WHAT IS LEFT?

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 67, 21 March 1933, Page 12

WHAT IS LEFT?

LINE OP EXPLORATION

SECRETS OF THE WORLD

Of course, the great days of explora- : tion are ended, writes Dr. Hugh E. J Mill, president of the Geographical As- < soeiation, in "Today and Tomorrow." i No future Alexander can travel to the ' conquest of any more worlds, nor any ( modern Marco Polo make the trade , routes of an old continent live again. ; The New World of Columbus is old now. Captain Cook's Eesolution long ago swept from the map that last fig- , ment of Eenaissanee fancy, the Great South Land. The nineteenth century wrote Q.E.D. at the end of the problems o£ the Nile, the Niger, the Congo, and the Zambesi which has vexed explorers from Herodotus to Livingstone,' and now all Africa lies open in the glare of motor headlights. Even the unsurveyed forests of South America can no longer conceal sensational discoveries between the great rivers that have all been traced to their sources. In Asia, Lhasa has ceased to be a forbidden city. The innermost deserts of Taklamakan and Gobi are criss-crossed by modern travellers' tracks. Soviet ice-breakers patrol the useless length of the long-sought North-East Passage to Cathay. What is there left unknown on the warmer side of the Polar Circles save a few mountain peaks, a few closed valleys of the remoter ranges, and a few patches of Arabian and Saharan desert? The answer is nothing. Exploration in the large old sense which inspired the Elizabethans and the Victorians is nearly over. How nearly may be judged by the somewhat strained importance attached to the preparations for next year's expedition, to climb Mount Everest. This can hardly claim to, be exploration, though it is nlountaineoring of the flrst, magnitude. Still a semblance of resource avails geographers to justify the association of the E.G.S. with the Alpine' Club in the forthcoming climb. It is an idealistic, some may say a sentimental, reason, for it is the vindication of the power of man to set foot on the highest point of the surface of the planet which he inhabits. No doubt the earth-worm type of humanity will ask, What is the good of that? To this question there .is no reply, for no one who would dream of putting it could possibly understand . the true answer. Apart from the mere attainment the climbing of Mount Everest-is an interesting physiological experiment. The human system "is- able by gradual approach to accustom itself to function at altitudes which if suddenly reached would put it out of action. This has already been proved up to 28,000 feet; it remains to demonstrate it for the odd thousand feet up to 29,002, the mystic number which once learned can never be forgotten from the mere absurdity of the mouse of a 2 perched upon the mountain that gave it birth. The objection has been made that this 2 can mean nothing; the official answer was that it is the mean of many measurements. THE POLAR REGIONS. There will be much the same interest next year in watching the arduous climb of the last thousand feet towards the zenith that there was twenty years ago in watching the last hundred miles beyond Shackleton's farthest of Scott's party plodding towards the Pole, confident as we may well be of a happier result. There is a difference between the two cases which will make the conquest of Everest less harmful to geography than was the attainment of the Pole. The desire to reach the Poles had

been a. magnet for many generations, drawing explorers through quite unknown spaces by different ways in the hope of being the first to reach it. The surroundings of Mount Everest are already known in their broad outlines and can await detailed surveys when such become desirable.

Scott and Amundsen demagnetised the South Pole as Amundsen, in his airship later demagnetised the. North Pole of this power of attracting fresh record-breakers. The sporting instinct of winning a race against a rival or against time has no geographical value any more in the Polar regions. Only the love of knowledge for its own sake or frank abandonment to the spirit of romantic adventure remains as an adequate motive for exploration. In the North Polar regions the totally unknown has shrunk almost to vanishing point. Enough has been ascertained by the many re-cent crossings of Greenland to reveal the main features of this great island. In the patches of unexplored ice-filled sea around the North Pola there is no room for any extensive new land. SECRETS OF ANTARCTICA. The answer to the question "What is left for exploration?" can now be given in one word—Antarctica. Here is the last great problem of geographical discovery and its nature is this. Cook in 1775 proved that whatever land might be in the far south must lie almost wholly within the Antarctic Circle. Weddell in 1823 showed that south-east of South America a great tongue of open sea cuts into the- Circle as far as 74deg S. In 1831 Bisco sighted solid land on the Antarctic Circle south of the Indian Ocean, and in 1841 Boss found that a wide wedge of open sea raeched to 78deg to the south of New Zealand. Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen later proved that the mountainous coast east of the Boss Sea ran due south to 85deg S., and then turned eastward, buttressing a huge plateau to the west and south. Mawson and B-iiser-Larsen very recently traced the coast westward from Victoria Land on the Eoss Sea to near Graham Land on the Weddell Sea, almost two-thirds round the world. On the seast side of the Eoss Sea Scott found and named King Edward Land, but no one has y,et sailed eastward sufficiently far to the south of the remaining one-third of the Circle from King Edward Land towards GrahVm Land to ascertain if there is any coast there. It is possible that the mountains running south along the coast of Victoria' Land to 85 S., and continuing eastward beyond that latitude then curve north again to King Edward Land and so round the unknown sector to Graham Land. If this be so there is one vast continental mass of high land indented by the two huge gulfs known as the Eoss and Weddell Seas which point towards each other. It is equally possible that the two seas are the ends of a broad depression or channel which separates the huge and j massive continent of West or Greater Antarctica from a smaller continent (a little thing not much bigger than Australia), or it may be only a group of -islands which may be called East or Lesser Antarctica. To decide which of these views is true or whether some other' will better explain known facts is the last really great problem left in the exploration of the world. SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS. The problem that remains is. purely scientific. Its solution will as far as we can see bring no material benefit to anyone, and the far gain which in the long run accrues from every fresh advance in knowledge is too remote to touch the imagination of most people with money to spare. Yet the coast of Greater Antarctica'is blazoned with the names of prosperous merchants, men of vision who did not grumble because their generosity did not increase their worldly wealth. Their memory stands enshrined for ever in

Enderby Land,. Newnes Bay, Mount Longstaff, Goats Land, tho Beardmoro Glacier, the Caird Coast, Macßobertson Land, and elsewhere. There is room in the interior for many more, and the white surface of Lesser Antarctica remains a tabula rasa awaiting dedication to some Unknown Donor, whoever the future declares him or her to be.

Once funds are forthcoming wo need have no fear that explorers will bo lacking. _ There are enough young men now in training who have . the fine physique, the high ideals and the spirit of adventure which are necessary and sufficient for the task. Even if their time is not yet we who value the glorious record of the past can still rejoice that one fine field of high endeavour is being kept open for a future

generation.