RECENT EXPEDITIONS TO THE ANTARCTIC 



seeking end of the needle pointed, of course, to the 

 latter and so picked out one ''north direction" out of 

 the infinite number radiating from the South Pole. 



On the return they could fly higher and reached 

 thirteen thousand feet. As they approached the ''up- 

 thrust block" of the Queen Maud Range, they saw 

 towering mountains to the east which seemed to reach 

 twenty thousand feet. However, Captain McKinley's 

 mosaic of aerial photographs should help to decide this 

 matter. Byrd descended by the Axel Heiberg Glacier, 

 meeting with dangerous air eddies and currents. At 

 4:33 A.M. he landed at the depot on the Ross Ice 

 Shelf at sea level, and here spent an hour refueling the 

 plane. On rising he made a detour to the east, cover- 

 ing new ground and helping to fix the eastern limit of 

 the great Ross Ice Shelf. The Charles Bob Mountains 

 in latitude 83° 30' were more closely surveyed and then 

 Byrd headed for Little America, where he landed safely 

 at 10:10 A.M. on the twenty-ninth of November. His 

 wonderful journey of 1,600 miles had only occupied 

 nineteen hours and had made him the flying conqueror 

 of both the North and South Poles. 



Dr. Gould, the geologist with Byrd, made some re- 

 markable discoveries on his sledging journey in Decem- 

 ber, 1929. Mount Fridjof Nansen stands between the 

 lower slopes of the Heiberg and Liv glaciers. Gould 

 climbed up 6,000 feet, and found the cap-rocks to con- 

 sist of Beacon Sandstone with carbonaceous layers. 

 Sledging eastward he demonstrated that there is no 

 Carmen Land as Amundsen supposed (see Figure 10). 

 Hence there may be a strip of low land or even in parts 



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