ON SEEING A POLAR ENTHUSIAST.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1114, 29 April 1911, Page 6

ON SEEING A POLAR ENTHUSIAST.

ONE WEIRD REMARK. "ECONOMIC FUTURE" FOR IT ALL. [By Evelyn Isiti.] I had an interview this week with Dr. Douglas Mawson, tho young Australian scientist and explorer, who has just come to London to make arrangements for tho expedition which Australasia is sending to Antarctica at the end of the year. Ho has taken offices in Lower Regent Street, and there 1 found him the other day, in a little room halt-filled with furs and minerals and boxes, and leather tilings that looked as though they had a Polar purpose. It was not an easy office to iind, and while- I was still hunting for it, wondering where tho Australasian Antarctic expedition lived, a tall, fair-haired man of tho kindliest, Viking typo came to my rescue, guiding mv expedition to its • destination, but not till he had gono again did 1 learn that this was Captain Davis, of the Nimrod, who is to bo in charge, of tho new expedition's boat, when they havo tho good fortune to secure one. Dr. Mawson, tho leader of the expedition, is another very tall man, thin and verv fair, with a quiet manner, and a voico'that will issuo its instructions pleasantly and firmly. I do not know that, in spite of his height, he would attract mnch notice in tho street, but in a room you would at once ask who lie was, for he has personality, and you can understand why those Australasian scientists think an expedition will do well under his leadership. He lools, too, as though ho were made of steel, and probably that is why, having once reached the 'Magnetic Polo (for you will remember that ho was the magnetician, as well as physicist, economic geologist, photographer, etc., to Lieut. Shackleton's expedition), he is so keen about Eetting'back to its vicinity onco more. Everyone who has onco been down there, ho thinks, must want to go back, and apparently Sir Ernest Shackleton shares his opinion, for, ho. told a "Daily Mail" reporter that he .wished that lie could accompany Dr. Mawson.

That was in an interview that the "Daily Mail" published last Monday, when it obtained "an account of his plans from Dr. Mawson, and from Sir Ernest Shackleton," the commander of the -expedition of which Dr. Mawson gained- his first Antarctic knowledge, "an estimate of tho young scientist's work —his energy and value.". It was in England that' Dr. Mawson was bom twenty-nino years ago,,but he insists, nevertheless,'that ho is an Australian, for his parents went out there when he was a child. He was educated at Sydney, entered the University there as tho youngest mining student it had over known, before he was twenty, went in for scientific research with special attention to mining geology, accomnanied an expedition to the New Hebrides as geologist, and published a book on tho geology of the New Hebrides, took his degrees of Bachelor of Engineering, aiid Doctor of Science, and held the Chair of Economic Geology at Adelaido University, all before he was twenty-five, and then he joined the British Antarctic expedition of 1907. During tlyit, expedition he was one of the party that ascended Mount Erebus for the first time, and one of the three who, struggled through to the South Magnetic Pole "He is specially known in Australia," said Sir Ernest -Shackleton. "for his researches hoth in the laboratory and in the field, on radium-bearing minerals,'and it was his monograph on the Broken Hill lode that (rained for him the. degree of Doctor of Science."

lit has been an interesting life, and now Dr. Mawson is full of enthusiasm at the prospect of visiting the Australasian Antarctic coastline with an Australasian expedition supported by Australasian funds.

."The Antarctic Continent is as largo as Australia and Europe combined," he says. "Its coasts abound with animal life, and surely its mountains aro blessed with mineral resources at least equally with other countries. It is not low and altogether covered with ice, but towers from the sea in great rocky ranges, only giving place ,to an uninterrupted sheet of ico in the' interior. It is tho only almost germ-free continent. The very key-notes of many of our scientific investigations are bound up in that area, and, until those data aro available, our efforts will' bo hampered."

The coast which the expedition is to visit is only 1500. miles from Hobart, and yet the ocean there is practically uncharted, and, except for a few brief hours in 1840, when D'Un-ille's.French expedition sailed down, and sailed away again, no human being has ever landed on those shores. Vessels have sighted it, but only on rare occasions, and many years ago an American expedition, hoping to make a dash for the Magnetic Pole, was blocked here by the ice. Though it sailed along the coast for 1000 miles, it saw no possible entrance. D'Urville sailed along, and charted 400 miles of coast, but since 1854 that has been an unknown sea.

Though stories have been told of the severity of tho climate;—severity in this connection seems hardly strong enough, brutality one would say—Dr. Mawson discounts them as travellers' tales, and ho points out that, in Spitsbergen, in even higher latitudes, permanent settlements havo been formed by Europeans in days when it was worth their while. Up thero the bears now play in and out of ruined houses, where once stood Sclimecringinburg or Blubbertown, and there, in 1650 or thereabouts, Dutch men, and Dutch women, too, made their homes as long as whaling near the coast was a profitable employment. Latei', the whales deserted the coast, and, with them, .tho settlement departed, but it was not because tho climate was too rigorous that Schmocrinburg was bequeathed to the bears of Spitsbergen.

Dr. Mawson foresees the establishment of similar settlements down on the Antarctic coast, where thero are enormous quantities of seals and whales, and he is prepared to believe that, some day, sanatoria may be set up there, and that young Australia will go to Antarctica for its winter sports. There is certainly a possibility that coal and precious metals may 'be found there, but it is not to find'these things that tho expedition is being organised. If it finds that tho resources of tho country can bo developed, well and good, specially well for those who send tho expedition out; but it is to be regarded as a purely scientific expedition to open up a largo country which lias possibilities of an economic future. An economic future! One has to pause over that thought a while.