Exploring English 2 Pdf

[Slikk Huisenga]

Northof the Arctic Circle, about 280 miles (450 km) east of Greenland and 340 miles (550 km) north of Iceland, the mysterious Jan Mayen rises from the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean. Often shrouded in thick fog, the small mountainous island was declared a nature reserve in 2010 and is rarely visited, save for the 18 rotating personnel of the Norwegian military and Norwegian Meteorological Institute, who are the only year-long inhabitants, save for some additional personnel during the summer.

As we sail farther north, spend some time with your shipmates in the lounge, swapping stories and photos, or take the opportunity to learn about the regions travelled with your experienced and knowledgeable Expedition Team.

Rugged, wild and situated entirely within the Arctic Circle, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago is unforgettable. From immense glaciers to lush tundra to polar deserts, the landscape here is as varied as the wildlife.

A 12-mile (20 km) long sound, Bellsund lured miners a century ago to its natural resources. Today, visitors come to Bourbonhamna and Calypsobyen to see historic mining and trapper sites and marvel at the magnificent vistas. It may also be possible to hike along the colorful tundra, dotted with flowers bursting for a taste of sunshine, and discover old whale bones.

The time has come to say farewell to your newfound friends and Expedition Team. After disembarking, spend the day exploring the frontier-style settlement of Longyearbyen before catching the charter flight to Helsinki.

Deck 4 offers guests two categories of suites. The Balcony Suites feature one double or two single beds, and a 52 sq. ft. (4.8 sq. m) balcony, a refrigerator, safe, TV, and a bathroom with shower and heated floors. (Some Balcony Suites offer interconnecting rooms.) The larger Deluxe Balcony Suites feature one double or two single beds, a 70 sq. ft. (6.5 sq. m) balcony, refrigerator, safe, TV, and a bathroom with shower, bathtub and heated floors.

One of only two possible landing sites on Jan Mayen is Kvalrossbukta. This small bay is the site of the remains of a 17-century whaling station. The island is home to a variety of birdlife, including a large colony of northern fulmar, which is also located here.

With a population of just 65 people, Fair Isle is the most remote inhabited island in the United Kingdom. It is also the best place to find rare birds in Britain, with records of 27 first sightings as well as one of top destinations in the Scottish Isles to view the sea parrot, the Atlantic puffin.

Home to 2,400 people, the administrative capital of Svalbard is situated on the southern side of Adventfjord.The settlement was founded in 1905 by John Munroe Longyear, the majority owner of the Arctic Coal Company of Boston. Today as much as ever, this is a true frontier town.

They called it the U.S. Ex. Ex., or simply the Ex. Ex., shorthand for the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842. It was an unprecedented naval operation, especially for a nation with a navy that was less than half the size of Great Britian's. For the young republic of the United States, it was a bold, some said foolhardy undertaking, consisting of six sailing vessels and 346 men, including a team of nine scientists and artists, making it one of the largest voyages of discovery in the history of Western exploration.

With the U.S. Ex. Ex., America hoped to plant its flag in the world. Literally broadening the nation's horizons, the Expedition's ships would cover the Pacific Ocean from top to bottom and bring the United States international renown for its scientific endeavors as well as its bravado. European expeditions-most notably the three voyages of the legendary navigator James Cook in the eighteenth century-had served both the cause of science and empire, providing new lands with which to augment their countries' already far-flung possessions around the world. The United States, on the other hand, had more than enough unexplored territory within its own borders. Commerce, not colonies, was what the U.S. was after. Besides establishing a stronger diplomatic presence throughout the Pacific, the Expedition sought to provide much-needed charts to American whalers, sealers, and China traders. Decades before America surveyed and mapped its own interior, this government-sponsored voyage of discovery would enable a new, determined nation to take its first tentative steps toward becoming an economic world power.

But there was yet another reason for America to launch an expedition. Although most of the oceans of the world had already been thoroughly explored, there remained a region that had so far resisted scientific inquiry: the ice-studded mystery at the bottom of the world. Cook had ventured below the Antarctic Circle and found nothing but snow and ice. Given the dangerous conditions and the slender prospect of significant results, further exploration hardly seemed warranted. But by 1838 there was renewed interest in the high southern latitudes. What had once been regarded as a forbidding wasteland was now one of the few places left where a discovery of Cook-like proportions might still be possible. With the U.S. Ex. Ex., America belatedly joined an international rivalry to discover and explore the last unknown portions of the planet.

The Expedition was to attempt two forays south-one from Cape Horn, the other from Sydney, Australia, during the relatively warm months of January, February, and March. The time in between was to be spent surveying the islands of the South Pacific-particularly the little-known Fiji Group. The Expedition's other priority was the Pacific Northwest. In the years since Lewis and Clark had ventured to the mouth of the Columbia River, the British and their Hudson's Bay Company had come to dominate what was known as the Oregon territory. In hopes of laying the basis for the government's future claim to the region, the Ex. Ex. was to complete the first American survey of the Columbia and would continue down the coast to California's San Francisco Bay, then still a part of Mexico. By the conclusion of the voyage-after stops at Manila, Singapore, and the Cape of Good Hope-the Expedition would become the last all-sail naval squadron to circumnavigate the world.

The Ex. Ex had begun with the grand, sweeping vision of a former newspaper editor from Ohio named Jeremiah Reynolds. In a stirring speech before Congress in April 1836, Reynolds proposed that America mount an expedition on a scale that had never before been attempted. In keeping with the giant size and boundless ambition of the young nation it represented, the U.S. expedition would "collect, preserve, and arrange every thing valuable in the whole range of natural history, from the minute madrapore to the huge spermaceti, and accurately describe that which cannot be preserved." In addition, the expedition's scientists would study the languages and customs of the many peoples they encountered, while also collecting data concerning weather, navigation, the earth's magnetism, and other fields of interest.

At a time when a trip to the Pacific was equivalent to a modern-day trip to the moon, a voyage of this kind offered scientists a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to investigate exotic habitats: rain forests, volcanoes, tropical lagoons, icebergs, and deserts. Before cameras and video equipment, the only way scientists could convey the scope and essence of what had been observed, besides field notes and sketches, was to bring the specimens back with them. Whether it involved shooting and skinning animals and birds, preserving delicate marine organisms in bottles of alcohol, pressing and drying plants, collecting seeds, or accumulating boxes of rocks, fossils, shells, and coral, scientists in European expeditions had inevitably returned with staggering numbers of objects. In America, there was not, as of yet, any kind of national scientific organization or museum, begging the question, where were the collections of the Expedition to be stored? Indeed, what Jeremiah Reynolds had failed to mention in his inspirational speech to Congress was that the United States, where the study of science had never been a priority, lacked the institutions required to sponsor and organize an expedition of this scale.

Government-sponsored exploration in America had begun with Lewis and Clark in 1803. Although the expedition succeeded in alerting the American people to the promise of the West, no provision was made to do anything with its results. The journals would remain unpublished for more than a decade; the botanical collection eventually ended up in England, while other specimens and artifacts were scattered among scientific societies throughout America. From an institutional and policy point of view, it was as if the expedition had never happened.

3a8082e126