ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE AND RESEARCH 



name of Wilkes Land. Totten Land seems to have 

 been wrongly placed by Balleny if it exists. On Feb- 

 ruary 7th Davis found his progress blocked, as had 

 Wilkes, by the great ice shelf of Termination Land. 

 But he considered that an open sea might lie to leeward 

 and was rewarded for his acumen by discovering Davis 

 Sea. Here he landed Wild on Februars^ 1 5th in Queen 

 Mary's Land some 1,200 miles west of Adelie Land. 

 (See Figure 25.) 



The expedition encountered an environment of bliz- 

 zards far more violent than in any other polar region. 

 The average wind force for the year was fifty miles an 

 hour, more than five times that experienced in the 

 United States. In spite of this disability many re- 

 markable journeys were made. On November 9th 

 Mawson with Ninnis and Mertz started on their trav- 

 erse to the east over the margin of the great Ice 

 Plateau. They found their route crossed by two tre- 

 mendous glaciers which projected far into the sea as 

 the Mertz and Ninnis ice tongues. These were fifty 

 miles apart and gave rise to terribly crevassed country. 

 On December 13th they had sledged two hundred and 

 eighty miles. Mawson and Mertz were ahead when 

 Ninnis with his dog team and nearly all the food was 

 engulfed in a tremendous crevasse. Only ten days' 

 food remained for the two men and nothing for the 

 dogs. They turned back, on a more southern track, 

 hoping thus to escape many of the crevasses. Mertz 

 rapidly weakened, and on the seventh of January he 

 became delirious and died. Mawson was still one hun- 

 dred miles from the hut, and his march has never been 



64 



