AT THE MAGNETIC POLE 



The heavy runners of our sledge rustled gently as they 

 crushed the crystals by the thousand. It seemed a 

 sacrilege. The sastrugi were large and high, and our 

 sledge bumped very heavily over them with a prodigious 

 ratthng of our aluminium cooking-gear. It was clear 

 that the blizzard winds blow over this part of the 

 plateau at times with great violence. Apparently 

 all the winds in this quarter, strong enough to form 

 sastrugi, blow from south or west of south or from the 

 south-east. Our run to-day was twelve miles one 

 hundred and fifty yards. 



January 15. — ^We were up to-day at 6 a.m. and found 

 a cold southerly breeze blowing, the temperature being 

 minus 19° Fahr. at 6.30 a.m. Mawson got a good latitude 

 determination to-day, 72° 42'. 



At about twenty minutes before true noon Mawson 

 took magnetic observations with the dip circle, and 

 found the angle now only fifteen minutes off the vertical, 

 the dip being 89° W. We were very much rejoiced 

 to find that we were now so close to the Magnetic 

 Pole. The observations made by Bernacchi, during the 

 two years of the Discovery expedition's sojourn at their 

 winter quarters on Ross Island, showed that the ampti- 

 tude of daily swing of the magnet was sometimes con- 

 siderable. The compass, at a distance from the Pole, 

 pointing in a slightly varying direction at different 

 times of the day, indicates that the polar centre executes 

 a daily round of wanderings about its mean position. 

 Mawson considered that we were now practically at the 

 Magnetic Pole, and that if we were to wait for twenty- 

 four hours taking constant observations at this spot 

 the Pole would, probably, during that time, come 

 vertically beneath us. We decided, however, to go 

 on to the spot where he concluded the approximate 

 mean position of the Magnetic Pole would he. That 



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