410 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 
Land the continent rises to great heights, at least 12,000 or 15,000 feet being 
visible from the sea. Indeed, Amundsen reports finding mountains up to 
19,000 feet in height near the Pole itself. Little was known of the extension 
of the continent to the west of Victoria Land until recently, when the Austral- 
asian Antarctic Expedition visited that region. Two expeditions in 1840, one 
French and one American, spent a short time in those seas, but neither landed 
upon the mainland, though the French reached a rocky islet off the coast. They 
both saw parts of the mainland, but their reports were vague, and served only 
to stimulate interest in that portion of Antarctica. 
The 60 degrees of that portion of Antarctica to which we sailed some three 
years ago then presented really a virgin field. Now we have brought back the in- 
formation that it is continuous land, and that it is covered by a very thick and 
solid ice-cap, which flows out from the central portions of that high continent. 
In that portion the coast-line is not anything like so steep and precipitous as on 
the Ross Sea side. ‘The German Expedition of 1901 made the land at what they 
called Gaussberg, just to the west of the Australian Quadrant. Their ship was 
frozen into the pack some distance from the land, and they sledged to the latter 
during the winter, but time did not permit of any extensive land work. The 
Swedish Expedition in 1901 and several French expeditions since then have 
done very good work south of America, amplifying the outline already started in 
that region long ago. A joint British and Swedish Expedition—in the course of 
preparation—proposes to carry on the work in that locality. The Scottish 
Expedition of a few years ago sighted the continental ice-sheet at what they called 
Coats Land, in the Weddell Sea. There it is a steep, straight ice-face—nothing 
but ice—which rises inland to considerable heights. The German Expedition 
of 1911, the same period as our own expedition, reached what appears to be 
the southern extremity of the Weddell Sea, and actually sighted rocky land 
beyond the ice coast. However, they were prevented from doing any land work. 
It now remains for future expeditions to tell us exactly what exists south of 
the Weddell Sea. 
Of the African Quadrant practically nothing is known. It has been sighted 
only in one place—Enderby Land—by a whaler in 1820, Though the discovery 
of Enderby Land has not since been checked, I feel certain of its existence, 
after comparing the meteorological conditions logged by Briscoe in that neigh- 
bourhood and those met by us off Adelie Land in the same latitude further east. 
The Pacific Quadrant also is almost a blank, nothing being known excepting 
King Edward Land on the extreme west. 
After surveying the geographical data available we conclude that there is 
about the South Pole a continent of about 5,000,000 square miles in area. It 
consists almost entirely of a great ice-cap, rocks seldom out-cropping excepting 
actually upon the coast. 
I will confine my subsequent remarks to the 60° of the Australian Quadrant 
entered by our own expedition. The voyages of the S.Y. Aurora are so 
numerous that, to save confusion, I shall refer only to the more important. 
In Macquarie Island, a subantarctic possession of Tasmania in 55° §. lat., we 
had a party of five stationed for two years, making a complete examination of 
that fascinating island, and sending up to Australia by wireless regular daily 
weather messages. Adelie Land was the situation of our main Antarctic base, 
where eighteen of us wintered and carried out a general scientific and geographi- 
cal programme for two years. When the wireless was working well, messages 
were sent up to Australia by relaying through Macquarie Island. About 1,100 
miles west of the Main Base station was our western Antarctic base, under the 
charge of Mr. Frank Wild. The party consisted of eight men all told. As 
the ship had not been able to reach solid land in that vicinity, on account of 
solid floe-ice, the party had wintered actually on a floating shell-ice formation 
the Shackleton Ice-shelf—seventeen miles from new land, called Queen Mary 
Land. Between the two Antarctic bases much new land had been met by 
Captain Davis. In other places the ship sailed over what had been marked as 
land from vague reports of the early explorers. In 1840 mapping was neces- 
sarily rougher than at the present time, but Wilkes particularly exceeded the 
allowable errors in his charting. I have come to the conclusion that Wilkes’s 
mistakes have arisen from errors of judgment in mistaking solid pack-ice for 
