AMUNDSEN IN LONDON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 198, 10 January 1913, Page 6

AMUNDSEN IN LONDON.

WELCOMED BY THE R.S.S. Captain Ronald Amundsen, liis famous Norwegian explorer, who paid 1 lie. people of New Zealand the compliment of personally conveying to f,li:m the story of his journey to the SoutU Pole, was in November iast the guest of honor at a great gathering in the Queen's Hall, London, on the occasion of a welcome extended to him by the Royal Geographical Society. Captain Amundsen gave a short' lecture, in the course of which he described his historic forced march upon the Pole, and the rest of the evening was given up to speechmaking. The newspaper accounts of the gathering show that the gallant captain lias made some important changes in his personal appearance since he left these shore. "He has shaved his face clean," says the Daily News and Leader, "and the grey hair is cut to within half an inch of his scalp, giving the whole head, with its bronzed and bony features, almost the appearance of some monstrous bird's." It was Sir E. Shackleton who proposed the vote of thanks to the conqueror of the South Po'ie, and Dr. Bruce, the veteran leader of the Scottish Antarctic Expedition, who seconded it. Lord Curzon, who presided, took care that Captain Scott's name should not be forgotten. "In the field of exploration," ihe declared, "we knoAV no jealousy. Even while we are honoring Amundsen this evening I am sure that his thoughts, no less than ours, are turned to our own brave countryman, Captain Scott, still shrouded in the glimmering half-light of the Antarctic, whose footsteps reached the same pole doubtless only a few weeks after Amundsen, and wbp with unostentatious persistence, and in the true spirit of scientific devotion, is gathering in during an absence of three years a harvest of scientific spoiV which, when he returns, will be found to render his expedition the most notable of modern times. The names of these two men will be perpetually linked, along with Sir Ernest Shackleton's, in the history of Antarctic exploration." Lord Curzon made it clear that no possible room was left for doubt that Amundsen had crossed and recrossed the actual site of the pole. The records brought back by Amundsen made that certain.