Canada and the USSR together possess most of the territory in the Northern Hemisphere underlain by permafrost or perennially frozen ground. As about one half of the land area of each country is affected, the permafrost region of the Soviet Union is 2½ times larger than that of Canada. Outside mountainous regions, permafrost extends southward in Canada to the southern tip of James Bay at lat 51° N (Brown, in press). Permafrost extends farther south in eastern Asia, however, and occurs in Outer Mongolia and Manchuria to about lat 47° N Fig 1) (Baranov, 1959; Nekrasov, 1962).

[The list of officers and crew of HMS Investigator, 1850–53, contains the name “James Nelson, AB”. Recently J. W. Nelson, a descendant of Nelson's, brought to the Institute two copy-books containing accounts by him of the last voyage of Investigator, the discovery of the North West Passage and the return of the surviving members of the ship's company to England after the abandonment of the ship in the Bay of Mercy, Banks Island, in June 1853. Both accounts were obviously written carefully after the author's return, presumably from diary notes. The handwriting is neat copperplate with alterations in another hand. Little is known of the origins or later history of James Nelson, whose command of contemporary literary style and facility of expression must have been unusual in an AB of the period. His naval Certificate of Service is as follows:

One of the biggest problems facing those who seek to exploit the natural riches of the north is the attraction and retention of a labour force. This problem is sometimes more intractable even than those posed more directly by the remoteness of the locality and the harshness of the environment. No easy or simple solution has been found, but it may be of interest to record some of the recent steps taken by the Soviet Government towards its solution.

McMurdo Sound is well known as an area comparatively free from fast ice during the middle and late summer. Although closed to its discoverer in February 1841 by contrary winds, pack ice and new ice (Ross, 1847), the sound provided easy access to high latitudes in January and February on at least ten occasions between 1902 and 1916. Since 1955, icebreakers have assisted shipping movements in November and December, and possibly helped in dispersing the winter fast ice by cutting wide channels from Cape Bird southward. However, northerly swells and south-easterly gales are sufficient in most years to disperse fast ice from the southern end of the sound by mid or late February (Heine, 1963).