THE SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE.

Lake County Press, Issue 2137, 27 September 1906, Page 7

THE SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE.

A HORROR OF THE UNKNOWN". * Tho mystery of the South Polar regions has exercised mankind from the earliest times, and in the new volume of the "Story of Exploration" series by Hugh Robert Mill the history of the various attempts to reach what our forefathers cal'led "Terra Australis Incognita" is given in such guise as to make it more in- , than the most fascinating , Explaining why, for so many j i hundreds of years, little or no effect was made to sail southward along the coast of Africa, Mr. Mill says:: "It is scarcely possible in the 20th ' century for us to understand the horror of the unknown ocean which i haunted the seafarers of the Mediter- I ranean even so late as the beginning of the fifteenth century. It was generally believed, for instance, that as the Torrid Zone was approached, tho I sea became covered with darkness,! the waves rose to mountain height, the wiinl dropped calm, the water it-j self evaporated into saline mud in ; which dwelt monsters of indescribable! size and variety. Blackest horror of j all. the huge hand of the devil himself would be thrust up above the ] boiling sea, groping for wandering ships." THE FIRST VOYAGE SOUTH. In 1 I.Si. however, Bartholomew Pin/, determined to brave these dan' gers. "lie set sai'l with three ships, crossed the whole breadth of the Torrid /one. and his crew-, first among sailors, realized that a second Temperate /.one lay beyond." Driven fur-j thcr ami further south by storms, the weather grew bitterly cold, and j his men were assailed by, a new ter- | ror. They were they imagined, driving towards a South Frigid /one, a region of eternal ice, where existence would be impossible and all chances of escape cut off. So the inevitable mutiny broke out, and Diaz was compelled to return to Spain. Hut he had shattered the cherished belief of the centuries, for he had proved that, not only was the Torrid /one not impassable, but that beyond it were temperate lands where there were living people—"those very Antipodes! to believe in whom had for centuries j been the rankest heresy." FIRST TO PIERCE THE "PACK." | Comparatively shortHy after these ] events, intrepid navigators began to I push further and further south, and some of them were carried —usually | much against their will—to the very edge of the Antarctic pack ice. but it i was not until Koss. in the "Erebus" j and "Terror," set sail on his famous j e\| edition, that, any attempt was, made to penetrate the "pack," in order to find out, if possible, I what, lay beyond. Ross ran his two tiny ships into the ice on New Year's Day, 1841, the height, of course, of; the southern summer. "The setting sun took seventeen and a half min- ! utes to sink from sight as it skim- | med along the southern horizon, ami commenced to rise again immediately j afterwards." For eight whole (lays the ships fought their way south, the i ice pack seeming to stretch interminably so far as the eye could reach, j "But at T> a.m. on January 9th. they ran oxit into open sea to the south. Not a particle of ice was to be seen.'' A LAND OF DESOLATION. "It was"—writes Mr. Mill—"an epoch in the history of discovery ; the magic wall from before which' every previous explorer had had to i turn buck in despair had s.illcn into | Fragments at the lirst determined of- | fort to break through i!. Tile opportunity opening before the triumphant ships* was one of those that occur but once or twice in tho course of agfS. It was impossible to predict how much might lie beyond that unbroken expanse of clear sea." What was found was, as all tin- world knows now, a hind of utter desolation. Everywhere the snowline descended to the Witters edge. The "Great Southern Continent," upon which such hopes had been built, ; proved to be not only quite uninhabited, but utterly uninhabitable, j No land mamma.il was found there. , No trace of vegetation even. Instead were vast ice-cliffs, hundreds of feet ! high, fringing the shore for hundreds I of miles, and behind and overlooking these range upon range of mountains j tftwering 12,000 to 14,000 feet in the air. One of the loftiest peaks seemed to be wreathed in whirling [ snowdrift, but as the ships approached nearer it was seen to be emitting dense volumes of smoke shot with flames. Wonder of wonders ! A "burning mountain" was almost the first thing encountered by the first men who had ever broken in upon the icy solitudes of Antarctica. THE FIRST ANTARCTIC NIGHT. The disappointment caused by Ross's report of the uninhabitability of the lands he had discovered seems to have discouraged further exploration in high southern latitudes. At all events, very little more was done for half a century,. Then there came a. recrudescence of interest, at).l in 1898 the"Belgica," with a small expedition on board, steamed towards the Pole with the; intention of permitting her to be frozen in during the wilder months. It was a hazard-, ous experiment., and was not under- j taken, without grave misgiving';. The misgivings were justified. On May ir.th the stin finally set at noon, and j for seventy days thereafter black darkness reigned. "The 'Belgiea' drilled aimlessly about, clasped in the ever-writhing and rending but unrelenting ice. The darkness entered into the soul of the ship's company. \|| suffered from impaired circulation and deranged digestion, the heart seemed to lose its regulating power, *f£- while the complexion became deathly pah', almost, greenish." Lieutenant hat.eo died before mid-winter, and most of the others were in a sorry state ere the sun returned, and the vessel was enabled to at length break tree. A lIA/AUDOI S EXPERIMENT. Still, it had been proved possible for men to ex is I through a South Polar winter, and even to move about and work in a temperature as low as l."> degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Others followed hi the footSteps of the pioneer, amongst them being Dr. Otto N'ordeusjold, in Iho ••Antarctic," who was I lie first nan to voluntarily leave his ship as \'un. sen did -and winter amongst the ice With five companions, while Ihe ' \ut arctic' attempted to return to civ ilization. Their experience was a trying one, for during six whole moid lis the little party were practically confined |() ||„.j r house, a strong timber structure built in Sweden. With the re-

turn of summer, N'ordeusjold Marie,, to explore the neighbouring coast line, "and while pursuing his way along the ice he suddenly encountered two beings, from whom the dogs fled howling." and the Header with difficulty realised them as human." They were Dr. .1. Gunnar Ancrersson and Lieutenant Duse, who had left the ship "Antarctic" during the previous summer (when she had got into difficulties) and had attempted to journey across to N'ordeusjold's camp on foot. Winter, however, had overtaken them, and they had been obliged to build a snow hut wherein to take refuge, with seal flesh for food and seal blubber for fuel. How they lived through such an experience is marvellous. FACT STRANGER THAN FICTION. The united party at once returned to camp, and waited anxiously. "On November Bth, strangers were seen approaching. They proved to be Captain Irizar and one of the officers of the Argentine naval vessel 'Uruguay,' who had come to offer the party a passage home, as no news of the 'Antarctic' had been received. That very night, by one of those coincidences SO improbable that fiction would hardly dare to copy them from fact, Larson, the captain of the 'Antarctic,' appeared at the camp with \\\e of his men. The ship had been crushed in the ice, and sunk, and the crew had wintered on Paulet Island, the third of the isolated parties into which the expedition had been broken up. At last, on November 10th, 190.". all were reunited on the 'Uruguay,' and a week later Captain Irizar had the pride and satisfaction of completing in Tierra del Fuego one of the shortest and most brilliantly successful relief expeditions in Polar history.." In conclusion, Mr. Mill strongly advocates the organisation of another British expedition, to sail in 1909, and incidently throws out the interesting suggestion that motorcars might be used with advantage in a "dash for the Pole" across the inland ice of Victoria Land.