DISCOVERY IN ANTARCTICA

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 139, 9 December 1929, Page 10

DISCOVERY IN ANTARCTICA

Judging by American statements in to-day's cablegrams, it would appear that while the Rockefeller range (of which so much has been heard in Byrd's reports) is "within the Ross Dependency," the new mountains just seen and photographed in the latest flight from Little America arc demonstrably beyond the geographical limits of the Dependency. Apart from the ownership interest, there is the geographical interest, which at present seems much the more substantial. Present indications are that the mountains are coastal, and that he who surveys the range from the air will survey the coast too, thus fixing the coastline for a certain distance towards Graham Land, as well as determining what is perhaps the key feature to the whole lay-out. For it can hardly be doubted that the discovery of high coastal mountains must help lo explain a great deal of the already observed phenomena, including the ice-barrier. Configuration of the land and of the glacier-outlets might be expected to throw light on many other things, and the discovery of isolated sheets of water away from the sea, but apparently at sea level, opens out the possibility of a great extension of the Archipelago theory. In short, this flight seems to eclipse in interest the Polar dash. An aeroplanist is a rapid explorer who must leave many things undetermined, but he has the great advantage of seeing and recording with the eye of the camera.