stefansson-wrangel-09-31-022v

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10 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

a rational view of the earth is Mercator with his grotesque
chart. The earth is flat in the idiom of our speech, it is
flat when you look out through your window, and it is
flat when you glance at a wall where hangs a map with
Greenland looking twice as big as Australia, though it is
only half as big, and with the north coasts of Alaska, Can-
ada, and Siberia stretching horizontally from east to
west. It is simple and natural to consider the earth as
flat. The sailor knows how simple it is in theory to cross
the ocean on the presumption of flatness, but he knows
also that nobody but a fool would do it. Hence that
picturesque expression “plane sailing,” which describes
a thing so easy that any fool can do it.

The navigators are among the few people who have to
apply day by day their knowledge that the earth is round.
Most of the rest of us seldom feel ourselves under the
same compulsion. We speak of the “top” of the earth,
and we have on our wall Mercator’s chart with Canada
and Siberia at the top. We see the arctic islands lying
between continents on one side and the ceiling on the
other, and we get the idea that they lie between Canada
and Siberia on one side and infinity or nothingness on
the other. This misleading presentation has actually
led to the half-formulation of a doctrine of international
law to the effect that one land belongs to another because
of lying to the north. That would be logical if the earth
were flat and had a farther edge. It looks logical on
Mercator’s chart, but the logic wholly disappears when
you consider the map of the northern hemisphere. Such
maps are rare. The summer of 1923 I visited every well-
known shop in London and was unable to buy a map of
the northern hemisphere, except on a small and practically
diagrammatic scale as a sort of footnote to a map of the

Notes and Questions

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jessiesusan

Note about the editor added at top, not sure where to put it. "English Editor: Be sure this is not changed to "plain sailing".

Samara Cary

Using the add tag around it, I'd put it just after the circled text.