging to go North.

My knowledge, too, of the developments and prospects
of aerial transport forced Wrangell Island upon my attention
continually. Most people, I know, regarded the Polar
Ocean as a barrier. In my view it was to become a con-
necting link between Europe and north-east Asia. The sea
which separates Spain France and Africa after all connects them
no less.

It is not twenty years till December since Orville
Wright first flew at Kittyhawk. But In twenty years from
now all lands will be connected with a network of airways.
more complicated than the lines on a chart which show the
present steamer routes. The Atlantic has already been
crossed and the Polar Sea is tiny by comparison. Maurer,