IN ANTARCTICA

Hokitika Guardian, 6 November 1929, Page 5

IN ANTARCTICA

(By. Russell Owen—Copyrighted 19?£ by the New York Times Company, and fet. Louis Post Disputch. Ail lights for publication reserved throughout the world Wireless to New ioik Times.)

GEOLOGISTS LEAVE CAMP

[United Press Association—By Electric

Telegraph.—Copyright, j

(Received this day at 9.40 a.in.) BAY OF WHALES, Nov. 4. The Geological party started this afternoon on a sledging journey of more than four hundred miles to Queen Maud Mountains, at. the edge of the Polar plateau. They will no absent for, throe months'. Nearly a month will be spent surveying and collecting geological data in this important but little known part of Antarctica. They will travel with light sledges at least one hundred miles and possibly fifty further if the “snowmobile” has been able to haul loads forward from the point where they word, left on the 'former , trip. They should also meet the supporting party now returning. .Team after teani was harnessed after lunch, to a chorus of howls and barks, th§) dogs straining at their picket ropes, snapping at each other and plunging . into their traces. It made excitement when! two could get near enough. There was" a momentary squabDle and a fight until they were pulled apart. Getting ready to go on the trail is the best fun they know. . .The last litter of pups, little fellows, sniffed at the bigger dogs noses and were tolerated. They were like a lot of small boys wishing they could be grown up too, Vviien the last team was harnessed and everyone in the camp had shaken hands with the six men in the party, and Byrd had wished them, good luck, team after team rushed down the slope to the inlet and out to the Bay where they turned south towards the Barrier.

Pile leader is Doctor Lawrence Gould (Geologist of the Expedition) whose face reflected all the delight he felt in getting away at last to a place that should be a geologist’s paradise. ~ Djganash’s supporting party camped on Monday night 160 miles south of Little America, within an easy week’s march of the home base and warm bunks, with all their obstacles behind them, according to a , short radio message received by; Byrd. Doganahi’s a dels a thrilling account of, how they retraced their steps through the treacherous area of broken ice south of Depot Three. “A-haze blotted out the broken features cf the mountains of ice, but it did not hide the trail or patches of blue light around which it wound. It would have been suicide to have attempted to -come through for the first time on a (day like this, but we. had tested every , foot of the trail on our way out and we felt we were comparatively safe in tracks. .Had we not found our way through to firm ice on the south side of the pressure when we did, we should still have been camped .in the nest of holldw haycocks in the centre of turbance. • ■ • In our first two camps south of the pressure area we heard an almost continuous rumble and cracking of ,ice, during the first night on the apparently solid barrier to .the south. We awoke to find that a narrow crevasse had opened immediately undei •Walden and Braathan. Walden counted two hundred crevasses which crossed two miles of our trail through the. heart of the disturbance. He did not attempt to count the open chasms everywhere to the right and left, though many of them were so .close we could see where the blue merged into the black.”