DAY IN ANTARCTIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20218, 1 April 1929, Page 9

DAY IN ANTARCTIC.

BRILLIANT LIGHT EFFECTS.

STRANGE SHADOWS IN SNOW

(Received March 31, 5.5 p.m.) United Service. NEW YORK, March 30. [By Mr. Russell Owen. Copyrighted 1928 by the New York Times Com finny and the St Louis Post Dispatch. All rights for nuhlication reserved throughout the world. Wireless to the New York Times.l BAY OF WHALES. March 29. The sun came up over the Barrier yesterday like 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 which enthral the beholder. The air is the purest in all the world. It was so crystal clear that distance was foreshortened, and the eye leaped as if over only a few yards to the far away ridges of snow in the glistening morning light. The sky was a thin blue, as if one could see into an infinity of space, far beyond the range of ordinary vision.

All around the horizon was a thin band of cloud which reflected the light as if from a mirror. There were strange shadows in (his clear light of the late Antarctic day. So low was the sun that every small protuberance in the snow, every sharp line of sastrugi, every gougedout hollow and eroded hummock, had its silver grey shadows. They stood out as if etched against the gleaming white cf the snow, and the vast field about us drew in and contracted, as for the first time for many days we were able to see 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 a shadow was cast on all sides, and one moved as if innumerable spotlights were focusscd on the tiny figuies in this vast and desolate stage.

Then came the witchery of the Antarctic twilight, a dim half light in which all things are distinctly outlined and yet. half concealed. The luminous light on distant horizons, the chill gray of the snow and the clond-barreil moon make ft scene that touches you with its weird attraction It is intensified by tho deep silence of this dead land. One might as well stand on the lifeless moon itself. There would be nothing more strange. ,