THE TOP AND THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
If you look at a good map of the world, you will find that all the vertical lines - the longitudes - meet at the top and the bottom of the map. The point where they meet at the top is the North Pole and the point at the bottom is the South Pole. If you are at the North Pole, every direction will be south and if you are at the South Pole every direction will be north.
It was only a few hundred years ago that men began to think about going to the poles. but no one was able to give a satisfactory answer. It was the North Pole that attracted them first later on, they began to think about the south Pole too. It is probable that even centuries ago some brave sailors had attempted to reach the poles but there are no records of such attempts. During the nineteenth century sailors made several attempts to reach the North Pole but they were not successful. However, in the first few years of this century a few courageous explorers reached the poles.
Before we go on to the deeds of these brave men, here is some information about the poles. The two poles are not the same.
First of all, there is no land at the North Pole. It is just a vast ocean, the Arctic Ocean, with massive sheets of ice. This ice is thousands of square miles in area. At the South Pole. However, there is land. In fact, there is a nuge continent there, Antarctica. But it is impossible to see land anywhere in Antarctica because it is all covered with ice through the year.
Secondly, the South Pole is Colder. Both the Poles are very cold, of course, but the South Pole is the colder of the two.
Thirdly, there is a difference in the animals that live in the two polar regions. The plants are different too. The North pole has a grater variety of animal and plant life than the South Pole. You may think that nothing can live on ice. But animals and birds do live in these regions. There are big animals like the polar bear and the musk-ox in the north polar region. There are also smaller animals - wolves and foxes in this region. These are land animals which live on the ice. There are the sea animals too the walrus and the seal. And there are gos. They have a special name, huskies. There are also people living in the north polar region. They live a few hundred miles away from the pole but they live and work on the ice all the time. Haven't you heard about these peoples? They are Eskimos and the y live mainly on the food they get from the sea.
Eskimos are short and sturdy. They are excellent hunters and they are very hard-working. They build their huts with ice and live in them all the time. Do you think you can live in a house made of ice? Well, Eskimos have nothing else for building houses with. They use ice. Igloos looks like round tents and they have very small entrances. This is for keeping the inside as warm as possible. The entrances are covered with dried skins and Eskimos crawl in and crawl out of their igloos. Eskimos can walk long distances on ice and snow. They use peculiar shoes which look like tennis rackets. These prevent their feet from sinking into the soft snow. They have small boats - kayaks - and they sail in them on the Arctic Ocean and catch fish, and hunt the seal and the walrus. They make good nets for catching fish with and they have sharp spears for killing animals with. They are able to kill the seal, the walrus and even the polar bear with their spears.
Polar bears are very strong animals. They can travel very fast on ice and they are capable of traveling long distances even in extremely cold weather. Their thick, white fur protects them from the cold, even in the icy waters of the Arctic. They are excellent swimmers and it is easy for them to swim miles in the freezing waters of the Arctic. They eat fish and the flesh of seals and walruses. They kill seals and walruses om an interesting way. The Arctic Ocean is covered with ice but the ice is broken in certain places and there are holes. Seals and walruses are sea animals and live in the sea. But they come up for air frequently. When the sea is covered with ice they come up for air at the holes in the ice. Polar bears know this and they wait at the holes for seals and walruses to come up. As soon as a seal comes up, the bear strikes a mighty blow on the head of the seal and then pulls it out of the water quickly. Some times the bear strikes so hard that the seal, which may weigh about two hundred pounds, is pulled out of the hole and thrown yards away from it with its skull shattered. The bear always strikes like lightning with its foreleg and seldom uses its powerful jaws in killing its prey. There is hardly any other animal in the world with such strength in its forelegs. Eskimos hunt polar bears. They are very careful and cunning in their hunting. They seldom go near a polar bear when it is on hard ice, for on hard ice the polar bear is all-powerful. They scarcely every face it then. The hunters wait until the bear is in the water. When the bear is swimming, it cannot use its mighty forelegs for defending itself. The hunters chase it in their kayaks and go close to it. Then from both sides they close in and attack it with their spears. Even in water the bear fights very hard. Generally, the hunters win and the bear is killed. Sometimes the bear wins. It overturns the kayaks with its forelegs and then kills the hunters with its powerful jaws. But this rarely happens for Eskimos are very good sailors and their kayaks are fast and turn with lightning speed in the water. After the bear has been killed, they drag it along in the water, pull it on to the hard ice and cut it up with their sharp knives. They use the skin for covering themselves with, eat the meat and burn the fat in their small lamps inside their igloos. Any Eskimo who kills a polar bear is a hero among his people. In fact, some of them have names which mean the man who has killed two polar bears 'or' the great enemy of polar bears.
The musk-ox is another animal which lives on the icy plains of the north polar region. It is also capable of moving long distances on ice just like the polar bear. It moves quickly too. It is very agile on ground which is covered with rocks and ice. Eskimos often hunt and kill these animals too for food. When they have too much meat or fish and cannot eat it all immediately, Eskimos simply bury it in the ice. They dig it up later whenever they need it. Eskimos have the biggest and the best refrigerator in the world- the north polar region.
Huskies, which are only found in the north polar region, are very hardy animals. Eskimos use them for drawing their ice-carts, called sledges. Huskies work like our bullocks and horses and they draw sledges over long distances. They are just dogs but they have heavy fur on their bodies. They have heavy fur on their bodies. They can live in very cold temperature without much difficulty. In fact, Eskimos do not put them in igloos or in any kind of shelter. These animals do not need any shelter. They just curl up and go to sleep in the open, in ice and snow. They look like balls of fur in the ice and sometimes the wind covers them with snow. Huskies sleep comfortably in the snow. When they wake up, they break the snow and come out. If the snowfall is heavy, their masters dig in the snow and pull them out. Huskies are useful animals but it is difficult to control them. They are very quarrelsome creatures. They are seldom quiet. They are quiet only when they sleep. They fight among themselves even when they are working. In any group of huskies there is always a leader, a sort of king. It is usually the biggest and the strongest in the group. The others obey the leader without question. Its authority is seldom challenged and scarcely any dog every fights with it. Eskimos train the leader of a group to draw sledges and then the whole group is generall willing to draw sledges.
There are usually six to ten dogs to each sledge. They are tied in pairs, one pair behind the other. The leader is in the first pair and if the leader works well, all the rest work well too. All explorers in the polar regions use huskies for drawing sledges. Once an experiment was was conducted with huskies. There were two groups of huskies and they were trained in different ways. One group was trained with kindness and affection. The dogs were never beaten and their trainers never shouted at them or beat them. The other group was not shown any affection or kindness. The dogs in this group were often whipped and the trainers always shouted at them. Both groups had a lot of work to do and both groups had lots of food to eat. At the end of the training period it was found that the dogs in both groups were still very quarrelsome, but the dogs in the first group were better trained and they worked better. Kindness was certainly more effective than unkindness.
The South Pole has fewer varieties of life. There are no land animals at all. This is strange because there is land, a vast continent under the ice, at the pole, there are, of course sea animals there - seals and walruses. there are no bears, no wolves or dogs. There are neither land animals nor people at the south Pole. This is because the region is mcuh colder than the north polar region. There is very little plant life and there are hardly any insects near the South Pole.
The South Pole, however, has a very interesting kind of bird- the penguin. Penguins have very short and weak wings and they cannot fly. But they are very strong swimmers. They have strong webbed feet like ducks and they are very good at catching fish because they can swim and dive very well. Their main food is, of course fish.
Penguins love playing in the sea, and on land too. They are very playful creatures. when they are on land or ice, they stand erect on their short legs. They look almost like little men when they stand. They cannot walk very well on their webbed feet. The way they walk is very peculiar. Their heads and shoulders swing from side to side and their legs move swiftly. They look very funny when they walk.
These strange birds play all sorts of games. Explorers have reported that penguins pick up small round pebbles from the sea-shore and present them to one another!. One penguin runs to the shore in its funny way, picks up a pebble, runs back and puts it at the feet of its friend. Then the other one runs to the shore and comes back with a nice, round pebble and puts it at the feet of the first penguin. And this goes on for hours. In their excitement penguins flap their little wings, fall on the ice and roll and tumble about like little children.
There is another game too. When they see a big pile of snow, penguins climp up the pile. It is very difficult for them but they try hard with a lot of pushing and flapping of winds. some slip and roll down. Then all the others turn round, flap their wings in joy and make a lot of noise. As soon as they have reached the top, they slide down the slopes like small children. All the time they make a lot of noise and peck each other playfully. This game too goes on for hours and hours. When they get tired, they walk back to the sea, catch a lot of fish and have a good dinner.
The early explorers who went to the south polar region were greatly surprised at the sight of these birds. They exclaimed, `What funny creatures!' and `How playful they are !' If you saw them, your would say the same thing too.