stefansson-wrangel-09-31-093v

146 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

attracted the attention of the Empire to these southern
lands, the British ownership of some of which had just
been proclaimed. Except for projecting mountain peaks
and a rare strip of foreshore, these lands are covered
with ice and are therefore less inviting than the ice-free
and grass-covered arctic islands. The arctic lands, as
we have said elsewhere, are towards the center of the
land masses, and may, therefore, become way stations be-
tween them, but a map of the southern hemisphere will
show that this is not true of the Antarctic. If you fly
from Australia, to South America direct, you will cer-
tainly cross the Antarctic, but a dirigible would have
to avoid that route even were the climate tropical, for
the mountains are among the highest in the world. No
other flying route that we can conceive between the coun-
tries now populous leads anywhere near the antarctic con-
tinent. Yet the British are wise in claiming it, for now is
the time to establish title and no man can tell what lands
may become valuable in a hundred years.

Although my personal and social contact with the of-
ficers of the Navy was uniformly delightful, my frequent
meetings with Rear Admiral J. W. L. McClintock made
on me an especially lasting impression in which were
blended my liking for himself and my great admiration
for his father. I have few heroes; SirLeopold McClin-
tock is one of the few. His and Parry’s are the greatest
names that the British Empire has given to arctic history.

But more interesting than any of my summer’s experi-
ences were the frequent long talks with Commander J.
G. Bower. I had met him first at Washington a year be-
fore when he accompanied Balfour in connection with
the Conference on the Limitation of Armament. We had