The Home Of The Blizzard Part 1

The Home of the Blizzard.

by Douglas Mawson.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The object of this book is to present a connected narrative of the Expedition from a popular and general point of view. The field of work is a very extensive one, and I feel that this account provides a record inadequate to our endeavours. However, I am comforted by the fact that the lasting reputation of the Expedition is founded upon the scientific volumes which will appear in due course.

Allusion to the history of Antarctic exploration has been reduced to a minimum, as the subject has been ably dealt with by previous writers.

This, and several other aspects of our subject, have been relegated to special appendices in order to make the story more readable and self-contained.

A glossary of technicalities is introduced for readers not familiar with the terms. In the same place is given a list of animals referred to from time to time. There, the common name is placed against the scientific name, so rendering it unnecessary to repeat the latter in the text.

The reports handed to me by the leaders concerning the work of sledging journeys and of the respective bases were in the main clearly and popularly written. Still it was necessary to make extensive excisions so as to preserve a "balance" of justice in all the accounts, and to keep the narrative within limits. I wish to a.s.sure the various authors of my appreciation of their contributions.

Mr. Frank Hurley's artistic taste is apparent in the numerous photographs. We who knew the circ.u.mstances can warmly testify to his perseverance under conditions of exceptional difficulty. Mr. A. J.

Hodgeman is responsible for the cartographical work, which occupied his time for many months. Other members of the Expedition have added treasures to our collection of ill.u.s.trations; each of which is acknowledged in its place.

To Dr. A. L. McLean, who a.s.sisted me in writing and editing the book, I am very greatly indebted. To him the book owes any literary style it may possess. Dr. McLean's journalistic talent was discovered by me when he occupied the post of Editor of the 'Adelie Blizzard', a monthly volume which helped to relieve the monotony of our second year in Adelie Land. For months he was constantly at work, revising cutting down or amplifying the material of the story.

Finally, I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Hugh Robert Mill for hints and criticisms by which we have profited.

DOUGLAS MAWSON

London, Autumn 1914.

FOREWORD

Nor on thee yet Shall burst the future, as successive zones Of several wonder open on some spirit Flying secure and glad from heaven to heaven.

BROWNING

The aim of geographical exploration has, in these days, interfused with the pa.s.sion for truth. If now the ultimate bounds of knowledge have broadened to the infinite, the spirit of the man of science has quickened to a deeper fervour. Amid the finished ingenuities of the laboratory he has knitted a spiritual entente with the moral philosopher, viewing:

The narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade Before the unmeasured thirst for good.

Science and exploration have never been at variance; rather, the desire for the pure elements of natural revelation lay at the source of that unquenchable power the "love of adventure."

Of whatever nationality the explorer was always emboldened by that impulse, and, if there ever be a future of decadence, it will live again in his ungovernable heritage.

Eric the Red; Francis Drake--the same ardour was kindled at the heart of either. It is a far cry from the latter, a born marauder, to the modern scientific explorer. Still Drake was a hero of many parts, and though a religious bigot in present acceptation, was one of the enlightened of his age. A man who moved an equal in a court of Elizabethan manners was not untouched by the glorious ideals of the Renaissance.

Yet it was the unswerving will of a Columbus, a Vasco da Gama or a Magellan which created the devotion to geographical discovery, per se, and made practicable the concept of a spherical earth. The world was opened in imaginative entirety, and it now remained for the geographer to fill in the details brought home by the navigator.

It was long before Thule the wondrous ice-land of the North yielded her first secrets, and longer ere the Terra Australis of Finne was laid bare to the prying eyes of Science.

Early Arctic navigation opened the bounds of the unknown in a haphazard and fortuitous fas.h.i.+on. Sealers and whalers in the hope of rich booty ventured far afield, and, ranging among the mysterious floes or riding out fierce gales off an ice-girt coast, brought back strange tales to a curious world. Crudely embellished, contradictory, yet alluring they were; but the demand for truth came surely to the rescue. Thus, it was often the whaler who forsook his trade to explore for mere exploration's sake. Baffin was one of those who opened the gates to the North.

Then, too, the commercial spirit of the generations who sought a North West Pa.s.sage was responsible for the incursions of many adventurers into the new world of the ice.

Strangely enough, the South was first attacked in the true scientific spirit by Captain Cook and later by Bellingshausen. Sealing and whaling ventures followed in their train.

At last the era had come for the expedition, planned, administered, equipped and carried out with a definite objective. It is characteristic of the race of men that the first design should have centred on the Pole--the top of the earth, the focus of longitude, the magic goal, to reach which no physical sacrifice was too great. The heroism of Parry is a type of that adamant persistence which has made the history of the conquest of the Poles a volume in which disaster and death have played a large part. It followed on years of polar experience, it resulted from an exact knowledge of geographical and climatic conditions, a fearless antic.i.p.ation, expert information on the details of transport--and the fortune of the brave--that Peary and Amundsen had their reward in the present generation.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the pioneers of new land there were pa.s.sing the scientific workers born in the early nineteenth century. Sir James Clark Ross is an epitome of that expansive enthusiasm which was the keynote of the life of Charles Darwin. The cla.s.sic "Voyage of the Beagle" (1831-36) was a triumph of patient rigorous investigation conducted in many lands outside the polar circles.

The methods of Darwin were developed in the 'Challenger' Expedition (1872) which worked even to the confines of the southern ice. And the torch of the pure flame of Science was handed on. It was the same consuming ardour which took Nansen across the plateau of Greenland, which made him resolutely propound the theory of the northern ice-drift, to maintain it in the face of opposition and ridicule and to plan an expedition down to the minutest detail in conformity therewith. The close of the century saw Science no longer the mere appendage but the actual basis of exploratory endeavour.

Disinterested research and unselfish specialization are the phrases born to meet the intellectual demands of the new century.

The modern polar expedition goes forth with finished appliances, with experts in every department--sailors, artisans, soldiers and students in medley; supremely, with men who seek risk and privation--the glory of the dauntless past. A.L.M.

INTRODUCTION

One of the oft-repeated questions for which I usually had a ready answer, at the conclusion of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Expedition (1907-09) was, "Would you like to go to the Antarctic again?" In the first flush of the welcome home and for many months, during which the keen edge of pleasure under civilized conditions had not entirely worn away, I was inclined to reply with a somewhat emphatic negative. But, once more a man in the world of men, lulled in the easy repose of routine, and performing the ordinary duties of a workaday world, old emotions awakened. The grand sweet days returned in irresistible glamour, faraway "voices" called:

...from the wilderness, the vast and G.o.dlike s.p.a.ces, The stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole.

There always seemed to be something at the back of my mind, stored away for future contemplation, and it was an idea which largely matured during my first sojourn in the far South. At times, during the long hours of steady tramping across the trackless snow-fields, one's thoughts flow in a clear and limpid stream, the mind is unruffled and composed and the pa.s.sion of a great venture springing suddenly before the imagination is sobered by the calmness of pure reason. Perchance this is true of certain moments, but they are rare and fleeting. It may have been in one such phase that I suddenly found myself eager for more than a glimpse of the great span of Antarctic coast lying nearest to Australia.

Professor T. W. E. David, Dr. F. A. Mackay and I, when seeking the South Magnetic Pole during the summer of 1908-09, had penetrated farthest into that region on land. The limiting outposts had been defined by other expeditions; at Cape Adare on the east and at Gaussberg on the west.

Between them lay my "Land of Hope and Glory," of whose outline and glacial features the barest evidence had been furnished. There, bordering the Antarctic Circle, was a realm far from the well-sailed highways of many of the more recent Antarctic expeditions.

The idea of exploring this unknown coast took firm root in my mind while I was on a visit to Europe in February 1910. The prospects of an expedition operating to the west of Cape Adare were discussed with the late Captain R. F. Scott and I suggested that the activities of his expedition might be arranged to extend over the area in question.

Finally he decided that his hands were already too full to make any definite proposition for a region so remote from his own objective.

Sir Ernest Shackleton was warmly enthusiastic when the scheme was laid before him, hoping for a time to identify himself with the undertaking.

It was in some measure due to his initiative that I felt impelled eventually to undertake the organization and leaders.h.i.+p of an expedition.

For many reasons, besides the fact that it was the country of my home and Alma Mater, I was desirous that the Expedition should be maintained by Australia. It seemed to me that here was an opportunity to prove that the young men of a young country could rise to those traditions which have made the history of British Polar exploration one of triumphant endeavour as well as of tragic sacrifice. And so I was privileged to rally the "sons of the younger son."

A provisional plan was drafted and put before the Australasian a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science at their meeting held at Sydney in January 1911, with a request for approval and financial a.s.sistance. Both were unanimously granted, a sum of L1000 was voted and committees were formed to co-operate in the arrangement of a scientific programme and to approach the Government with a view to obtaining substantial help.

The three leading members of the committees were Professor Orme Ma.s.son (President), Professor T. W. Edgeworth David (President Elect) and Professor G. C. Henderson (President of the Geographical Section). All were zealous and active in furthering the projects of the Expedition.

Meanwhile I had laid my scheme of work before certain prominent Australians and some large donations** had been promised. The sympathy and warm-hearted generosity of these gentlemen was an incentive for me to push through my plans at once to a successful issue.

CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM AND PREPARATIONS