ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 21 December 1927, Page 4

ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION.

In his own words, “The last, great challenge to an aviator to explore comes from the Antarctic Continent” to Commander Richard E. Byrd, the American airman who flow over the North Pole in May last year. Flying in a few hours over the miles of ice and snow across which Scott and Amundsen toiled so painfully, Commander Byrd and his men hope to cross the continent from coast to coast in two directions, to plant the American flag at the Pole, and. to visit as well the four corners of the great ice-bound land, twice the size of the United States. While Byrd is making the longer flights, the scientists who will accompany him will be going out by small airplane and by dog sledge, several hundred miles from the base near the Ross Sea, in quest of knowledge in their respective fields. Byrd believes that there are wide stretches of lowland where extreme low temperatures do not exist, and where perhaps completely new forms of animal life will ’ ;be found. The coalfields and copper-beds known to exist somewhere below the mountains of snow and ice will be searched for, and the expedition will study the metcrological conditions of the “home of the blizzard.” It is not surprising that Byrd has already received over 300 applications from men, young and old, wishing to take part in the expedition. Ventures such as this have an irresistible appeal, and New Zealand may feel sorry that Byrd has decided to take off from South America, and not, as he first intended, from this Dominion.