THE SOUTH POLE WILL BE FOUND 241 



tinent. In the above three named routes the most important discoveries have 

 been made by way of Tasmania. 



In recent years a new line of travel has been used. Lieut. Shackleton's 

 was the most recent. He sailed from New Zealand for the southern regions. 



Prof. T. W. E. David who made a trip to the southern magnetic pole 

 asserts that in company with two other explorers he found the Magnetic 

 Pole after a journey of 1,260 miles which lasted four months. Prof. David 

 describes the Magnetic Pole as a circular area about thirty miles in diameter, 

 within which the pole is situated from time to time during different days and 

 at different hours of the day the pole constantly moving around. 



Prof. David said that when his party got to the Antarctic Magnetic Pole 

 the needle of the ordinary compass refused to work, but their position was 

 more accurately told by an instrument which contained a number of magnetic 

 needles, which tilted up vertically the nearer they got to the Magnetic Pole 

 till at the Magnetic Pole itself they were upright. The compass would act 

 in a similar manner in the Arctic magnetic circle. 



That the South Pole will be discovered, and speedily, was asserted in 

 an earlier chapter. Activity in this line was immensely stimulated by the 

 discoveries of Cook and Peary. Explorers who had hoped to be the first to 

 plant the flag of their nation at the northernmost point began to yearn for 

 the glory of finding the southernmost. No sooner had the success of the 

 North-pole-finders become known than preparations were begun by several 

 travelers to go to the Antarctic. For a time it was believed both Cook and 

 Peary would try for the South Pole, but later Peary announced he was 

 through with polar travel. Cook did not give out his intentions immediately. 

 In the meantime announcement was made that Capt. Scott, the Englishman, 

 had received the backing of the Royal Geographical Society for a South Pole 

 trip in which he expected to use motor sledges and all the other most modern 

 means of polar travel. He expected to establish two bases, one in McMurdo 

 Sound and the other in King Edward Land. 



The Antarctic has not furnished the same black record of death, starva- 

 tion and misery that has attended the search for the farthest north. This, 

 perhaps, is because there has not existed the same fever of desire to reach the 

 South Pole. But the day of discovery is coming. They will push forward, 

 these intrepid voyagers, into the great white waste of the Antarctic, until the 

 last discoverable land is charted, the last mountains climbed, and all that is 

 knowable about the South Pole, as well as the North, will be known. And 



