NEW ANTARCTIC LANDS

Hokitika Guardian, 11 April 1929, Page 7

NEW ANTARCTIC LANDS

THE DISCOVERIES OF SiJ? 0. H

WILKINS.

By his aerial survey of Graham Land Sir Hubert Wilkins has initiated a new epoch in Antarctic exploration, states the naval correspondent of the “ limes.” For two reasons his achievement is of outstanding importance. Ho has solved one of the two great problems of Antarctic exploration, and he has performed, in a few hours, an amount of work which, in the days before he demonstrated the enormous advantage of aerial transport in Polar exploration, would have taken at least two Antarctic summers.

Graham Land, to employ the loose generic title given to the projecting tongue of land lying between (approximately) lat. 63 deg. and 69 deg. S., and between long. 58 deg. and 67 deg W., is probably the best, and certainly the earliest, known portion of the Antarctic regions. The South Shetland Islands, which lie some 80 miles northwestward of its northern extremity, were discovered, almost accidentally, by an English merchant skipper, William Smith, in February, 1819. Furtlier exploration of the vicinity by Edward Barnsfield, master, R.N., result-

ed in the discovery of a short stretch of “mainland” farther southward. Barnsfield’s survey, however, showed that the newly-discovered land was of practically no commercial value, and when the sealers of 1821-27 had departed from it, after killing off some 500,000 fur-seal and accomplishing a certain amount of exploration, it remained unvisited for many years. John Biscoe, an English sealer, explored part of the west coast of Graham Land in 1832, and gave it the name which it now bears; but apart 'from his visit and that of Dallmann, a German sealer, who followed him in 1871, exploration in Graham Land slumbered from 1827 to 1892.

Tn 1892-93 four Scottish whalers made an unsuccessful voyage to the northern extremity of Graham Land; and in the same season two Norwegian sealers, Captains Larsen and Evensen, extended its known limits far to the southward. Larsen, in the German sealer, Jason, reached 69 deg. 10 points S. on the eastern side of the peninsula, and was incidentally the second steamship captain (Xaros, M.M.S. Challenger. 1X74, being the first) to cross the Antarctic Circle, lie sighted a stretch of high land, fronted by an ice harrier, extending from late 07 deg. to OH deg. S., and named it the “ Fovn coast.”

I’ntil Sir Hubert Wilkins’s recent flight Larsen’s discovery of the Foyn coast has remained the only accepted report of land on the eastern side or th Graham Land peninsula extending beyond the Antarctic Circle. It seems probable, however, that at least a glimpse ol the coast line there, and < little further southward, was caught by the American sealer .Morrell in IR'23 Larsen’s work was checked by tin Nordonskjold expedition of 1902-3 ; but while this exposed certain errors in liis longtitudes and his estimates of distance, it did not succeed in reaching his “ Koyn coast.” The work of Hie Belgioa, of Xordenskiold’s expedition and ol ( ha rent s two expeditions (1904-5 and 1.'0.-l 01l the northern and western sidos of Graham Land showed that there "as apparently, continuous land as far south as lat. 09 deg.; and since the Endurance (1915) postulated the existence of considerable land masses on the western side of the Weddell Sea, 0was apparent that there was ground for supposing that the Graham Land peninsula formed part of the Antarctic continent, and that it constituted, i’ ( .ffect a link in a great mountain chain' whose all-but-submerged summits (the Shag Hocks. South Georgia, the S. Sandwich Islands, and the S. Orkneys) formed a hairpin loop, continuing through Graham Land and inwards the South Pole, ultimately joinin,r the “ Queen Maud’s Mange ” seen by' Amundsen in 1911 during liis Polar journey. Tliis supposition, however, was in flat contradiction to the view (advanced by the late Sir G. 11. Darwin in 1907, and based upon the tidal differences observed in the Moss and Weddell Seas) that an arm of the sea divided E. Antarctica from W . Antarctica. In conse(|iience. two geographical problems arose to await the test ol furt Imm- exploration. Incidentally, a question of territorial ownership also awaited settlement; for if Graham Laud were actually part ol the Antarctic continent, the honour of first sight

ing and charting any part of this terri lory would fall to an Englishman Barnsfield.

Sir Hubert Wilkins’s great flight (the first ever made in the Antarctic' has definitely answered one of these questions. Graham Land, we now know, is not part of the Antarctic continent; it is separated from it In the wide Stefanson Strait, and th(presumed) portion of the continent further southward shows no signs of a mountain range, but is of a gentlysloping type. The continuous-chain theory must therefore be held to have received a set-back, while some slight weight is added to Darwin’s theory ot an ice-filled strait connecting the Boss ■Hid Weddell Seas—uniting, in other words, the Boss and Luitpokl ice barriers.

Futliormore, the honour of having first sighted the Antarctic continent passes from Brnnsficld to Captain J. S. C. Dumont d’Urville, of the French corvette Astrolabe, who sighted Adelic Land, which is unquestionably part of the Antarctic continent, on January 20. 1840, a date which he logged as January 19, not haying altered his calendar when crossing the meridian of 180, and proceeding westward. By a curious coincidence, he only litrrowlv anticipated an American explorer Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, U.S.N.. who sighted Adelie Land a few days later. Wilkes claimed, indeed, to have sighted land, eastward of Adelie Land, some days before d’Urville, but this “land” was sailed over by Tapsell (1850) and Scott (1904), and there Is no doubt that it has no real existance. Apart from their very great geographical importance, Sir Hubert Wilkin’s discoveries constitute a most impressive demonstration of the fact that the future of Polar exploration lies in the air. During a flight of some ten hours’ duration he has coveied vastlj more ground than any of his predecessors in the Graham Land region; and. in all probability, he has mapped his results with no less accuracy. He reached “Evans Inlot” (Nordenskjold’s “Richthofen Valley,” lat. 66 (leg. S.) in less than two hours from his base at Deception Island. Nordenskjold. advancing on foot from a base 50 miles nearer, took a fortnight to accomplish the same distance, and could get no further, while Wilkins, three hours later, was in lat. 71 deg. 5.—300 miles to the southward. Even should ho make no further flights lie enn look hack upon a very great achievement —a pioneer flight winch has set a completely new standard for future exploration of the Antarctic.