WORLD OF WHITE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 301, 20 December 1928, Page 7

WORLD OF WHITE.

BYRD EXPEDITION.

Colour, Light And Silence Of Eerie Antarctic.

"WHAT LIES AHEAD?"

(Australian and N.Z. Press Association.)

(Received 9.30 a.m.) VANCOUVER, December 19. "We are lying in a world of drifting white," says a message received by wireless last evening from Mr. Russell Owen, official recorder to the Byrd expedition, which is now approaching the Ice Barrier en route to the Bay of Whales, which will serve as a base for the projected flight to the South Pole.

"For hours," the message continues, "our ship has not moved. We are shut in by solid ice that stretches for many miles. It is snowing hard, so one cannot see more than 50 yards, and in the wind the snow sifts past us in a curtain that opens and closes, giviug swift glimpses of the tortured surface which is quickly hidden. Overhead is a pale glow where the sun is trying to break through, but it only succeeds in making a diffused light that hurts the eyes as they strain to pierce the obscuring drift.

"There is the fascination of the mysterious in this eerie concealment. It is not haze or mist, but an enshrouding impalpable light that closes about us. When it opens for a moment we realise that our microcosm is not the limit of this frozen sea, but almost instantly that quick, stabbing rift is blotted out and we are alone. What is ahead for us in the forbidden land we are approaching?

"Day and night now we have been living in this gray silence, which is broken only by the whistle of the wind in the rigging and the whine of the dogs. Voices are lost in this vast emptiness. Every hour the light and colour have changed, painting scenes which can never be forgotten. Before snow fell there was wind, which lifted the clouds of scurrying drift from the surface of the ice and concealed the horizon. It changed its density constantly and uplifted cakes of ice and hummocks, which pushed out of the gloom and then were swiftly hidden as if aa opaque but invisible hand had swept down over them."