The Greenwich of the South.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 December 1921, Page 1

The Greenwich of the South.

SHACK LETOVS SENTR V-BO\. l’.v J. P. Collins. \ si'di of relief will g“ round i.v world of science at the news that the ( ape (Miservatory is in no danget ittm ,11 \ faLe alarm has sav.d the situ ition. or perhaps, as so often lmpp-m. the alarm proves to have been |Ut.'-I'u-d first and falsified alterwards. At any rate there is reason to i.iiVc among those who know what, n involved for the future of astrmiamv. meteorology, and. above all. tmvig.v

tiun. ... , , So it, happens that the best Ir.e.ul to the Shaekleton expedition, next to ill directing p .-evidence, is a spectacled cent lemon and his stall' who inhabit a t luv colonv of queer white buildings (hat nestle among the trees and "sugar bush" on the lower slopes ol Stgual Tt ill outside Capetown. . Time was when this particular suburb wo- lumv.i, -s Kira Imp (lull of snakes), one of mvrird of names that remind '•« what a paradise of animal file South Africa u-cd to he. . . . ~ Rut the observatory has banished the Sll dies lif e another St Patrick, and a more dec. tons age is banishing from tl„. bill itself its picturesque Mile ot the I ion’s Rump. Even the dullest dweller thereabouts L dimly aware Unit here under this t i *-cut done i- one oI th,. great outposts of human knowledge, with a reputat i'll amiiT; the si ar-sfations of the lV oild fee necuracy amounting to virtual inf Hihility. Considering the importance that tho Cape had for tho East India Company,

as its half-way house to the East India it is surprising that “John Company did not set 0)1 thi- observatory centur-

1 lalfi.y of the comet conducted an expedition to St Helena in ltufi-S, but uotbing more was done to link the southern with tlm northern hemisphere till i;.-,if. when the Abbe <!•• la C’aille went n it to Capetown, took a modest bouse in «lrand nor far from | r-borcb. end there with ioo'l. s, 1 appliances charted 10.024 stars -,ml earned the gratftnde of the scientiworld. Sir David Gill went out m and was ibis son of a Suottisb cloikinaker who rut a seientdie halo round tbe Capo for over. Even then some of tile best of the work dune at the Cape lias been carried ut at private cost. Many of its best inst ni I lien fsi arc private gifts. and while some of Gill’s undertakings bad t „ |„. abandoned tile others left him a ,„,nr man Once Gill was trying to ,-oax assistance out of Rl.edcs. and tins crisp dialogue ensued: “Fine thing- - nionov ’’ said Gill. “Ten d d expensive ” said Rhodes, and there it would I: ace, ended if Gill had not, brought in t-ilwavs to redress the balance of tlio siar Rlm-’cs was brooding over bis Cape-to-Cairo route, and Gill showed It'.w it would be helped hv the plan lie lead in mind. Tin's “ilix'am of bis life was to measure the great meridian are ~r :V deg. east lniP'itndo. Tt involved a difficult siirvi'v las, ina many vears. but be acconinlislied bis aim. or the proa ter ,', n rl of it. and wlmtlier or not tlio lino is ,-ver .-arried across tlm Mediterranean and -m to tlio North Cape it constitutes n monument to Gill’s genius for all time.

This and the time-signal svstem has made tlm southern ocean highways as safe as Piccadilly, and when Sir Ernest Shackle!mi and his successors have eharlorod all the snags and rocks of tlio Antarctic fringe they will still be under a| debt to Gill for reiding tlio heavens like a book and building a safe roof over their heads.