LIFE IN THE ANTARCTIC.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 103, 1 April 1929, Page 7

LIFE IN THE ANTARCTIC.

WITCHERY OF THE TWILIGHT. DEEP SILENCE OF DEAD LAND. (By Russell Owen, copyright 1928 by the New York Times Company and the St. Louis Post Dispatch; all rights for publication reserved throughout the world. .Wireless to the New York Times.) I BAY OF WHALES, March 29. The sun came up over the Barrier yesterday, a huge ball of yellow, and in its slow journey along the horizon, gave us a perfect day—one of those quiet, brilliant Antarctic days that enthral the beholder. The air, the purest air in all the world, was so crystal clear that distance was foreshortened, and the eye leaped as if over only a few yards to the faraway ridges of snow glistening in the morning light. The sky was a thin blue, as if one could see into the infinity of space far beyond the range of ordinary vision.

All around the horigon was a thin band of cloud, which reflected the light as from a mirror. There were strange shadows in this clear light of a late Antarctic day. So low was the sun that every small protruberance in the snow, every gouged-out hollow and eroded hummock had its silver-grey shadows. They stood out as if etched against the gleaming white of the snow, and the vast field about iis drew in and contracted, as for the first time for many days we were able to see the details of its surface, details usually lost in the obscurity of the diffused light under an overcast sky. But the oddest shadow of all was that .around us, as we walked, for so great was the reflection from the encircling horizon that the shadow was cast on all sides, and one moved as if innumerable spotlights were focused on the tiny figures in this vast and desolate stage. Then came the witchery of the Antarctic twilight—the dim, half-light, in which all things were distinctly outlined. And yet the half-concealed luminous distant horizons, the chill grey of the snow and the cloud-barred moon make a scene of weird attraction, which is intensified by the deep silence of the dead land. One might as well stand on the lifeless moon itself. There would bo nothing more strange. ’ '