Chapter 3

“–the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole–
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.”

Danforth was a great reader of bizarre material, and had talked a
good deal of Poe. I was interested myself because of the antarctic
scene of Poe’s only long story–the disturbing and enigmatical _Arthur
Gordon Pym_. On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the
background, myriad of grotesque penguins squawked and flapped their
fins, while many fat seals were visible on the water, swimming or
sprawling across large cakes of slowly drifting ice.

Using small boats, we effected a difficult landing on Ross Island
shortly after midnight, on the morning of the 9th, carrying a line of
cable from each of the ships and preparing to unload supplies by means
of a breeches-buoy arrangement.

Our sensations on first treading antarctic soil were poignant and
complex, even though at this particular point the Scott and Shackleton
expeditions had preceded us.

Our camp on the frozen shore below the volcano’s slope was only a
provisional one, headquarters being kept aboard the _Arkham_. We landed
all our drilling apparatus, dogs, sledges, tents, provisions, gasoline
tanks, experimental ice-melting outfit, cameras, both ordinary and
aërial, aëroplane parts, and other accessories, including three small
portable wireless outfits–besides those in the planes–capable of
communicating with the _Arkham’s_ large outfit from any part of the
antarctic continent that we would be likely to visit.

The ship’s outfit, communicating with the outside world, was to convey
press reports to the _Arkham Advertiser’s_ powerful wireless station
on Kingsport Head, Mass. We hoped to complete our work during a single
antarctic summer; but if this proved impossible we would winter on the
_Arkham_, sending the _Miskatonic_ north before the freezing of the ice
for another summer’s supplies.

* * * * *

I need not repeat what the newspapers have already published about our
early work: of our ascent of Mt. Erebus; our successful mineral borings
at several points on Ross Island and the singular speed with which
Pabodie’s apparatus accomplished them, even through solid rock layers;
our provisional test of the small ice-melting equipment; our perilous
ascent of the great barrier with sledges and supplies; and our final
assembling of five huge aëroplanes at the camp atop the barrier.

The health of our land party–twenty men and fifty-five Alaskan sledge
dogs–was remarkable, though of course we had so far encountered no
really destructive temperatures or windstorms.

For the most part, the thermometer varied between zero and 20° or 25°
above, and our experience with New England winters had accustomed us to
rigors of this sort. The barrier camp was semipermanent, and destined
to be a storage cache for gasoline, provisions, dynamite, and other
supplies.

Only four of our planes were needed to carry the actual exploring
material, the fifth being left with a pilot and two men, from the
ships, at the storage cache to form a means of reaching us from the
_Arkham_ in case all our exploring planes were lost.

Later, when not using all the other planes for moving apparatus, we
would employ one or two in a shuttle transportation service between
this cache and another permanent base on the great plateau from six
hundred to seven hundred miles southward, beyond Beardmore Glacier.

Despite the almost unanimous accounts of appalling winds and tempests
that pour down from the plateau, we determined to dispense with
intermediate bases, taking our chances in the interest of economy and
probable efficiency.

Wireless reports have spoken of the breathtaking, four-hour, nonstop
flight of our squadron on November 21st over the lofty shelf ice, with
vast peaks rising on the west, and the unfathomed silences echoing to
the sound of our engines.

Wind troubled us only moderately, and our radio compasses helped us
through the one opaque fog we encountered. When the vast rise loomed
ahead, between Latitudes 83° and 84°, we knew we had reached Beardmore
Glacier, the largest valley glacier in the world, and that the frozen
sea was now giving place to a frowning and mountainous coast line.

At last we were truly entering the white, æon-dead world of the
ultimate south. Even as we realized it we saw the peak of Mt. Nansen
in the eastern distance, towering up to its height of almost fifteen
thousand feet.

The successful establishment of the southern base above the glacier in
Latitude 86° 7´, East Longitude 174° 23´, and the phenomenally rapid
and effective borings and blastings made at various points reached by
our sledge trips and short aëroplane flights, are matters of history;
as is the arduous and triumphant ascent of Mt. Nansen by Pabodie and
two of the graduate students–Gedney and Carroll–on December 13th to
15th.

We were some eight thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. When
experimental drillings revealed solid ground only twelve feet down
through the snow and ice at certain points, we made considerable use of
the small melting apparatus and sunk bores and performed dynamiting at
many places, where no previous explorer had ever thought of securing
mineral specimens.

The pre-Cambrian granites and beacon sandstones thus obtained confirmed
our belief that this plateau was homogeneous, with the great bulk of
the continent to the west, but somewhat different from the parts lying
eastward below South America–which we then thought to form a separate
and smaller continent divided from the larger one by a frozen junction
of Ross and Weddell Seas, though Byrd has since disproved the report.