Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1621/The Arctic Expedition; Its Scientific Aims

by Robert Brown

From Blackwood's Magazine.

THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION: ITS SCIENTIFIC AIMS.

BY ROBERT BROWN,
M.A., PH.D., F.L.S., F.R.G.S., ETC.

Before the next part of this review is in the hands of its readers an English expedition — the object of which is to explore the wide unknown region surrounding the North Pole — will be well on its way to the scene of its labours for the next two years. An event so remarkable in the annals of science cannot be allowed to pass unnoted. For months past almost every journal in the kingdom has had something to say on the subject; for years to come we shall hear talk interminable, or may read print of which there is no end on this fruitful subject. Judging from the past we may expect these articles to be plentifully distinguished for the want of knowledge, more especially of what are the scientific aims and objects of the expedition. A few pages may be therefore profitably devoted to this question. Thanks to the unwearying efforts of Sherard Osborn and Clements Markham, backed by the Arctic Committees of the Royal and Geographical Societies, and their refusal to accept a denial — sedunt æternumque sedebunt — in a few weeks the ships and the men will be ready. The "Alert" and "Discovery" are now fitting out at Portsmouth with every appliance which experience and ingenuity can suggest as best fitted for serving the purposes for which they are intended. Twenty-three officers have been selected from the overwhelming number of volunteers who offered themselves. The head of the whole expedition will be Captain Nares, of "Challenger" fame. Commander Albert H. Markham, who has shown that his skill as a naval commander in many seas is almost equalled by his literary power in describing his voyages, is second in command; while Captain Stephenson, late of the royal yacht, will have the command of the second ship. Under these officers will be about one hundred and twenty seamen. In addition there will be six ice-masters — experienced whalemen — who will advise the officers on questions connected with ice-navigation, and two civilian naturalists. It is to be hoped that one of these is a geologist; for, as we shall see presently, the geological questions to be solved are not the least important of all those which await the labours of these gentlemen. Altogether he would be a carping critic who would cavil at the arrangements of this expedition, or its personnel. By the end of May it is believed that it will be ready to sail. In a fortnight or so after it will be sighting the coast of Greenland. It will now enter Davis' Strait, and after touching one or two of the little Danish posts on that dreary coast, it will sail into Baffin's Bay, and then into Smith's Sound, the "threshold of the unknown region." The exploration of this sound has been advanced by the expeditions of Kane, Hayes, and Hall; and the chief aim of this expedition, geographically, will be to reach and explore a latitude beyond that attained by the last-named and ill-fated commander. How this is best to be accomplished may be safely left to the judgment of Captain Nares himself. Speaking broadly, the plan at present proposed is for the two ships to push north up Smith's Sound, or its continuation, to a point as far as the season, or the ice, will permit. One of the ships will remain in this locality, while the other will push still further on if possible, and explore, by boats or sledges, as circumstances may show to be best, the sea and lands lying beyond. In case of disaster the depot- vessel will afford the adventurers a home to fall back upon. It is, however, unnecessary to say that the details of such plans must be altered indefinitely, and that it would be most unwise to strangle the skill of a commander, who has already shown himself so worthy of trust, by the bonds of red tape, which cut-and-dry "instructions" would assuredly be.

What, then, are the objects of this expedition? In the first place, it is the only expedition — since the unfortunate one of Sir John Franklin in the "Erebus" and "Terror" — which the English government has despatched to the Arctic seas for exploration alone. Since 1845 numerous ships flying the pennant have been within the Arctic circle, and have greatly enlarged our knowledge of the circumpolar regions. But they were in search of the expedition of Franklin; discovery was not one of their objects; and though they might have incidentally advanced science, provision was not made for research; and, indeed, so long as the mission they were sent on was unfulfilled, no man dared to think of science or of geographical exploration, brilliant though some of the discoveries made, no doubt, were. Need I remind the reader that on one of these expeditions the North-west Passage was discovered?

But the adventurers in the "Alert" and "Discovery" will have no thought to divert their minds from exploration in the widest sense of the term. Every provision has been made for it consistent with that economy of space which the storage of such a large quantity of fuel and provisions demand. Unlike the case of the "Challenger," there are no posts to visit, where stores can be taken or surplus baggage left. All must be at once taken from England; on this they will have to draw for the whole term of the expedition. The land and seas they are to explore are dreary enough, and an idea obtains that there is really nothing to be done in these far northern lands; that no interest attaches to them from a scientific point of view; and that the naturalists of the Arctic expedition, after they have surveyed their home in the far North, may sit down on its frozen shores and weep, if they are so inclined, because there is there no world for them to conquer. Around the Pole there are about two million five hundred thousand square miles of sea and land yet unknown, and lying virgin for exploration. It must not be supposed that the mere vainglory of reaching the spot known as the North Pole is the object of the equipment of this expedition. "The North Pole," writes Mr. Clements Markham (I quote the ipsissima verba of this eminent geographer because I can find none of my own which more fully express the meaning which I wish to convey), "is merely a spot where the sun's altitude is equal to its declination, and where bearings must be obtained by reference to time and not to the magnet. It will doubtless be reached in the course of exploration, and there is something which takes the imagination of ignorant and uncultivated persons in the idea of standing upon it. But this will not be the main, or even a principal result, of the expedition. The objects in view are the discovery of the conditions of land and sea within the unknown area, and the investigation of all the phenomena in that region, in the various branches of science. These results can only be obtained by facing difficulties, perils, and hardships of no ordinary character; but their vast importance, owing to the additions they will make to the sum of human knowledge, will be an ample recompense."^[1] I mention this, because in some circles the mere vainglory of reaching the North Pole seems to be considered the acme of the labours of the brave and accomplished men who are so soon to leave England, just as among the same people to march up a steep mountain, and then like the king of France, in the nursery rhyme, come down again (if possible with greater celerity than they went up), is the aim and end of all alpine research. In all likelihood the "North Pole" will be found to be situated in the midst of some icy sea, or if on land, in the midst of some dreary waste, its position only ascertainable by a long series of observations by the scientific officers, and differing certainly in no degree from the region immediately surrounding it. It is impossible to say what branches of science will be most advanced by the researches of the expedition. Oftentimes discoveries are made when least expected. One discovery leads to another, and with the material at hand an accomplished naturalist can never fail to make interesting observations, and even deduce important generalizations which those at home, only acquainted with what has already been done, cannot even presage. Still there are a few points in various branches of science which it would be well that the naturalists should attend to, and which the Jeremiahs, who are never weary of crying that all is barrenness, should be aware still require solution, or more extended observations in regard to. Let us take geology. Over the north of Europe — most markedly in Great Britain — America, and in all likelihood Asia also, are found certain remarkable deposits which are believed to date from one of the latest geological epochs, viz., that known as the glacial period, and are known to have been caused by ice. These deposits are very varied, but they may be referred to three great series, viz., great beds of stiff tenacious clay, unfossiliferous, but mixed with rounded boulders most frequently scratched and ice-worn; a series of finely laminated clays, containing fossils, chiefly Arctic shells; and lastly beds of sand and gravel and boulders, rounded and angular, scattered over the country, and belonging to formations not in the immediate vicinity; indeed often far distant from the localities where these boulders and "travelled blocks" are found, showing that they may have been transported by some agency. This agency is now universally conceded to be ice in some form, most likely icebergs. Ice, again, must have been at work in forming the "glacial beds;" but whether floating ice, or some great ice-cap covering the whole country, is as yet undecided, though the preponderance of belief points to the latter as being the mode in which the ice was formed. Agassiz long ago pointed out that Scotland must have been swathed, hill and dale, mountain and valley, in such a great glacier-covering. For long he was treated with incredulity, simply because we knew of no country which at the present time was in such a condition,^[2] and therefore, reasoning on the great principles taught by Lyell, we could not accept such a hypothesis. We now know that Greenland is a country in exactly such a condition, and it is to it that we must look for an explanation of the glacial phenomena of Britain and the rest of the northern hemisphere. The naturalists, by a thorough study of glacial phenomena in that great country of glaciers, can do much to solve the questions now under discussion. In this country, and indeed in any country but Greenland, we cannot do so. Take Mr. James Geikie's "Great Ice Age," as the book which most fully — though still not so fully as it might — treats of these questions, and there is work enough for a geologist lying ready at his hand.

What is the nature of the material lying under the great ice-cap of Greenland? Is it the counterpart of the Scottish boulder-clay or till? Are the finely laminated clays forming in the Greenland ice-fjords from the mud-laden streams which flow out from beneath the glaciers the same as the brick clays of Scotland and elsewhere, as the present writer has shown to be highly probable? Again are the Greenland fjords, as are the fjords in other parts of the world, due to the wearing action of ice, when they formed the beds of great glaciers as Nordens-kjöld and I have argued? Again, the whole question hinges on the theory — not a theory, I believe, but an established fact, but still opinions differ — in regard to the eroding power of ice. In studying ice — sea and land — alone the geologist would be very fully and profitably occupied for a couple of years.

Another question for him to try and solve is this — Is Greenland rising in the north, while we know well that it is sinking in all the region south of Wolstenholme Sound? Are the terraces you find on the shores of Smith's Sound evidences of this general and gradual uprising of the shores going on, or are they only like the terraces you find on the shores of Greenland south of Melville Bay, which we know are evidences of a former uprising, not of one now going on, for at the present time I find others have shown^[3] there are indubitable signs that a gradual sinking of the coast is in progress. Mr. James Geikie — a most competent authority on all questions touching glacial deposits — suggests to me that "it would be very interesting to have determined whether the raised beaches of Greenland give any indication of changes of climate such as have been observed in these deposits in Spitzbergen. Great banks of Mytilus edulis, Cyprind islandica, and Littorina littorea, occur in that island, and none of these species are ever found living in the Spitzbergen sea. It is true that Mytilus is occasionally seen attached to algæ in these regions, but such rare birds are but poor representatives of the banks of the same shell which are met with in the same island. Mr. Nathorst, of the Swedish Geological Survey, tells me that in 1870 he examined these shell-banks, and found one made up of Mytilus resting upon a scratched rock-surface (now far removed from any glacier), and the scratches ran parallel with the fjord. The Mytilus still lives in Greenland, as does also Cyprinà islandica, but Littorina littorea does not. Heer notices these circumstances in his paper 'Die Miocens Flora und Fauna Spitzbergens' {Kongl. Svenska Vet. Akad. Forhand. Band 8, No. 7, p. 23). It would be worth while, I think, for the naturalists attached to the Arctic expedition to examine any raised beaches they may come across, with a view to discover whether the facts bear on the conclusions drawn by Swedish geologists, for it is difficult to believe that a considerable change of climate could take place in Spitzbergen without also leaving traces in North Greenland." All these questions are of deep philosophical interest. There is another not less interesting. The vegetation of Greenland nowadays is meagre enough — no tree, no shrub higher than the knee, and then only in favoured places. But just towards the close of the cretaceous period, and during the miocene age, a luxurious flora of evergreen trees and shrubs, oaks, magnolias, chestnuts, cypresses, red woods, (Sequoia), ebony, etc., flourished in Spitzbergen, Greenland, the Mackenzie River, and Alaska — in fact forming a circumpolar belt of rich vegetation, some of the species of which also stretched far to the south. The Southern States of America or California afford a vegetation which may be compared with this tertiary flora of the Arctic regions. In West Greenland at the present time it is only found in the vicinity of Disco Bay and the Waigat Strait, not stretching beyond 71°, where it is conjoined with beds of coal, and broken through by trap dykes. No doubt its range was at one time much more extensive, and has been circumscribed by the soft strata being destroyed by disintegration and the wearing action of the ice; for we cannot believe that a flora so extensive in its range could have been limited in Greenland to such a small area. Most likely it at one time stretched right across Greenland, before the country got overlain by ice. It would be interesting to find patches of it in the regions geologically unexplored further in the north. The whole geology of such a region would be extremely interesting. Most likely other formations than what we know of in West Greenland will be found in the North. In East Greenland, for instance, liassic beds, unknown on the west coast, have been discovered on Kuhn Island, and there is a probability that other mesozoic beds — perhaps the true carboniferous strata of Melville Island — may be discovered dotting one or other, or both shores of Smith's Sound, or the strait, the entrance to which bears that name.

Some people ask, "What is the good of this expedition?" The plain English of such a question is, I suppose, how much money is to be made out of it? Well, we may at once answer that the "Alert" and "Discovery" expedition is not a joint-stock company, of which Captain Nares is chairman, and that there will be no dividends in the form of pelf to the shareholders, viz., the English taxpayers. There will, however, be a richer reward than any money can give, in the advancement of knowledge, the stimulus it will afford to enterprise, the training of our seamen for future work, and the glory which will attach to the English naval name from the gallant deeds which are sure to be done in the far North by the officers and men attached to it. But still, if the expedition was to discover a vein of cryolite — a mineral only found in one spot in Greenland, and of such value that sometimes twelve or thirteen ships will load with it during the summer — in a locality sufficiently accessible, there are plenty of merchants in the city of London who would gladly pay the costs of the expedition for the privilege of working it. In zoology we must not expect too much. The researches of the expedition will be made in a very high northern latitude, where animal life is scarce. Perhaps the very scarcity of it makes the species which live there more interesting. The extreme northern range of animal or vegetable life is always valuable to know; and accordingly every specimen, more especially of the land fauna, will be an important acquisition to science. The sea even, in high northern latitudes, often swarms with the lower forms of life, particularly on banks, and there the zoologist might reap a rich harvest with the dredge. The sea is often thick with the most beautiful forms of acalephæ, none of which can be preserved in a condition fit for identification or description. They must be described and drawn on the spot. A naturalist, skilful with his pencil and sufficiently instructed in the subject to be capable of describing; these animals accurately, might alone find sufficient for his labour, as day after day the vessel sails along, is "hooked on" to an ice-field, or lies at anchor. Nowadays naturalists are not so particular about having a long list of new animals, or rare species. They are more anxious about the range of particular forms of interest, about questions of structure, and other particulars bearing on the philosophical questions of the day. These points can frequently only be made out by dissections on the spot. The large animals will afford plenty of material to the scalpel of the anatomist. What would a home-staying anatomist give, even to dissect on an ice-floe, a narwhal, or a white whale in a fresh or in any condition. He looks back with sadness to Barclay's description of the white whale, the only one we have, and has a tradition that once a narwhal reached Scotland in brine, and was described by an anatomist who has not yet published his descriptions. The northern ranges of the birds, their nesting, their eggs, their changes of plumage, their parasites, and a dozen other points well known to the ornithologist, would give even this unpromising department of Arctic zoölogy some interest, and yield results which science will not despise. The fishes of the Arctic seas, as the discoveries of late years have shown, are not "worked out," and the fresh-water species of the North will be of extreme interest. Let us only take one or two points as illustrating what may be yet done in even the higher groups. One might suppose that, after the Danes had lived in Greenland for one hundred and fifty years, there were not many new mammals to discover in that country. But we have seen, by the discovery within the last few years of three land mammals previously unknown to the fauna, that this is not the case. Take the musk ox (Ovibos moschatus); Fabricius, no doubt, described it under the name of yak (Bos grunniens) as a member of the Greenland fauna, but all he saw was a skull drifted in the ice from the high North. The gradual discoveries of Kane, Hayes, and lastly of Hall, have shown that in the very highest reaches of Smith's Sound it is quite abundant, though entirely unknown south of the glaciers of Melville Bay. Almost contemporaneous with this discovery was that of the German expedition to East Greenland, that in a high-latitude it was abundant on that coast, though quite unknown further to the south. Take, again, the lemming (Myodes torquatus). Scoresby, and afterwards the German expedition, found it on the north-eastern shores of Greenland; but it was quite unknown on the western shores until Dr. Bessels, of Hall's expedition, obtained it from Smith's Sound. Here is a very curious distribution of life, the same animals being found at about the same latitude on both coasts, and yet unknown south of these parallels. The interior, it is believed, is covered with ice. The animals could not have crossed over a stretch of six hundred or seven hundred miles without food. Have they worked their way round the northern end of the continent, and if so, what is the northern termination of Greenland? Is the interior, as is believed by the best informed physical geographers, covered with a great glacial covering? I think the preponderance of facts is in favour of this view, and that the moraine supposed to have been seen on it, near Upernavik, is only local. Further to the south we find no moraine, and if the ice crossed over or infringed on any land in the interior such moraine would be sure to be found in it. Lastly, the ermine (Mustela erminea) has been found on the east coast, though this animal is entirely unknown on the west. The habits of few of the Arctic mammals are well known, and any notes on these would be interesting. The European birds — in large numbers and of many species — every summer migrate to the furthest North. For what purposes do they migrate, and where do they all go to? Professor Newton, of Cambridge, has called attention to the strange movements of the knot (Tringa canutus), which migrates to Greenland and Iceland, but it soon leaves these regions and must move further to the north; but where it goes to is unknown, and of its nidification we know nothing. It comes to Britain in large numbers — old and young birds — in the autumn, but again soon takes its flight to the far South until the following spring. Where does it go during the summer? To regions less sterile than Greenland and Iceland — but where in the North are those regions? Is this expedition to discover them surrounding the shores of that open sea, in the warmer regions which are believed by some to surround the Pole, but which other sceptical souls have long ceased to plice any faith in? Perhaps not. Still there is no use denying that "there is a great deal to be said" in favour of "the open Polar Sea."

Dr. Hooker's classical paper on the Arctic flora^[4] has so fully explained the peculiar condition of the vegetation of Greenland that, if even my space permitted, any explanation of the phytogeography of that country is unnecessary.

The vegetation — meagre as in all probability it must be — of the far North must be extremely interesting. Already Smith's Sound has yielded additions to the Greenland phanerogamous plants. There are many puzzling varieties of Arctic plants, epilobiums, drabas, dryas, &c., which it would be well to investigate; and the whole flora should be studied, not from the mere dried-hay point of view, but with reference to its origin and nature, as so lucidly and philosophically explained in the treatise of the president of the Royal Society just mentioned. The cryptogams will yield many novelties; lichens, mosses, algæ, &c., will all be found in abundance. We know little of the Arctic algæ. Disco Bay yielded to the present writer almost as many species as had been previously known from the whole Arctic regions. Botany, however, will not be the branch of natural history which will be most advanced by this expedition. Geology or zoölogy will be the greatest winners.

I have only taken up these three sciences as specimens of what maybe done. Even then I have only touched upon one or two points. Had I more space at my disposal, I could have pointed out a score of other questions still requiring solution, and which this expedition can assist in solving, if not solve altogether.

The other branches of science I have purposely avoided, as being foreign to my studies, and my opinion on them can therefore be of little value. Mr. Markham has given an outline of what additions to our knowledge in these departments we may look for from researches in these fields of knowledge, and to his work I refer the reader. For instance, a series of pendulum-observations at or near the Pole would be of service in determining the true figure of the earth. The nearest point to the Pole at which the pendulum has been swung for geodetical purposes is six hundred miles from that point, and yet Sir Edward Sabine's observations are those which we chiefly rely upon for our knowledge of the earth's figure towards its northern termination. Terrestrial magnetism, and the study of the aurora by spectrum analysis, will yield good results — perhaps entirely new. The meteorology, the temperature of the sea at different depths, the nature of the currents, are all important subjects, and may be advanced by the researches of the officers of this expedition.

Finally, additions to our knowledge of the ethnology of the far North may be advanced by a study of the few remnants of the Eskimo now living in Smith's Sound, by an investigation of their kjokkenmöddings, or refuse heaps and grave-mounds,^[5] their wanderings, &c. It may be found, though this is not probable, that detached tribes may be found still higher north than we yet know, and I think it is not improbable that the Eskimo of the east coast of Greenland doubled with the lemming and the musk of the northern extremity of the continent, and then spread to the south. In this case it would be interesting to compare the remains, implements, &c., of Smith's Sound with those of the east coast, brought home by the German expedition, or contained in the Ethnological Museum in Copenhagen.

Elaborate instructions will no doubt be supplied to the naturalists regarding all of these questions.^[6] It is to be hoped that they, like the commander, will not be hampered by too many instructions prepared by naturalists, who, however eminent, may be unaware of the difficulties which a naturalist has to meet with in his researches in such a region. If they are qualified — as doubtless they are — for the duties, then they may be safely left to do what they can. If they are not qualified, then for the credit of English science they had better be left at home. No one, however, who knows the stuff out of which the expedition is composed, will ever hesitate in believing that — though such an expedition is to a great extent at the beck of the ice, and a hundred other circumstances which those who have never sailed the ice-choked seas of the North can have little conception of — every man will do his best; and the best will be very good indeed.

1. "The Threshold of the Unknown Region," 3rd edition, p. 325.
2. Yet in 1780 Otho Fabricius wrote ("Fauna Groenlandica," p. 4), "Interioribus ob plagam glacialem continuam inhabitabilibus;" and Lars Dalager, among others, described the "inland ice."
3. "Physics of Arctic Ice," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxvii. (1871); Pop. Sc. Rev., August 1871.
4. Trans. Linnæan Soc. vol. xxiii. p. 251; Proc Roy. Geog. Soc. 18/1, &c.
5. It has been found that the iron which faces the old bone knives found in the old Eskimo graves in Greenland is meteoric.
6. Arctic Committees of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society, at the suggestion of Mr. Markham, are now preparing manuals, giving a summary of our knowledge of Greenland.