IN ANTARCTICA

Hokitika Guardian, 1 November 1929, Page 5

IN ANTARCTICA

(By Russell Owen—Copyrighted 1929 by tho New York Times Company, and j St. Louis Post Dispatch. All rights for publication reserved throughout the world Wire'ess to New Yoik limes.) } United Press Association—By Electric , le'egraph—Copyright). (Received tin's day at 9.2-1 n.m.) BAY OF WHALES, October 31. Five dog teams of the geological party, having takbn loads hundreds of miles, returned in eight and a half days. They tumhled in just before dinner. The dogs were eager for seal meat, instead of ponuniran, which they have eaten lately, and the men were just as anxious to get inside and eat a warm dinner in comfort. All five drivers—Vaughan, Goodale, Crockett, O’Brien, and Thorne—were in good condition though their faces were burned anid peeling from facing the wind going out, and the sun all the way back. When they left they had a bitter cold wind in their faces and the temperature rapidly dropped to thirty below on tho interior of rhe barrier. They became soaked in perspiration travelling in the hot sun during the clay and when they stopped at night their outside clothing froze before they could get it off. It was so ! warm that at twenty below .it melted a ! bag of pemmican in one depot which ; had been improperly covered with snow, and even melted snow on canvas, tanks. ' | About seventy-five miles' out they came to a remarkable series of Sart- J gugi snow which has been driven and cut into sharp ridges by the wind, flat 1 on the top end with overhanging knifelike edges on the windward sides. They were two or three feet high and hard as flint, wlp!e between them the hollows were filled with soft snow. Travelling over these is very difficult. It was in the midst of these sartgugi that the geological party left their leads in order to relieve the dogs after reaching hundred miles depot four days ago, and finding the support party had gone on, they left their loads and with one light sledge each started back for the camp. They travelled fast, coming the whole distance in three days. The dazzling sun burned their facis and hurt their eyes* for they were lac- J ing it all the way, as it is still too I cold to travel in what would normally be the hours of night, when the sun is low in the north. | The skin was peeling from cheeks and lips were cracked and broken. | The day before yesterday they topped , one of the long hills on the barrier and saw before them to the north • a tiny black speck. It began to move and came clown the slope, towards them, ! . throwing snow behind it and muttering to itself as it climbed again. It was a snowmobile full of fuel and scornful

words for the dogs. That was a many meeting. The snowmobile started fciir days ago.

After many vicissitudes, Tim Feury, the long-legged Irishman from Pairson, New Jersey, who drove it last year, dug it out of the snow about ten days ago and went to work on its internal arrangements. He took the clutch out, cleaned it, fixed trends ami one day, with the aid of half nf the camp ran it out of the deep hole vlriro it had been buried all the winter.