Chapter 2

The public knows of the Miskatonic Expedition through our frequent
wireless reports to the _Arkham Advertiser_ and Associated Press, and
through the later articles by Pabodie and myself. We consisted of four
men from the University–Pabodie, Lake of the biology department,
Atwood of the physics department–also a meteorologist–and myself,
representing geology and having nominal command, also sixteen
assistants: seven graduate students from Miskatonic and nine skilled
mechanics.

Of these sixteen, twelve were qualified aëroplane pilots, all but two
of whom were competent wireless operators. Eight of them understood
navigation with compass and sextant, as did Pabodie, Atwood and I. In
addition, of course, our two ships–wooden exwhalers, reinforced for
ice conditions and having auxiliary steam–were fully manned.

The Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation, aided by a few special
contributions, financed the expedition; hence our preparations were
extremely thorough, despite the absence of great publicity.

The dogs, sledges, machines, camp materials, and unassembled parts of
our five planes were delivered in Boston, and there our ships were
loaded.

We were marvelously well-equipped for our specific purposes, and in
all matters pertaining to supplies, regimen, transportation, and camp
construction we profited by the excellent example of our many recent
and exceptionally brilliant predecessors. It was the unusual number and
fame of these predecessors which made our own expedition–ample though
it was–so little noticed by the world at large.

As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston Harbor on September 2nd,
1930, taking a leisurely course down the coast and through the Panama
Canal, and stopping at Samoa and Hobart, Tasmania, at which latter
place we took on final supplies.

None of our exploring party had ever been in the polar regions before,
hence we all relied greatly on our ship captains–J. B. Douglas,
commanding the brig _Arkham_, and serving as commander of the sea
party, and Georg Thorfinnssen, commanding the barque _Miskatonic_–both
veteran whalers in antarctic waters.

As we left the inhabited world behind the sun sank lower and lower in
the north, and stayed longer and longer above the horizon each day.
At about 62° South Latitude we sighted our first icebergs–tablelike
objects with vertical sides–and just before reaching the antarctic
circle, which we crossed on October 20th with appropriately quaint
ceremonies, we were considerably troubled with field ice.

The falling temperature bothered me considerably after our long voyage
through the tropics, but I tried to brace up for the worse rigors to
come. On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me
vastly; these included a strikingly vivid mirage–the first I had ever
seen–in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable
cosmic castles.

Pushing through the ice, which was fortunately neither extensive
nor thickly packed, we regained open water at South Latitude 67°,
East Longitude 175°. On the morning of October 26th a strong land
blink appeared on the south, and before noon we all felt a thrill of
excitement at beholding a vast, lofty, and snow-clad mountain chain
which opened out and covered the whole vista ahead. At last we had
encountered an outpost of the great unknown continent and its cryptic
world of frozen death.

These peaks were obviously the Admiralty Range discovered by Ross, and
it would now be our task to round Cape Adare and sail down the east
coast of Victoria Land to our contemplated base on the shore of McMurdo
Sound, at the foot of the volcano Erebus in South Latitude 77° 9´.

* * * * *

The last lap of the voyage was vivid and fancy-stirring. Great barren
peaks of mystery loomed up constantly against the west as the low
northern sun of noon or the still lower horizon-grazing southern sun of
midnight poured its hazy reddish rays over the white snow, bluish ice
and water lanes, and black bits of exposed granite slope.

Through the desolate summits swept raging, intermittent gusts of
the terrible antarctic wind, whose cadences sometimes held vague
suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping, with notes
extending over a wide range, and which for some subconscious mnemonic
reason seemed to me disquieting and even dimly terrible.

Something about the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing
Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich, and of the still stranger and more
disturbing descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng which
occur in the dreaded _Necronomicon_ of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. I
was rather sorry, later on, that I had ever looked into that monstrous
book at the college library.

On the 7th of November, sight of the westward range having been
temporarily lost, we passed Franklin Island; and the next day descried
the cones of Mts. Erebus and Terror on Ross Island ahead, with the long
line of the Parry Mountains beyond. There now stretched off to the east
the low, white line of the great ice barrier, rising perpendicularly
to a height of two hundred feet like the rocky cliffs of Quebec, and
marking the end of southward navigation.

In the afternoon we entered McMurdo Sound and stood off the coast in
the lee of smoking Mt. Erebus. The scoriaceous peak towered up some
twelve thousand seven hundred feet against the eastern sky, like a
Japanese print of the sacred Fujiyama, while beyond it rose the white,
ghostlike height of Mt. Terror, ten thousand nine hundred feet in
altitude, and now extinct as a volcano.

Puffs of smoke from Erebus came intermittently, and one of the graduate
assistants–a brilliant young fellow named Danforth–pointed out what
looked like lava on the snowy slope, remarking that this mountain,
discovered in 1840, had undoubtedly been the source of Poe’s image
when he wrote seven years later: