HUNT FOR LANDS TO EXPLORE

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 10 March 1934, Page 14

HUNT FOR LANDS TO EXPLORE

Few Areas Left for Mapping

' A & explorer has to hunt fairly hard “‘** to 'find a bit of unknown .country to explore these days, said Professor Griffith Taylor, explorer-geographer, at a meeting of the Association of American Geographers, reports an overseas paper. There is the section Admiral •Byrd is exploring, of course, and New Guinea, in the Malay Archipelago, with ifs lofty ice fields right on the equator, but not mueh else very thrilling. Professor Taylor, now of the University of .Chicago, was senior geologist and deader of the -western parties in the. British Antarctic Expedition under ■Scott, from 1910 to 1913. This region, now being studied by Admiral Byrd’s party, offers some of the most interesting questions to be solved, he said. Is Antarctica one continent or two? Professor; Taylor thinks the Byrd Expedition may find a frozen strait which will cut the vast land ateh near the South Polo into two .continents. As for other places left to.-explore, it is mostly odds and ends, it appears from Professor Taylor’s summary. There are some good unexplored rivers in the Amazon system of ‘South America. And there are some unvisited parts of Labrador. “A person could leave here for Canada, get a canoe and soon put a new

river on the map, if he wanted to explore said the geographer. There is some unexplored land in the heart of Greenland, he added, but it is likely to be just ice and pretty unmt e r e sting. He cautioned against taking too seriously certain titles given books of travel by publishers, such as “Across Unknown Australia.” _ Professor Taylor lived many years in Australia, being British by birth, and he happened to know that the “unknown” country thi3 explorer traversed was composed chiefly of farms. “We know the main outlines, but w T e need to have many details written in,” said Professor Barrel Haug Davis, of the University of Minnesota. “With the aid of aeroplanes, this work is pro- ■ eeeding well now. By another geneiation this work will probably be finished.” The Association of American Geographers was .considering research problems, regarding exploration as somewhat outside its field, but Professor 'Davis estimated that 10 per cent, of the membership were people with records of exploration and most of the members make field studies in distant places. He .spent last summer in a. portion of Japan where lie never saw a white person.