POPULAR ERRORS.

BY VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON.

IL—THAT THE FURTHER NORTH THE COLDER.

MANY think the North Pole is the coldest place in the northern hemisphere, and nearly everybody believes that the minimum temperatures of the Arctic are much lower than those of any countries ordinarily inhabited by people of our wace. Still, there are few of us who could not get rid of those opinions by analysing and applying knowledge which we have had in our minds since our schooldays.

We know well, but we realize little, the three chief factors that make for extreme cold. They are distance north from the equator, height above the sea, and distance away from the sea. We know there are these three factors ; and still we allow the one of distance north to control almost wholly our general ideas con- cerning the temperature of the world.

In January the cold will be greater as we increase one of the three factors if the two others remain constant. That is to say, if altitude and distance from the sea remain the same, then the weather will generally be colder the farther north you go. Similarly, if distance north and elevation above- sea level both are the same. then the place will be colder the farther you go away from the sea. The like holds more or less true of altitude.

This is not a technical discussion. In order to be absolutely accurate we would have to consider various other minor factors, such as wind currents, ocean currents, and the like. We are interested here merely in conveying a true general impression.

Apply the three factors to the question of whether the North Pole is the coldest place in the northern hemisphere. It is far north ; but it is not high above sea level because it lies in the ocean, and it is not far from the ocean because it lies in the ocean. Having only one of the three factors that make a place extremely cold, it can never be extremely cold. It is not. It is probably never colder than 60° below zero, Fahr.

Whether 60° below is very cold is a matter of opinion. I lectured once in Jackson, Mississippi, and found that seats which had been sold before my arrival remained vacant. I can easily see why people might refrain from buying an opportunity to hear me, but I found it difficult to see why they would stay away after paying. On inquiry I learned the weather was too cold for them to come out, and that the management actually intended to refund the money, considering the excuse adequate. The temperature was 40° above zero. There was a drizzling rain, but what the people talked about was the cold.

Two weeks later I spoke to a crowded house at Ypsilanti, Michigan, with a temperature well below zero (I think about 20° below). I asked -several people there- what they thought of the weather, and all spoke of it enthusias- tically as delightful. There was no arguing with the people of Jackson who said that 40° above was unfit weather, nor is there any arguing in Michigan or the Adirondacks with people who are enamoured of 20° below. We cannot, accordingly, prove to anyone that 60° below is not disagreeably cold ; but we can at least show him that there are many places inhabited by healthy and reasonably contented Europeans that are at times colder than the North Pole.

We do not know for certain whether the North Pole is ever 60° below zero. What we do know is that off and on for the last forty years the American Government has had a weather bureau station at Point Barrow, three hundred miles north of the Arctic circle, without ever recording a temperature lower than 54° below zero, exactly the same as the lowest Government record for Herschel Island on the north coast of Canada. We believe that any reports by travellers of weather colder than that on the north coast of America are due to instrumental faults or to the inaccuracy of the observers.

The other two factors which determine extreme low temperatures are altitude and distance from the sea. The lowest records should, therefore, be at places which are reasonably far north, fairly high up and a considerable distance away from any ocean. In North America we find such places in the Rockies. We are not consider- ing mountain tops. We must confine ourselves to places where people actually reside, not only because they are the sort of places we are interested in but also because they are the only places for which we have reliable and numerous weather records.

At first sight it would appear that we ought to have, the coldest Rocky Mountain records somewhere in the Yukon. It does happen that the Canadian Weather Bureau has recorded there 68° below zero at mining camps in the remote mountain districts. But you can get farther away from the ocean by going farther south along the. Rockies, and accordingly we have weather bureau records from towns in the State of Montana, a thousand miles farther south, that are exactly equal-68° below zero, or 14 degrees colder than it has ever been known to be on the north coast of North America and probably from five to ten degrees colder than it ever is at the North Pole.

There are no great cities in North America that have temperatures as low as the theoretical figure for the North Pole, but there are some which drop as low as any records for the Arctic coast of North America. Winnipeg with 200,000 inhabitants is one of these.

Nome, Alaska, is just south of the Arctic circle, and they seldom have 45° below zero. Out of the many winters spent by my expeditions in the Polar regions there have been several when the temperature never dropped below -46°. The Crocker Land Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History and the American Geographical Society spent four years at Etah in North Greenland at 78i. N. Latitude, about eight hundred miles north of the Arctic circle, without ever recording at winter quarters a temperature lower than 42° below zero. The minimum United States Bureau record for towns in Pennsylvania is 42° below zero, for New England 45°, New York 46°, North Dakota 54°, and Montana 68° below zero.

If a combination of distance north, height above and distance away from the sea really gives the coldest winter temperatures, then we ought to find them not in North America but in the far greater land mass of Asia. So we do. There are towns of eight and ten thousand Russians (blond Europeans) that have a temperature as low as 70° and even 80° below zero, and the village of Verk- hoyansk has an official record of 98° below zero. That is a temperature 89° colder than has ever been recorded on the North coast of North America and 20° or 80° colder than it ever has been at the North Pole. Yet this is a kind of farming community. I have been unable to get information about the town itself as to crops, but in the general district in which it lies they are given by ordinary reference works as rye, barley, oats and certain garden vegetables. That these should be the products seems less strange when we find that the summer record for Verkhoyansk is 92° in the shade, which is con- sidered hot in New York and intolerable in London. Verkhoyansk itself, the coldest known inhabited place in the northern hemisphere, is just north of the Arctic circle, but a few miles south of the circle in the same locality we have temperatures of 85° below zero, some 15° or 25° lower than the North Pole.

I usually find it difficult to get people to believe that I have never been seriously inconvenienced by the cold in ten Polar winters, and that I certainly have never " suffered " from it. That is because they do not under- stand how we dress and what comfortable camps we make. Still, it should enlighten us on this point to realize that in the Adirondacks and in Ontario winter sports are popular at temperatures similar to those we ordinarily have in Polar exploration, and that in Dakota, Montana, Manitoba and the Saskatchewan there are thousands of farm children trudging to school at similar temperatures. The inhabitants of the beautiful and prosperous town of El Centro, California, have told me it is impracticable to hold church services for two or three months in mid- summer for no one will come because of the heat. But in Havre, Montana, which has minimum records lower than the theoretical figure for the North Pole, I am told that church services have never been suspended in mid- winter, and that the school attendance is not materially lowered on even the coldest days. That is, of course, because our clothes and houses and heating systems have enabled us to control the cold far better than we yet can control the heat.