BACK FROM THE SOUTH.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16487, 28 February 1914, Page 10

BACK FROM THE SOUTH.

Dr Douglas Mawsox, the leader of the Australian Antarctic Expedition, lias returned to Adelaide with a fine reoord of achievement to his credit. His purpose in going south two years ago was to explore the stretch of unknown Antarctic coastline lying below Australia. The features of Victoria Land, west of the Ross Sea, had been made fairly well known by the earlier British expeditions, but beyond stretched the virgin shores of Adelie Land and Clario Land, as lonely and mysterious as when Wilkes tried to reach them in the fourth decade of the last century. The venture was less spectacular than the dashes to the Pole of other Antarctic travellers, but it was both important and dangerous. Dr Mawson and his comrades have succeeded in completing a very large part of tlieir original programme under conditions of exceptional difficulty. The wireless station they established at their base on Adelie Land, with a relay station on Macquarie Island iu the southern ocean, kept us informed of the chief incidents of tlieir travels, which may bo said to have added more than a thousand miles of continental coastline to the. map. The hopes entertained in some quarters of important mineral discoveries within the Antarctic circle appear to have been disappointed, though judgment on that point must be reserved until Dr Mawson has put all the information he has collected before the world. But the expedition lias secured definite knowledge of tho geological conditions ns well as the geographical facts and we cannot doubt that the fuller reports which will become available later will prove to be of very great interest. The discovery of coal in largo quantities is in itself an incident of the first importance, with a direct bearing upon tho problems of climate, evolution and

ancient land connections. The young Australian explorer deserves very warm praise for what he has dared and done in the polar solitudes.