Subtitled "Captain Bob," Who Went North with Peary, Tells of 42 Years of Exploration in the Orphan Island of New Aerial and Naval Interest”
Since that first visit I have made more than 30 exploratory trips to Greenland in the last 15 years, taking with me on my schooner Effie M. Morrissey lads from the preparatory schools and colleges and gathering data and specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and other scientific societies, as well as birds and animals for zoos.
I have observed the development of the country's resources under the intelligent management of Denmark, have seen the Eskimos gradually adopting white men's ways of living, and have learned that the snow fields of the icecap, the open land along the shore, and the sheltered fjords provide excellent landing fields for airplanes and hide-outs for war vessels.
Each summer Danish ships have brought tools, foodstuffs, and clothing to the people of Greenland. Who will furnish these supplies now?
To keep the United States Government informed on conditions on the "orphan island," Mr. James K. Penfield has been appointed the first American consul to Greenland. On May 10 last, accompanied by Mr. George L. West as vice-consul, he sailed on the U. S. cutter Comanche for Godthaab.
When Germany entered Denmark, the question arose whether this "protectorate" extends to Denmark's island of Greenland, and, if it does, what the effect will be on North Americans.
The answer, it seems to me, is found in geography. If military forces come to Greenland, they will find a diverse island, beautiful, amazing, difficult, icebound; yet a place which might very well serve as a year-round base for air operations and in summer for maneuvers by sea and land.
The distance from the west coast of Greenland to Cape Dyer, Canada, is less than 200 miles, and northern Greenland is only 12 to 14 miles from Ellesmere Island. It is only 200 miles as the sea bird flies from Greenland to Iceland, and from there 500 miles to the British Isles, 625 to Norway.
Thus, while Greenland belongs to North America, it is actually a convenient stepping-stone for airplanes flying to this continent from Europe.
Before I set down my notes of specific voyages, I wish I could put on paper the wonder and bafflement I felt when, as a newcomer to the North, on my original Peary expedition, I saw the picture of just what Greenland comprises.
First, it is an island, the largest in the world, and one of the most sparsely inhabited. In the interior is the vast, forbidding waste of ice which has been accumulating in mystery and splendor since the beginning of time, or, at any rate, since blind Nature in the glacial period set her inscrutable machinery to work.
It is more than three times as big as Texas. But a good four-fifths of its 827,300 square miles lies mute and frozen beneath the icecap which has filled the dead valleys and made them level with the mountain tops.
All the visible land of Greenland is a sort of uncovered band, stretching about the coast, 4 to 20 miles wide, but in a few places widening to as much as 112 miles on the west coast and to 180 or so on the east coast.
Interior Greenland today is a majestic plateau of ice. Over this plateau in the old Peary days, we made our sledge journeys across the icecap a full 6,000 feet above the level of the sea. What sleds from the sky may alight there soon I can only conjecture.
The snow of the Arctic has not changed, nor have the ice-locked mountains of Greenland; but the changes which have come over the Eskimos are profound.
In the old days Peary compared the Greenland Eskimos as he had found them on his first trips, with the Eskimos as he left them when the great venture of the North Pole had…"
7” x 10”, 30 pages, 25 B&W photos plus map
These are pages from an actual 1940 magazine.
40G3
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