Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1917-05-10
MAwsoN ANTARCTIC PICTURES.

that will be shown at Chautauqua
this season, Sir Douglas Mawson,
the young Australian scientist fought
enemies as dangerous as machine
guns-or even dun dunn bullets. In
the Antartic he waged war against
enemies as dangerous as any Eng
land is meeting today.
Only in the Antartic they never
meet the enemy face to face-and
they never have the joy of firing
back. 1t is frost-the frost that pen
etrates your body and cripples you
for the long tramp; 1t is the blizzard
that blinds you till you lose the
trail; lit is the treacherous hidden
crevasse all smoothly covered with
snow into which one unsuspecting
step may plunge you and your sled
down into unending space from
which there is no return. 1t is the
awful stiffness and lonesomeness
that drives one mad-it is the fight
ing on with insufficient food; battl-
ing increasingly against stubborn
nature that grudgingly yields up her
secrets; it is fighting with the loath-
some scurvy. It is all these that
make risks assumed in the Antartic
as great as the fight on the battle
fields of Europe at the present time.
Mawson and his two companions
who had left the main party to
make special sledging journey in
the interior, Travelled over hundreds
of miles, making marvellous dis
coveries, gathering valuable infor-
nation for the use of the world.
The story has many a thrilling eff
ect, especially of the sudden plunge
of MINIS and his team down an un-
dreamed-of crevasse. In a moment
an, sledge, dogs, provisions had all
disappeared and the hungry white
chasm had swallowed them up. The
loss of this distinguished man of
science, Lieut.. MINIS, left only
Mawson and DR.. Mertz. For weeks
these two battled bravely against
tremendous odds, but never discuss
ing their chances for escape. They
were removed far from their base
of supplies. Their food was giving
aozt-e.they had eaten their last dog
and only a piece of torn canvass re-
mained with which to build shell
ter. The fearful strain became too
much for Mertz. Mawson saw him
weaken, and death in the antarctic
is not pleasant sight. Alone on
the great snow plain he stood; With
the broken spade he dug agrave in
which he laid his last conrad
alone he stood and repeated the
burial service over him-then erect
ed rude cross from portions of the
sledge, tied the rope of the sledge
about his shoulders aud started on
his long, lonely journey. For one
month month during which time
me heard no voice, saw no livingfi
creature, only the cold winter sky
above and the eternal white expanse
of snow beyond in the deathlike 81
lence that breeds insanity daily
growing weaker, this man with set
teeth and hollow eyes pushed on.
The tale of his long wandering,
stumbling on cache where he
found food-the adventures on the
way-would fill book, as they do
= book as thrilling as any ever
| conceived-a book full of real adj
| venture.
AT Chautauqua the story is told of
the last and worst of all his advent
ures. When alone he walked across
these wintery wastes tied to his sled
ge and suddenly without warning he
plunged through the snow into a
hidden crevasse. Hanging there
with the rope under his arms, he
thought his moment had come-but
looking across hesaw that the cliff
was only five feet wide. By push
ing with his feet on one side and his
shoulders on the other, he managed
to wriggled his way up to the level
of the sledge, when suddenly the op-
posite shelf of ice gave away and
he plunged down again to the full
length of his rope. The force of
his fall had dragged the sledge to
the very border of the crevasse, and
looking up he could see the runners
at the edge. 1t was now only mat
ter of moments till the end should
come. Looking up he decided to try
and climb up his rope. So after a
few moments rest to gather streng-
tn, he climbed up the strong rope,
frozen with sharp knives of ice that
cut through his fur clothing till the
blood trickled down-inch by inch
he pulled himself up. At each pull
he felt the sledge give and saw the
runners advancing slowly over the
edge.
Painfully, but VIGOROUSLY, he
raised himself until at last an elbow