stefansson-wrangel-09-26-001-013

were without a good-sized modern map of the northern hemisphere until in 1922 one was issued
by the U.S. Weather Bureau, perhaps under pressure of the modern necessity of
considering the northern half of the earth as a unit from the aeronautical point
of view. Mercater and the doctrine of the Arctic as a barrier had muddled even
our cartographers!

When we look at maps of the eastern and western hemispheres we
are scarce better off. We do realize that the Arctic is not so huge as it seems on
the flat Mercator, but it still remains at the top of the map and in so far confirms
the Mercator illusion of its being at one end of the earth. Of course there
is nothing wrong about dividing the earth into eastern and western hemisphere
maps, thought it is seldom done. If we do it we see that the arctic frontier of the
great land masses does not run in a straight horizontal line as on a Mercator,
but forms instead a horseshoe. This horseshoe is much smaller than you would have
thought, for the Arctic Ocean is tiny when compares with any of the other oceans.
If it were dreadful and uncrossable by aircraft it could be avoided. if you
can not cross the Gobi Desert you can always go around it.

Maps of the northern and southern halves of the earth show that
the great land masses of the world are in the northern hemisphere. It is important
from the political and economic point of view (since we do not inhabit the ocean)
that the Arctic on such a map or on a globe looks like a hub from which the continents
radiate like the spokes of a wheel. This gives it an immediate importance
which is bound to increase as the settlements creep northward along the great
Siberian and Canadian rivers. Major-General Sir Sefton Brancker, Director of
Civil Aviation for Great Britain, said in a speech at Sheffield in thesummerof 1923 that
carrying mails from England to Japan by way of the Arctic was a probability of the
next ten years. Rear-Admiral William A. Moffett, Chief of the Burear of Aeronautics
the Unites States Navy, has announced that the American dirigible Shenandoah will