IN ANTARCTICA

Hokitika Guardian, 2 April 1929, Page 6

IN ANTARCTICA

AY INTER’S COALING. (By Russell Owen— Copyrighted 192! : by the New York Times Company, aim St. Louis Post Dispatch. All right: for publication reserved throughout the world. Wire'sjss to New Yoik limes.) BAY OF WHALES, 31 arch 29. The sun came up over the Bnrriei yesterday a huge ball of yellow, and and in its slow journey along the horizons it gave us a perfect day —oik of those quiet, brilliant Antarctic days which enthrall the beholder. The air—the purest air in the world —was sc crystal clear that distance was fore shortened, and the eye leaped as il over only a few yards to the faraway ridges of snow glistening in the morning light. The sky was a thin blue, as if one could see into ail infinity of space far beyond the range ol ordinary vision. All around the horizon there was a thin band of cloud which reflected the light as from a mirror. There were strange shadows in this clear light of the late Antarctic day. So low was the sun that every small protuberance in the snow, every sharp line of sastrugi, every gouged out hollow and eroded hummock had its silver grev shadows. They stood out as ii etched against the gleaming white the snow, and the vast field about us drew in and contracted as, for the first time for many days, we wore abb to see the details of its surface—detail usually lost in the obscurity of difTu-eo light under an overcast sky. But the oddest shadow of all was that around us as we walked, lor so groat was the reflection from the encircling horizon that a shadow was cast on all sides, and one moved as if innumerable spotlights were focussed on tiny figures in this vast and desolate stage. '1 her came the witchery of the Antaretb two-light—a dim half light in which all things were distinctly outlined and half concealed. Luminous distant horizons. the chill gray of the snow, and a cloud-barred moon make a scene that touches you with a weird attraction, intensified by the deep silence of the dead land. One might as well stand on the lifeless moon itself. There would ho nothing more strange.