AMUNDSEN AND SCOTT

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8352, 12 February 1913, Page 8

AMUNDSEN AND SCOTT

Captain Amundsen, in his recent work on "The Sooth Pole," makes this reference to the scene of the pole, .where the cables relate . Captain Scott found Amundsen's record: At three, in the afternoon a simultaneous "Halt" rang out from the drivers. They had carefully examined their sledge-meters, and they all showed the full distance —our pole by reckoning. The goal was reached, the journey ended. 1 cannot say—though I know it would sound much more effective —that the object of my life was attained. That . would be romancing rather too barefacedly. 1 had better be honest and admit straight out that I have never known any man to be placed in such a diametrically opposite position to the goal of his desires as 1 was at that moment. The regions around the North Pole—well, yes, the Pole itself—had attracted me from childhood, and here I was at the South Pole. Can anything more topsy-turvy be imagined '< . . . It was not for one man to- do this, it was' for all who had staked their lives in the struggle and held together through thick and thin. . . . Five weather-beaten, frost-bitten fists they were that grasped th« pole, raised the waving flag in the air, and planted it as the first at the geographical South Pole. "Thru we plant thee, beloved flag, at the South Pole, and give to the plain on which it lies the name of King Jlaakon the Seventh's Plateau." That moment will certainly bo remembered by all of us who stood .there.