PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. XLVH 



Captain Scott, the South Pole might have been considered any- 

 body's Pole; either the Norwegians, or the Japanese, or the Ger- 

 mans, or the British, for the expeditions representing all these 

 peoples had by this time entered the field as competitors. As the 

 result of his own consummate skill, forethought, capacity as a 

 leader, and that genius which lies in the capacity for taking an 

 infinity of pains, backed up by the record of a heroic past, and 

 supported by a brave band of as equally heroic countrymen, 

 Amundsen, as the world knows, secured the much coveted prize of 

 the South Pole for the flag of Norway. Knowing full well, as we 

 do, that Amundsen's dash for tlae South Pole was his last 

 desperate throw to save his expedition, planned for the North 

 Pole, from financial ruin, we can surely afford to make light of his 

 slight departure from usual scientific etiquette, all the more be- 

 cause of the glorious record the British nation already holds in 

 polar exploration, and can congratulate heartily and generously 

 this hero of either Pole, and his brave companions, on the splen- 

 dour of their achievement. Achieve the Pole they certainly did, 

 as the most rigid scientific scrutiny of their numerous accurate 

 observations proved that they must have passed within a few 

 hundred metres of the Pole, and possibly have been even closer. ^ 



It has been said that the scientific results of such a dash are 

 meagre. Such a conclusion is disproved by the results, for 

 although they do not bulk as large as those of Captain Scott's 

 expedition, the geographical, meteorological, and oceano-graphical 

 results are of extreme and unique interest. 



In the first place, Amundsen's march to the Pole, and the ex- 

 plorations of his lieutenant, Prestud, in the direction of King 

 Edward VII. land, showed that large masses of land, either im- 

 mense islands, or low continents, with deep inlets, bound the 

 Great Ice Barrier on the east, and southwards to tlie Antarctic 

 Andes. It will be observed on the map exhibited that the Ant- 

 arctic Andes make a great swerve from their south-easterly trend 

 in the King Oscar Mountains, near where the Heiberg Glacier 

 joins the Barrier; the trend southerly from this point being to- 

 wards the S.S.E. This suggests a possibility of the Antarctic 

 Andes after all, perhaps, extending into the eastern side of Wed- 

 dell Sea, near Coat's Land, though this is by no means certain. 



In these Andes, Amundsen discovered the highest mountain 

 yet known in Antarctica, called by him Frithjof Nansen, 15,000 

 feet in height. ^ 



1 Subsequent observations (with a theodolite) by the late Captain R. F. Scott and his heroic 

 comrades prove that the .spot where Amundsen planted the Norwegian flag was within half-a-mile 

 of -where they calculated the actual South Pole is situated. 



•> The late Captain R. F. Scott and Sir Frnest Shackleton discovered almost equally high 

 mountains respectively in Mount Markham and Mount Kirkpatrick. the latter to the north-west 

 of the Beardmore Glacier, the former about 80 miles further north. 



