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  The period of actual discovery found three men—the Frenchman, D’Urville; the American, Wilkes; and the Englishman, Ross,—on the very edge of the Continent within a year. D’Urville was off first, with two corvettes, and after a futile attempt to gain the Continent southeast of the South Shetlands, sailed from Hobart Town in 1840. He discovered Adelie Land, a far-reaching expanse of ice cliffs, on an islet adjoining which his men saw a fragment of rock which scientists hastily broke up for specimens. While off these coasts he met one of Wilkes’ ships, the Porpoise. Wilkes’ expedition was authorized by an Act of Congress, May 18, 1836. It conprised six vessels; two sloops-of-war, the Vincennes, of 780 tons, and the Peacock of 650; a brig, Porpoise, 230 tons; the Relief, a store ship, and two pilot boats, the Sea Gull of 1 IO tons and the Flying Fish of 96 tons. The personnel comprised 345 men, 83 officers and twelve civilian scientists and attaches. The expedition put out from Norfolk, Va., August 18, 1838. After an unsuccessful sortie south of the South Shetlands, the expedition based at Sydney Harbor. December 26, 1839, the squadron sailed to the south ice pack. Despite his ill-equipped ships, Wilkes fought his way to the rim of the Antarctic in 1840 and claimed the discovery of an immense extent of Continental land. Whether he made this discovery is something the British still seem to doubt. Scott1 and Captain Davis,2 of Mawson’s expedition, have further shrunk his claims. It has always seemed a pity to me that the American government failed to follow up the work of this gallant officer, who had the courage to undertake the great responsibility of this mission. I personally am convinced that Wilkes discovered land. My friend Sir Douglas Mawson, than whom there is no greater authority, has told me that he believes that Wilkes saw land of the Antarctic Continent.

  No such doubts imperilled Ross’s claims. Under orders from the Admiralty to locate the South Magnetic Pole, if possible, and the Continent, if it existed, he sailed from England, September, 1839. His two vessels, the Erebus, of 370 tons, and the Terror, of 340, were bombing vessels, and so very strongly built. Ross arrived at Hobart, Tasmania, in time to learn of the discoveries of D’Urville and Wilkes; and “being impressed with the feeling that England had ever led the way of discovery in the southern as well as the northern region,”3he decided to strike south far to the east, following the 170° E. meridian, rather than to the scene of their discoveries. He sailed from Hobart, December, 1840, and January 5, 1841, he plunged his two vessels into the pack. Four days later he emerged into the deep blue waters of the sea that bears his name. On January 1 1, the snow-capped peaks of Mount Sabine appeared on the horizon; then the Admiralty Range of mountains; and finally the low-set cape he named Cape Adare. Thus was the forbidding coast of the continent unveiled to him. He struck a (true) southern course, hoping to hedge in toward the Magnetic Pole, and on his way sighted a second range of mountains (Prince Albert) and then an active volcano (Mount Erebus) with a dead crater, only slightly lower, nearby (Mount Terror). He pressed on, and a discovery of vast importance awaited him. “As we approached the land under all-studding sails, we perceived a low white line extending from its eastern extreme point as far as the eye could discern to the eastward. It presented an extraordinary appearance, gradually increasing in height as we got nearer to it, and proving at length to be a perpendicular cliff, between 150 and 200 feet above the level of the sea, perfectly flat on top, and without any fissures or promontories on its even seaward face.”1

  Thus was the Great Ice Barrier, which is now known as the Ross Ice Barrier, discovered; and with it the highway by means of which two parties of men afoot, and a third by air, were later to gain the Pole. Ross made two later magnificent voyages to the south, but the value of his discoveries was obscured somewhat by the public’s rising interest in the North, where the quest for the Northwest Passage and the Pole was leading to many mad, magnificent things.

  Fifty-three years were to pass before man set foot on the Antarctic Continent; and fifty-seven before Borchgrevink, apparently in the face of all reason, announced that he would inflict upon himself and nine companions the dreadful earthly purgatory of wintering at Cape Adare; by this time science had taken the place of empire-building in exploration. Storms buffeted the little hut; the zoologist, Mr. Nikolai Hanson, died of intestinal complications, the first human being to find burial on the continent, but, on the whole, the winter was not as bad as had been expected. The way was open for the Age of Heroic Discovery, which came in with Scott and is emblazoned with such imperishable names as his own, and those of Shackleton, Mawson, Amundsen and the rest of their gallant companies.

  Slowly but painfully, facts concerning the continent were discovered. Scott, on his first voyage, on the National “Discovery” Expedition, 1901-1903, pushed far beyond the limits of Ross’s discoveries, adding hundreds of miles to the known coastline of the continent; he discovered King Edward VII Land and the eastern end of the Barrier; with Dr. Edward Adrian Wilson, the chief scientist on his later expeditions, and Mr. Hartley Ferrar, also of the scientific staff, he undertook the first southern sledge journey; he did many things first, this gallant Scott, and not the least among them was the manner in which he opened the eyes of the world to the possibilities of a well-organized, courageously prosecuted scientific inquiry into the Antarctic. The traditions he founded, and in keeping with which he died, were sustained and extended by two of his able countrymen, Mawson and Shackleton. What we know about the Antarctic comes largely from them; and if it so happens that the sum total of this knowledge, so painfully and splendidly accumulated, serves largely to suggest the appalling amount still unknown, it is not that they have not done magnificent work; it is only that the problem is so vast.

  Prof. David estimated, in 1914, the coastal limits of the continent at 14,000 miles, of which about 4,000 were either discovered or explored. Hayes is inclined to reduce the former figure to approximately 12,000 miles, and advanced the latter to approximately 5,000 miles, as a result of subsequent exploration.1 Thus, at the bottom of the world there lay, in 1928, a continent, greater than the combined areas of Mexico and the United States, more than half of whose coasts had never been seen, and whose desolate interior had felt only the hurrying feet of the parties under, or directed by, Shackleton, Mawson, Scott and Amundsen, tracing relatively a few narrow paths in its infinite immensities.

  We know many things of this continent. It differs from all other land that has come into human consciousness. It is the only polar continent. The north polar regions consist of an ocean encircled by continents. The south polar regions consist of a continent encircled by oceans. Hayes has drawn a singular contrast between its isolation and that of other great land masses.1 Europe, Asia and America form only two land masses which are but slightly separated at their nearest points. Europe and Asia are separated from Africa by the Suez Canal; and Asia from America by Bering Strait, with the Diomede Islands in its stream, so that the water jump from Asia to the Island is only 17 miles and from the Island to Alaska only 25. Cape Horn, the most southern continental point, lies 600 miles from the nearest truly Antarctic land, the South Shetlands Islands, and these in turn are separated by 80 miles from the western coast of Graham Land, which is separated from the mainland, having finally been proved by Sir Hubert Wilkins not to be a peninsula. The stormiest oceans to be found anywhere surround Antarctica. And as if these things were not enough, its isolation is made secure by the fact it is separated from the rest of the world by oceans of abysmal depths, soundings showing depths ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 fathoms.

  The Antarctic is a continent still in the ice age, similar to that which gripped the northern hemisphere perhaps 50,000 years ago.2 The greatest ice mass in the world covers the continent, so that only the highest peaks emerge; bare rock is so unusual that explorers, finding it, could hardly seem more delighted if they had come suddenly upon green meadowland. The continent is mainly uplifted tablelands of snow and ice, from 5,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level, and is traversed in places by mountain ranges of extraordinary size and beauty. Inland lie t
he Polar and South Victoria plateaux—level, vast and elevated—which are central areas of the continental ice sheet; here the depth of the ice cap appears to range from a few feet, where it touches steep mountainous slopes, to from 1,000 to 5,000 feet on the plateaux. From these areas pour moving masses of continental ice, which, propelled by vast pressures in the interior, move down the valleys and passes of the encircling mountains in the shape of glaciers and ice falls of a size and grandeur found nowhere else in the world.

  Toward this continent we turned; and we approached it with growing humility; conscious of its majesty and its sullen solitudes, and conscious, too, of the large accomplishments of the men who had preceded us. What we hoped to do, and more we could not do, was to attempt simply to extend the knowledge that they had begun to accumulate.

  We selected the Bay of Whales as the best place to base because (1) it seemed to offer the likeliest circumstances for flying and (2) because it was surrounded by unknown areas. To the north and east lay King Edward VII Land, first seen by Scott from the deck of the Discovery, first and last traversed by Prestrud,1 and beyond that a wholly unknown coastline and interior. Here lay hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory utterly unknown to geography, a vacuum abhorrent to scientist and cartographer alike. To the southeast lay the supposed Carmen Land discovered by Amundsen on his polar journey,2 awaiting the inquiry of precise science. Save for the paths of Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen, which at the extreme distance were separated only by 400 miles and thence converged steadily and narrowly upon the Pole, the mysterious plateau was untrodden and unknown. What lay beyond it, between the Pole and Weddell Sea, no one could say. These avenues for pure discovery offered themselves. No less important was the probability of bringing to bear upon these unknown areas, and upon known areas as well, the organized research equipment that modern invention has produced; in the departments of geology, meteorology, glaciology, magnetism and allied divisions, pure science must benefit. And the advantage lay with us in that we possessed three of the most efficient instruments given to the explorer; radio, the airplane, with its wonderful speed and independence of surface obstructions that vex the foot-traveller, and the aerial mapping camera, which sees everything and forgets nothing.

  We had reason to hope we might accomplish much. But as the Larsen forged south, on a peaceful ocean, it was not difficult sometimes, to imagine a very different ending. So many things might go wrong. So many important things that perhaps I had overlooked. So many other things that no one could foresee, save the omniscience reserved at the very end for the reproachful man, when everything is done and past remedy.

  Footnotes

  1 Captain Amundsen was the first man to reach the South (geographical) Pole, attaining it Dec. 14, 1911.

  1 Later renamed City of New York.

  1 The engines of the Bolling were rated at 200 h. p.

  1 The famous Wright J-5 used on the trans-Atlantic flight; nine cylindered, air-cooled, rated at 220 h. p.

  1 The Queen Maud Range. Peaks in this range are as high as 10,000 to 19,000 feet.

  2 The Ford was a factory transport plane, type 4-AT. Its other measurements were: span over all, 70 ft.; length over all 49 ft., 10 inches; wing area, 785 sq. ft.

  3 The dimensions of the Fokker were: span over all, 74 ft., length over all, 49 ft., 10 inches; wing area, 733 sq. ft. Powered with a 425 h. p. Pratt and Whitney “Wasp” engine.

  4 The dimensions of the Fairchild were: span over all, 50 ft.; length over all, 32 ft., 10 in.; wing area, 332 sq. ft. Powered with a 425 h. p. Pratt and Whitney “Wasp” engine.

  5 This plane failed to reach the Antarctic.

  1 Shackleton on his first, Scott on his last, and Mawson on his first expedition all attempted to use surface machines. Shackleton used an automobile, with an air-cooled, 4 cylinder Arrol-Johnston motor. (“The Heart of the Antarctic,” i, p. 23.) But its wheels repeatedly sank and spun futilely in soft snow. After repeated experiments with rubber tires and cog-like treads, Shackleton was forced to abandon it only a few miles out on his main journey (p. 249). The failure of Mawson’s motorized sledge, with propeller attachment, has been described (see footnote, p. 21). Scott took three motorized sledges to the Antarctic. One was lost in the unloading at the base (“Scott’s Last Expedition,” i, p. 73) when it fell through the ice; and the remaining two, after thoroughly disappointing performances, broke down in the early stages of the Southern Journey—“so the dream of great help from the machines is at an end” (i, p. 311).

  1 Mawson experimented with radio between Cape Denison and his base unit at Macquario Island with indifferent success; in summer, continuous daylight limited wireless operations to a few hundred miles at best, and the effective working distance for all times of the day was not above 100 miles (“Home of the Blizzard,” ii, p. 36). Scott, on his last expedition, set up a telephone connection between Hut Point and Cape Evans, a distance of 15 miles.

  1 Mill, “The Siege of the South Pole,” p. 85.

  2 “The Heart of the Antarctic,” i, 327.

  3 At Cape Bernacchi, pure quartz in situ with large lumps of copper in it—“the first find of minerals suggestive of the possibility of working.” “Scott’s Last Expedition,” i, p. 411.

  4 “The Heart of the Antarctic,” i, 307.

  5 Mawson, “The Home of the Blizzard,” i, p. 110. Iron, copper and molybdenum—”The ores were present in small quantities, but gave promise of large quantities in the vicinity and indicated the probability of mineral wealth beneath the Continental ice cap.”

  1 “Scott’s Last Expedition,” ii, p. 104.

  2 Mawson, “Home of the Blizzard,” i, p. 6.

  3 Cherry-Garrard, “The Worst Journey in the World,” introduction, xvii.

  4 Dr. Hugh Mill, “Siege of the South Pole.”

  1 Cook, “Voyage Towards the South Pole,” p. 268.

  1 “Voyage of the Discovery,” ii, p. 392 “… once and for all we have definitely disposed of Wilkes Land.”

  2 “With the Aurora in the Antarctic,” chapter xxiii.

  3 Ross, “A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions,” i, p. 117.

  1 Ross, “A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions,” i, p. 117.

  1 Hayes, “Antarctica,” p. 308.

  1 Ibid., p. 5.

  2 The deglacierisation of the continent is now held to be a fact. The raised beaches discovered by Scott and Shackleton; the finding of moraines and erratics high above the general level of the adjacent surface of glacier ice. Shackleton found the summit of Mt. Hope strewn with erratics at a height fully 2000 feet above the nearest glacial ice, and David and Priestley believe that during the height of glaciation, the ice attained a maximum thickness of 4,000 feet in parts of McMurdo Sound, from which it is now entirely retreated. (“Heart of the Antarctic,” ii, p. 277).

  1 The Japanese Antarctic Expedition, under Lt. Shirase, ascended one of the peaks of Alexandra Range in 1911. The exact route followed, however, is unknown.

  2 The South Pole, ii, p. 31, 170, 171.

  CHAPTER III

  THROUGH THE PACK

  THE Larsen docked at Wellington November 5; and the end of the journey across the Pacific was to mean many things, not the least important of which was the discovery of New Zealand’s hospitality to Americans. We soon learned that the proximity of this island dominion to the Antarctic was not the only thing that recommended it to explorers. We were to carry from it the experience of having felt unstinted kindness, friendliness and cooperation. Had we been Englishmen, on an English errand, we could not have been better treated. If we, on our side, failed perhaps to show the true measure of our gratitude, it was only because we were of necessity so intent on our work. Dominating our every mood and action was the necessity of making contact with the Larsen at the pack. It was a spur that drove us on at top speed.

  As for the Larsen, on her arrival at Wellington, she immediately began to take on water and supplies: t
he chasers1 that were to accompany her south were already waiting at Stewart Island, and Captain Nilsen expected to start within a few days.

  Our New Zealand representative, Hon. Harold Livingstone Tapley of Dunedin, owner of Tapley Ltd., Shipping Agents, sent his manager, Jim Duncan, to meet us to discuss the loading of supplies previously sent to Dunedin. Tapley Ltd. was one of the volunteers of the expedition. I have never met a finer gentleman than Harold Tapley; and his manager, Jim Duncan, typifies the words conscience and efficiency.

  Rest was a word that soon lost personal meaning. We at Wellington took charge of the airplanes and other supplies unloaded by the Larsen. We were assisted by our Wellington representatives, Gardiner, Binnie and Halliburton, who were splendid to us. As the days passed, and the City, with emptying coal bunkers, dawdled in Pacific doldrums, we almost ceased to watch the calendar and began to count the hours.

  November 18th saw the Boiling come into Dunedin at dawn, her crew tanned and darkened by tropical sun, her own sides stained and coated with rust, and with a tale to tell of decks that sizzled at noon and fire room temperatures that got as high as 120° Fahrenheit. There was much good natured grousing over the idea of getting seasoned for polar cold in what one member of the crew described as “Hell’s anteroom”; but I was delighted to observe that the crew as a whole had come through very well, the greenhorns had become accustomed to their various duties, and Captain Brown’s ability was plainly marked in the high morale of his men.

  Our plans had meanwhile taken a new turn. Captain Brown had been ordered to dump part of his cargo at Dunedin, to make room, and proceed north to Wellington as soon as possible. There he was to pick up the stuff dropped by the Larsen, and return it to the concentration docks at Dunedin, where some of it would be taken aboard by the City. This meant a saving of at least a day’s time. Just before the Boiling got underway, Captain Melville reported that the City would arrive in about seven days. She had been becalmed for days, and later driven off her course by storm. She was under both steam and sail and deriving but slight assistance from the Trades. Her arrival, then, would be tardier than we had hoped; and as these precious days ebbed, my hope of meeting the Larsen grew fainter.