Section E. 



GEOGRAPHY. 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, 



THOMAS WALKER FOWLER, M.Inst.C.E , 

 M.Am.Soc.C.E., F.Pv.G.S., &c., 



Hon. Sec. Victoria Branch Royal Geographical Society of Australasia. 



Ladies and Gentlemen — Since the last meeting of the Association, 

 held at Dunedin in 1904, the event of greatest interest to geographers 

 of our Southern Hemisphere has been the return of the British National 

 Antarctic Expedition from the scene of its labors in Ross Sea and Vic - 

 toria Land. The detailed account of the expedition has been available 

 for some time, and attentive readers are compelled to admire the courage 

 and determination with which the work of the expedition was carried 

 out — courage and determination well worthy of the best traditions 

 of our race. Captain Scott's farthest point south was 82° 16' 33", or 

 about 534 statute miles from the pole. This is about 50 miles less 

 than the distance by rail from Sydney to Melbourne, or 50 miles more 

 than that from Melbourne to Adelaide. To reach this position Captain 

 Scott and his comrades, Lieut. Shackleton and Dr. Wilson, in 93 days 

 covered 960 miles, an excellent record for a sledge journey, which, 

 however, was surpassed by that of the same leader, accompanied by 

 Evans and Lashley the following season, when, journeying westward, 

 they ascended to the great plateau of Victoria Land and covered 1,098 

 miles in 81 days, a large part of the journey being at an altitude of 

 9,000ft. in latitude 78° south. In some respects this journey resembles 

 that of Nansen across Greenland, in 1888, in latitude 64J° N. He 

 reached practically the same altitude and travelled 282 miles in 41 days 



Captain Scott gives us a vivid description of the pleasures (or, as 

 most of us would term them, miseries) of sledging in polar regions, 

 and enables us to understand more clearly the hardships experienced 

 by the early polar explorers such as Parry and the Rosses, Franklin, 

 McClure, McClintock, and others, who had not the facilities available 

 to more recent explorers for obtaining warm food. Few of us would 

 relish the comforts of a sledge journey, even with modern luxuries, 

 as described by Captain Scott. Let us picture to ourselves three men 

 in a sleeping-bag, each in turn suffering from intense fits of shivering, 

 which form part of the nightly programme preparatory to a short period 

 of broken sleep ; and, again, the misery of putting on each morning 

 boots frozen as hard as iron and far from the shape of the wearer's feet. 

 What agony those men must suffer before those boots get gradually 

 thawed from the warmth of the wearer's feet after he has dragged the 

 sledge for an hour or more. 



