THE WHITE SOUTH

Evening Star, Issue 19019, 14 August 1925, Page 12

THE WHITE SOUTH

ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION CAPTAIN WILKINS’S EXPEDITION. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright OSLO, August 11. Captain G. H. Wilkins, the Australian explorer, states that ho is negotiating with Captain Amundsen for the use of one of the latter’s aeroplanes for survey work in connection with his own Antarctic expedition. The machine is in good order, but it will not be available this year. Captain Wilkins has a special invitation to attend to a gala dramatic performance to-night in honor of Captain Amundsen’s party, at which the King and Queen will be present. With Captain Amundsen ho will go to Sande Fjord to inspect the boats for use on his Antarctic expedition. Ho will then return to Oslo to hear Captain Amundsen’s first lecture on polar flights.—A. and N.Z. Cable.

THIRTY YEARS OF ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION A GENERATION OF DISCOVERY. Thirty year's ago this year (on January 23, 1895) there was made at Cape Adaro the first landing on the shores of the South Potir 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 foil men—Amundsen and his four companions, Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers, and Edgar Evans—have reached the Pole, and seven others—Shackleton, Wild, Marshall, Adams, Commander Evans, Crean, and Lashlyhave been within 150 miles of it. David, Mawson, and Mackay have located the South Magnetic Pole. The great land expeditions of the period, those of the Discovery, Nimrod, Fram, Terra Nova, and Aurora, reveal, when taken as a whole, the development of the technique of Polar travel. Transport has always been their greatest difficulty. There have been attempts at unaided man-hauling, experiments with Manchurian pomes, others, trials indeed, with motor tractors, and ultimate satisfaction attained by tbe use of dogs. Au enormous amount of work remains for future generations. Only a few hundreds of the 14,000 miles of Antarctic coastline have been charted, and a mere vestige of its five million square miles of interior has beeu explored. The Pole itself is neither the most inaccessible nor the most interesting region of this, the last great scene of geographical discovery.—* Observer.’