RECENT EXPEDITIONS TO THE ANTARCTIC 



surpassed for difficulty and endurance. On the seven- 

 teenth he fell completely into a crevasse and only with 

 the utmost difficulty managed to reach his sledge. 

 Thereafter he carried a rope ladder to enable him to 

 climb out of any future crevasses. When five miles 

 from the hut he was held up in a small ice cave for 

 seven days, but he reached headquarters safely on the 

 eighth of February, 191 3. (See Figure 2.) 



A party of three men under Lieutenant Bage jour- 

 neyed toward the Magnetic Pole and covered a dis- 

 tance of about three hundred miles before turning 

 back. They reached within about one hundred and 

 seventy-five miles of David's position in 1909, careful 

 magnetic observations being made by Webb (see Fig- 

 ure 2). They obtained a dip of 89° 43' with the needle 

 and estimated that they were only fifty miles from the 

 Magnetic Pole. The Ice Plateau w^as here 5,900 feet 

 above the sea. A fine coastal journey over the dan- 

 gerous sea-ice was made by Madigan and two comrades 

 to the east. They found a number of outcrops of 

 gneiss and crossed the tongues projecting from the 

 Mertz and Ninnis glaciers. In spite of the risk of the 

 ice breaking away, they proceeded eighty miles to the 

 east and discovered Horn Bluff, where dolerite sills 

 penetrate a sandstone resembling the Beacon sandstone. 

 (See Figure 2.) 



The western party, under Wild, built their hut just 

 a few miles north of the Antarctic Circle on the ice 

 shelf named after Shackleton. In August, 1912, a 

 depot was laid twenty miles to the east amid granite 

 outcrops. In this region men were lifted from the 



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