POLAR VISIT ABANDONED

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 143, 20 June 1925, Page 7

POLAR VISIT ABANDONED

"We came to the conclusion there were no grounds for assuming the conditions to be such as to permit a landing iurther north, and that to land at the lole with an opportunity to take observations or soundings would bo impossible. We considered that only to i\y over the Pole, without taking accurate observations of what possibly was merely ice, had no real significance, and was not wort h the taking of the great risks. We agreed, therefore, instead of continuing tether north, to lay our return cour se further east in order to cross the xutnerto undiscovered tracts With the aeroplanes ice-blocked, and the difficulty of raising them into the air the situation was acute. With a view to making them last as long as possible, the daily rations were drastically curtailed. We concentrated all our energies m getting 'plane N25 clear. Dunn* the following twenty-four days we c-c° penenced all kinds "of difficulties bwin" to the vagaries of the fickle Arctic