BYRD’S EXPEDITION

Hokitika Guardian, 20 December 1928, Page 5

BYRD’S EXPEDITION

IN SNOW AND ICE

(Copyright From Byrd Expedition) WELLINGTON. J>ec. IS.

“Wo are lying in a world ot drilling white. Fur hours the ship has not mooed. It is shut in by solid ice that stretched lor many miles, it is .snowing hard, so one cannot see mono than forty yards, and in the wind, tiio snow drifts past us in a curtain that opens and closes, giving swift glimpses of tortured surfaces, which are quickly hidden. Overhead is a pale glow where the sun is trying to break through, hut iL only succeeds in making a diffused i.ght that hurts the eves as they strain to pierce the obscuring drift. There

is a lascinution ot the mysterious in this eerie concealment. It is not hare or mist hut an enshrouding, impalpable light, that closes about ns. When it opens for a moment we realise tiial our miseroeosm is not the limit oT Ibis frozen area, hut almost instantly thal ipiii k stabbing rift is blotted out and wo arc alone. What is ahead loins in the forbidden land we are approaching day and night. How have we been livng ill this gray silence, broken only by the .whistle of the wind mi the rigging and the whine of dogs. Voices arc lost'in Ibis vast emptiness. Kvory hour light and colour have changed pointing to scenes which can never he forgotten. Before the snow there was wind which lifted clouds of scurrying drift from the surface of the ice and covered the horizon. It changed its density constantly, and lifted up cakes and hummock which pushes out in the gloom. These were sw.iitl.v hidden as if an opaque, hut invisible hand had swept down over them.'’