THE SOUTH POLE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 95, 29 April 1913, Page 7

THE SOUTH POLE.

AMUNDSEX’S PICTURE. Captain Roald Amundsen, who discovered the South Polo so shortly in advance of Captain Scott, lias given tliis picture of the desolate South Polo to the New York Independent. “There is no life at the South Pole, no kind of life, in air or water or on land. There is a great continent covered by ice and snow. Animal life, so far as we observed, does not extend beyond the Barrier, which is 700 miles distant from the pole. “We found bare spaces on the land but nothing to show that the South Polo region holds treasures which would interest our civilisation. Wo found no evidence of gold, silver, copper, or iron. lam not responsible for the statement that there are in that region some of the largest coal deposits ever discovered, and I did not express a hope that they would soon be developed. Information of the subject of the coal comes, I believe, from Sir Ernest Shackleton. “But even if there arc in the South Polar region very large deposits of coal and of precious metal they will simply he something to sigh-over—-they are inaccessible. Miners cannot live there, and even if they could live and could work mines, no one would bo the better off, as there would be no way to got their products out to a point where commerce could reach it. The lowest temperature wo found at or'around the South Pole was 75 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. The highest velocity of wind was twenty metres per second. It is a region ol storms. “No, I doubt that South Polar exploration will realise anything that can he directly made of material benefit. But, on the other hand, any addition to our present fund of scientific knowledge is of immense importance, and our magnetic observations taken at or near the Pole are, therefore, most valuable. So also our geological specimens. “I will remain in this country lecturing until next July, when I will away, this time to the North Pole region, to work again.”