FLYING NORTHWARD
This account by Captain Amundsen of his attempt with five companions to cross, by air, the Arctic Circle, employs our imagination, for it is More rousing than a Viking saga ; to the loneliness of northern sea and white berg is added that of air disturbed by man for the first time. We recapture the excite- ment of those fir-off days when the Brothers Wright, by aid of pylon and gradient, rose in their biplane, and when Bleriot crossed the Channel. In a civilized land with its network of communications, the aeroplane still remains an accessory, a speedier memiS of transport for :those who are in a foolish hurrY but in those desolate regions, north or south, where min has had to fight his way by painful inches, with only the aid of dog and sledge, slowly crossing or circumventing the icy ranges ,and delayed by ever changing ice-floes, the advan- tages of mechanical flight are obviously incomparable. Only an actual explorer can realize that change to the full. Stern Nature and the transitional state of the aeroplane rendered the attempt of Amundsen 'a hazardous and heroic experiment. Two machines of the Dornier-Wall type with fore and aft pro- pellers, and flying boats of durable aluminium were used, having been conveyed by ship in gigantic cases to, King's Bay, Spitzbergen. The start of No. 25 from the frozen fjord, quickly followed by the companion machine, No. 20, is strangely exciting. Over sea and icy reseh,es, the prior machine flew steadily for a day and a half, until 88. 30' N. Lat. was reached. There a forced landing was imperative and thb machine came to a stop in a narrow_ ice fissure. The feat of getting the machine out of the crevice, which threatened at any moment to close and crush the frail mechanical. bird was Homeric. . Tons of ice had to be dug away. and aauitIble stretch from- which the aeroplane might rise lufd to-he_preparede The Magnitude of the task may be judged from th,fact that it took the six men from the 22nd of May to the 15th of June, hampered by weather and an alarming decrease of food supplies, to accomplish it—all - that period during which Europe and Ameriea anxiously awaited tidings of the missing expedition. Much Of the problem of Arctic flight, owing to the present limitation of the aeroplane, deals with the diffi- culty of finding a landing place, for the- water-lanes and ice- surfaces are deceptive in appearance and obviously the slightest miscalculation means disaster. Valuable meteoro- logical observations were taken, and Captain Amundsen agrees with Peary's opinion that no land exists in the northern: sector of the Arctic Ocean. Mr. LincolnEllsworth, the American. *ho accompanied the explorers and by whose financial aid the expedition was, in fact, made possible, contributes, in an in- teresting chapter, his impressions of the great flight.
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