Jagged Peaks and Gaping Crevasses

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 545, 24 December 1928, Page 11

Jagged Peaks and Gaping Crevasses

WILKINS’S DISCOVERIES COAL STRATA AND WARM AIR (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) (United Service) Reed. 10 a.m. LONDON, Sunday. In a further copyright message from his base at Deception Island, Sir Hubert Wilkins says of his 1,200mile hop over Graham’s Land: "The first part of our fight was over water, then we passed over high, peaked mountains, on which flowed glaciers reticulated with gaping crevasses, many of which coaid have swallowed the machine without leaving a trace. “There was no chance whatever of landing safely. 'Some peaks showed horizontal strata, some of them black, which perhaps was coal. At times we flew to a height of 8,000 feet. We returned at 130 miles an hour. We kept a compass course, and easily located Deception Island and landed safely. "The temperature in the pilot cabin throughout the day was exceptionally warm, mostly 64 degrees Fahrenheit. Only when we came low over Deception Island we felt the cold. We discovered no sign of any game or'other sustenance. The prospect of being forced down was much less inspiring than on our Arctic trip. "When we returned to Hektoria we learned that our wireless transmitter had functioned perfectly throughout the flight.”

EXPLORER PRAISED

RISKS DISREGARDED “PASSION FOR ACCURACY” Times Cable. LONDON, Saturday. "The Times,” in commenting on the discoveries made by Sir Hubert Wilkins, says that after having had no sleep for 40 hours, and after a flight of 1,200 miles, not many people would have the energy on returning to their base to sit down and write home about it. It is no wonder, the paper says, that Sir Hubert and Lieutenant Eielson weer tired and weary. But no fatigue was likely to prevent them from sending their message at the earliest opportunity, to announce the solution of a disputed question, which had puzzled geographers for centuries. Graham’s Land is found to be an island. It is separated from the great Polar Continent by an ice-filled channel. That may now be taken to be an established “fact. Wilkins, like Sir Douglas Mawson, has long had intimate practical knowledge of the conditions of Arctic and Antarctic travel. It is not only the call of the ice, but the true geographer’s passion for accuracy and detail in mapping out the surface of the globe that induced him to add to the 8,000 miles he had already flown in the Polar regions with Eielson as his companion. It is already evident that the flights still to be undertaken for the discovery of sites for meteorological stations will be by no means easy, but Wilkins is thinking less of the risks than of the benefits which may result from their adventurous sallies into the unknown. And after the invariable practice of men of their kind, their final conclusion is that their luck still holds.