The scientific work to account for the sliding properties of snow and ice is not abundant. Osborne Reynolds suggested that a skate slid on ice owing to the lubrication caused by pressure-melting. Bowden and Hughes, after studying the measurements made by the last-named as physicist to our glaciological expedition to the Jungfraujoch in 1938, formed the opinion that this could not alone account for the action of ski sliding upon snow. I had reached a somewhat similar conclusion some years ago after a study of the structure of snow crystals on the surface of snow fields.

Following directly on the voyages of Captain Cook, who had been killed at Hawaii in 1779, there was a growing interest in the search for a North-West Passage. Although it must have been apparent at an early date that no practicable trade route would be discovered, interest in this geographical feature of the world was not only sustained, but grew right up until the middle of last century. During the Napoleonic Wars, as in the wars of our own times, polar exploration had suffered. With a return to the more humdrum conditions of peace, it was revived with redoubled vigour, reaching a climax in the remarkable series of searched following the disappearance of Her Majesty's Ships Erebus and Terror under Captain Sir John Franklin.

In Rome in the year 1555 a book, written by Olaus Magnus, the Archbishop of Upsala, and Primate of Suetia and Gothia, was published to the world with a fine resounding title. It claimed to be “A History of the Northern Peoples, their different states, conditions, manners, ceremonies, superstitions, training, mode of life, diet, methods of warfare, buildings, tools, mines, and marvels, and also of nearly all the animals that dwell in the North and of their nature. A work, which while varied and crammed with information on many subjects, with examples drawn from other countries and with printed pictures of native affairs, is also full of delight and entertainment, easily flooding the mind of the reader with the greatest pleasure. With a very full index.”—full indeed, for it extends over sixty-five pages. The writer of this remarkable volume, Olaus Magnus, was born at Linköping in 1490, and knew his northern countries well, as became a former canon of Upsala. But already the Reformation was beginning to disturb those parts, and from 1527 onwards Olaus spent most of his time in Rome, so that his Archbishopric of Upsala and Primateship were titular only. This may serve to explain some references to the Lutheranorum detestabilis impostura or to the temeraria praesumptio of the Lutherans, whom he regards as the “spreaders of every kind of crime and impurity”.

During the eight years I spent in the Arctic, I have experimented with a variety of clothing, but in neither winter nor summer have I found any more suitable than that worn by the present-day Eskimos in districts where caribou are still plentiful. From 1938 to 1941 we prepared all our own skins, and my wife made all the skin clothing excepting the seal-skin boots. The descriptions are primarily intended to give practical information on clothing to travellers in Arctic regions. For this reason we have made no attempt to discuss women's clothing. My wife adopted men's clothing because of its superior convenience, and because it requires less material. Women's clothing is made with a view both of being different from the men's and of accommodating the baby, always carried on the back. Except as otherwise indicated, both the clothing and the methods of preparation here described are those of the Eskimos of Baffin Island, Melville Peninsula, Southampton Island, and the coastal region from Repulse Bay to Chesterfield Inlet; and where mention is made of “the Eskimos”, the reference is to those of these regions only.

The most stirring event in the Arctic in 1944 was the return voyage of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Schooner St Roch from Halifax to Vancouver by the North-West Passage. Not only was it the first passage made in a single summer season, but it was also by a new and probably better route. In her 1940–42 voyage the St Roch had followed Amundsen's southerly track in the reverse direction, namely eastwards. In 1944 Staff-Sergeant (now Sub-Inspector) H. A. Larsen was again in command for the return westward, but on this occasion a northern route was chosen via Barrow Strait and Melville Sound, where Parry had made his attempts in 1819 and 1820 and Bernier in 1908 and 1910.

The Falkland Islands Dependencies are divided into two main groups; the one consisting of South Georgia with its important whaling stations together with the South Orkneys and the South Sandwich Islands, and the other of the South Shetlands and the Graham Land peninsula. Coats Land and other large land areas in the Antarctic continent itself are also included. The Dependencies were the first part of Antarctica to be brought under British control, and are defined in Letters Patent of 1908 and 1917.

When Sir Leopold McClintock returned from King William Land in 1859, he stated that none of Sir John Franklin's officers and men could still be living, and the principal Arctic authorities entirely agreed with him. Nevertheless, a dissentient voice was raised in the United States by Captain Charles Francis Hall. Convinced that survivors might still be found, he undertook two Arctic expeditions in search of them. His first expedition, to Frobisher Bay (1860–62), yielded no relevant information, and need not be described. On the other hand, his second expedition, which lasted five years (1864–69), was not in vain. He spent the first winter near Wager River, and the other four winters at Repulse Bay, and made many journeys from his winter quarters. The stories told him by Eskimos convinced him at first that his long-cherished belief was founded on fact, and he informed his friends in the United States that survivors of the Franklin expedition might still be alive. Not until he himself had visited King William Land in 1869 did he realise that he had been too sanguine.

The preceding article by Mr Seligman has broken the ground for a review of what is known about the nature of friction on sledge runners, which is so vital an element in polar travel.