HEIR TO AN EMPIRE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 304, 26 December 1933, Page 7

HEIR TO AN EMPIRE.

HAPPY EVENT IN JAPAN. TOKYO, December 23. The Empress of Japan has given birth to a son. The nation is jubilant as this is the first son and thus heir to the throne. The previous family of the Emperor and Empress comprised three daughters. Many organisations are forming processions in order to march to the palace to congratulate the Imperial household. I'he ceremony in connection with the naming of the baby will take place on ""•ember 29.

FLIGHT SOUTH.

BYRD OVER ICE PACK.

Venturesome Flight to Solve Mystery. FOUR HOURS IN THE AIR. (United r.A.—Electric Telegraphs-Copyright) NEW YORK, December 25. A message received from the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, on board the Jacob Ruppert, states:— When the ice pack, accumulating ahead, seemingly threatened to bar the ship's further progress along the 150 th meridian, Rear-Admiral Byrd yesterday ordered the ship to retreat a little toward open water. Then the southern assault was renewed by a seaplane flight which carried Admiral Byrd to latitude 70 decrees south, surpassing by 350 miles Captain Cook's most southerly point along the 150 th meridian. With pilot June at the controls, the seaplane rose from a bay in the ice pack at 10.53 in the morning and returned at 3.4 in the afternoon. Admiral Byrd reported: "We saw no land, no barriers and no heavy pack to speak of. This area has been one of the most puzzling mysteries in Antarctic geography. It is "fabled for its impenetrable pack. "There is supposed to be a great land mass, perhaps an archipelago, extending into the Ross Sea against which this pack was thought to be buttressed. After what I saw yesterday I am not so sure. "It would not surprise me if open sea existed clear to the Antarctic Continent's limits. .We explored on our flights eastward of Little America in 1929 and 1930, and to the limit of vision open water could be seen. The pack was all young, shallow, pancake ice. "It may be that further exploration in this / vicinity would have the effect of extending the known limits of the Ross Sea far to the eastward. I think we might have solved the riddle," Admiral Byrd concluded, "if we hadn't ran out of petrol and had to turn back." Yesterday's flight had long been secretly planned by Admiral Byrd and was the hidden purpose that brought him so far to the eastward of this normal break into the Ross Sea. That was the reason the seaplane was fully equipped during the Jtrcob Ruppert's stay in Wellington. The plan was to drive the ship as far south into the ice pack as wad compatible with safety instead of risking the ship in the heavy pack guarding tho Ross Sea approaches early in the season, and then, if open water could be found, to hurdle the pack aerially.