THIRTY YEARS OF ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION

Evening Star, Issue 18885, 9 March 1925, Page 2

THIRTY YEARS OF ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION

A GENERATION OF DISCOVERY. Thirty years ago this vear (on January 23, 1895) there was madlo at Cape Adare the firse landing on the shores of the South Polar Continent. The expedition was commanded by Captain Leonard Kristensen, in an old whaler, the Antarctic, the first vessel since the Erebus and Terror to revisit South Victoria Land. In the generation that has passed since then, no fewer than nineteen expeditions, of which eight were British, have sailed for the Far South. Nine wintering parties have landed on the continental shores, and carried out research and exploration for a year or longer. Ten men—Amundsen and his four companions, Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers, and Edgar Evaus—-have reached’ the Pole, and seven others—Shackleton, Wild, Marshall, Adams, Commander Evans, Crean, and Lnshly—have been within 150 miles of it. David, Mawson, and Mackay have located the South Magnetic Polo. The great land expeditions of the period, those of the Discovery, Nimrod. Fram, Terra Nova, and Aurora, reveal, when taken ns a whole, the development of the technique of Polar travel. Transport has always been their greatest difficulty. There have been attempts at unaided manhauling, experiments with Manchurian ponies, others, trials indeed, with motor tractors, and ultimate satisfaction attained by the use of dogs. An enormous amount of work remains for future generations. Only a few hundreds of the 14,000 miles of Antarctic coastline have yet been charted, and a mere vestige of its five million square miles of interior has been explored. The Pole itself is neither the most inaccessible nor the most Interesting region of this, the last great scene of geographical discovery.—‘ Observer.’