ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION

Mataura Ensign, 29 December 1911, Page 5

ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION

CINEMATOGRAPH PICTURES

Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole —with all details of the voyage, the life on board the Terra Nova, the entrance into the Antarctic Ocean, and'the ship making her way through the ice—was shown for the first time yesterday morning, privately, by Messrs Gaumont's bioscope at the London Coliseum (stated the 'Daily Mail' of November 17). This series of bioscope pictures provided a wonderful little drama of adventure in real life in the southern seas, for which the expedition sailed from New Zealand only last February. It was no easy task, the lecturer explained, to take cinematograph pictures in a temperature -lOdeg. below zero, but if the members of Captain Scott's expedition, now living amid the snow and ice, could have witnessed the delight that the audience in London took yesterday in this pictorial record of their doings they would nave felt that least they had been repaid! for some of their labors. In the half-hour that the display of the bioscope lasted the departure of the British expedition from New Zealand was shown. We saw the men, the Eskimo dogs, and the Siberian ponies in the ship. Then came the first sight of the fields of ice, a huge iceberg that had broken away from the Great Ice Barrier, and eventually the ship in | the midst of a pack that took her three weeks to navigate. It was all very beautiful, wonderful, and fascinating. The pictures were taken by Mr Herbert G. Ponting, F.R.G.S-, who is still with the expedition. There are humorous little incidents, such as the rolling in the snow of the ponies, delighted at getting off the ship, and the crew playing nvith penguins on the snowfield. But the scenes that impress one are the views of the lonely peaks of Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, and the white cliffs of the Ice Barier.