Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-07-31
i'll Find Land of Mystery When He Flies to South Pole

siseent belief among geographers that
A1ttay was a vast continent which
expended northward into the tropics.
Thtfj legend was one Of the hardest to
k'D which explorers ever have encoun.
tH ed. Even Wilkes, with the records
cF Cook before him, thought that he
might discover for the United States
the great, mysterious Terra Nova
Australis butting far north into the
Pacific. Second. was the search for
l/wholes and seals. Third. was the
4 search for the South Pole.
4 The first voyage into the Far South
4 was that Of Amerigo Vespucci, for
| whom the American continents are
named. His journal records that in
| April, 1902, while crossing the South
Il Atlantic, he was blown far out of his
\ course until he sighted a new and
l rough coasA along which he sailed for
I 20 leagues. This has been identified
liby geographers as the Island of South
HGeorgia.
|, The next expedition OF record is that
lof the Dutch whaler. Dirk Gerritzz.
possibly the original OF the Ancient
KMariner," who long was reported to
Vhave been carried south OF Cape Horn
Vim his ship, De Blijde Beetschap, to "a
degrees south. where he sighted a.
/ rough coast which reminded him OF
L TIC Quasi OI Norway. GeTEltSZ AFTER
! ward was captured by the Spaniards.
\ Biographies long believed that he had
1 discovered West Antarctica in the
/ Summer OF 1893. but it now is con-
4 coded that the claim rested only on a
clerical error in preparing his log for
\ publication.
Antarctica was TO wait for 200 years
before the appearance of the first
scientific explorer. France took the
N hn fV,fp % all
\ equipped expedition under NJ. Des
|, Loziers Bouvet of the French navy
sailed south from the Cape Of Good
II Hope. Bouvet sighted the rocky
4 island known ever since as Bouvet
4 Larfd, but he was unable to effect a
\ landing. In 1771 another French ma
y val, expedition under Capt Yves J.
/ de kerguelen. with two ships, sailed
into the Antarctic and made a landing
On the Kerguelen Islands. Both these
hesolate lands still are under the
l/French flag. Kerguelen suffered the
customary fate of Antarctic explorers.
I His claims were disputed for nearly q
Il century after his death.
'ITHEN came the celebrated voyages
of Capt. James Cook. partly
financed by the British Royal Society,
from 1913 to 1876. With the single
exception of Columbus, no other ex.
plorer has added so much to geograph-
ical knowledge. His most notable feat
was the vigation of Australia
and the claim which he established to
that continent for the British Empire.
He crossed the Antarctic Circle in
1873 and reached IS degrees South,
Then he circumnavigated the South
Polar regions, rediscovered South
Georgia. and ended the legend OF a
great southern continent extending
into the tropics.
Following Cook come the American
whalers, including Palmer. Besides,
there was the Nantucket whaler, Capt.
Swain, who discovered the present
Dougherty Island, and Capt. James z.
Sheffield of Stonington. who landed on
the South Shetlands. The log Of Capt.
Benjamin N1orrell of Stonington re-
cords the sighting of a land mass,
which he named New South Green.
| land, in 1922. This may have been
West Antarctica, but geogra piers now
are inclined to question it.
The next Antarctic expedition was
that of Capt. James Weddell, master
in the Royal Navy. in 1S20-23, fol-
lowed closely by Wilkes and d'Urville.
Both these men undoubtedly saw the
mountains of Antarctica, but neither
effected a landing. Like Wilkes dur.
Vile cOntented himself with landing on
a small island off the coast, raising
the French flag and drawing a bottle
Of old Bordeaux wine"
For the next half century interest
in Antarctic exploration was confined
largely to firm of London shippers,
Enderby Bros, whose captains. Will
liam II. Smiley in 1912, John Balleny
in 1889, and John Biscoe, all sighted
the continental land mass and gave
names to vast stretches of the coast.
In 1898 a British scientific expedi.
ton under Capt c. z. Borchgrevink
sailed South on the steamer Southern
Cross and landed on the coast Of Vic
toria Land at 70 degrees south, the
nearest the Pole which had been
reached up to that time. They were
the first persons to set foot on the
| Antarctic continent. They established
| Winter quarters and the Southern
Cross sailed North. The ship returned
and picked up Borchgrevink and his
men the next year.
| In 1900 Swedish expedition, under
DR.. Otto Nordenskjold, brother OF the
| celebrated Greenland explorer, win.
tered on the coast of West Antarctica.
Their ship was lost in the ice pack
| and they were rescued the following
Summer by relief expedition sent out
| by the government of the Argentine
| Republic.
There were two expeditions in 1901,
that of the German ship Gauss, under
DR.. Erich Won Drygalski, and that of
Scotch party, commanded by DIR.
| w. s. Bruce. That same year Scott
| and Shackleton were in the Antarctic
| with the English ship Discovery. The
| next expeditions are those of Scott
and Amundsen.
Now the Antarctic has been de-
serted for nearly 20 years, and the
silence of the great waste probably
will next be broken by the whirr OF
Byrd's airplane. The mountains Of
Antarctica are almost as little known
as the mountains of the moon, and
| they constitute the great challenge for
explorers of the future
Even the nomenclature of Antarc.
tica is confused. Every explorer has
made his own maps. The generally
| recognized division, however, is into
four quadrants whose apexes meet at
the Pole-the Weddell quadrant, south
OF Cape Horn; the Enderby quadrant,
south of Cape Good Hope; the Victo-
ria quadrant. south of Australia, and
the Ross quadrant. between the Vic.
toria and Weddell divisions.
Only one of these quadrants, the
Victoria, has in any sense been ex.
plored. There the Ross Sea runs far
into the land. so that it is only about
500 miles from the coast to the South
Pole. 1t was over Victoria Land that
Shackleton. Scott and Amundsen
pushed their dogs and pOnies