Some six years ago it fell to my lot to edit and print the first Antarctic publication; it is my fortune now to edit another.
There are essential differences between the two efforts, for The South Polar Times was typewritten and only one copy could be issued, whereas Aurora Australis is actually printed, and therefore allows of a larger edition. Again; the labours of the Editor are light, for the bulk of the work falls on the shoulders of the Printers and Artist.
If it had not been for the great generosity of the firm of Sir J. Causton & Sons, Ltd., we would never have had this opportunity of making such a memento of the winter months, for the above firm not only presented us with an entire printing and lithographic outfit including the necessary paper, but also allowed our Printers and Artist to obtain instruction at their works.
Now; seven years is the usual time to serve as apprentice to the printing and lithographic trades, and as only three weeks could be spared by the producers of this little book to learn the business, any shortcomings will be leniently viewed both by the small public in this colony and by our friends at home to whom we trust these pages will be of interest.
I take this opportunity to specially thank not only the heads of the firm that made this book possible, but also the managers of the various departments and the foremen, who did everything in their power to help our people.
During the sunless months which are now our portion; months lit only by vagrant moon and elusive aurora; we have found in this work an interest and a relaxation, and hope eventually it will prove the same to our friends in the distant Northland.
E. H. Shackleton.
Since writing the preface for this book I have again looked over its pages, and though I can see but little not up to usual standard in bookmaking, the printers are not satisfied that it is everything that it ought to be. But the reader will understand better the difficulty of producing such a book quite up to the mark when he is told that, owing to the low temperature in the hut, the only way to keep the printing ink in a fit state to use was to have a candle burning under the inking plate; and so, if some pages are printed more lightly than others it is due to the difficulty of regulating the heat, and consequently the thinning or thickening of the ink. Again the printing office was only six feet by seven and had to accomodate a large sewing machine and bunks for two men, so the lack of room was a disadvantage; but I feel sure that those who see this book will not be captious critics. The printing was entirely done by Joyce and Wild, the lithography and etchings by Marston, and the covers made of provision cases were manufactured by Day. It is therefore to these four that the carrying out of the Aurora Australis is due; most of us have contributed an article of some sort, and I as Editor feel an interest in the work, as it was a pleasure to see it progressing; and I trust that all who have a copy will think kindly of the first attempt to print a book and illustrate it in the depth of an Antarctic Winter.
E. H. Shackleton.
Under the Shadow of Erebus
Erebus was discovered by Sir James Clarke Ross on January 28th, 1841, and was so named by him after the leading ship of his famous expedition. Rising rapidly from sea level it rears itself aloft, from near the western side of Ross Island, to an altitude of over 13,000 feet.
If Ross Island be likened to a castle, flanking that wall the the world's end, The Great Ice Barrier, Erebus is the castle keep. Its flanks and foothills clothed with spotless now, patched with the pale blue of glacier ice, its active crater crowned with a spreading smoke cloud, and overlooking the vast white plain of the Barrier to the East and South, the dark waters of Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound to the North and West, and still further West, the snowy summits of the extinct volcanoes of Victoria Land, Erebus not only commands a view of incomparable grandeur and interest, but is in itself one of the fairest and most majestic sights that Earth can show.
Erebus, as seen from our winter quarters, showed distinctly the traces of the three craters, observed from a distance by the British National Antarctic Expedition of 1901 - 04. From sea level up to about 5,500 feet, the lower slopes ascend in a gentle but gradually steepening curve to the base of the first crater. They are largely covered with snow and glacier ice down to the shore, where the ice either breaks off to form a cliff, or, as at Glacier Tongue, spreads out seawards in the form of a narrow blue pier five miles in length: near Cape Rows, however, there are three long smooth ridges of brown glacial gravels and moraines mostly bare of snow.
Those are interspersed with masses of black volcanic rock, and extend to an altitude of about 1,000ft. Above this, and up to above 5,000 feet above the sea, all is snow and ice, except of an occasional outcrop of dark lava, or a black parasitic cone, sharply silhouetted agains the light background of snow or sky.
At a level of about 6,000 feet, and just north of the second, or main crater, rises a huge black fang of rock, the relic of the oldest and lowest crater. Immediately south of this the principal cone sweeps upwards in that graceful double curve, concave below, convex above, so characteristic of volcanos.
Rugged buttresses of dark volcanic rock, with steep snow slopes between, jut out at intervals, and support the rim of this second crater, which reaches an altitude of fully 11,400 feet. From the north edge of this crater the ground seemed to ascend, at first gradually, then somewhat abruptly to the third crater, now active, further south. It is above this last crater that there continually floats a huge steam cloud. At the time of Ross’ Expedition this cloud was reddened with the glow of molten lava, and some thought they saw lava streams descending from the crater. The National Antarctic Expedition had also once or twice witnessed a similar glow, and although, during the few weeks we had been at Cape Royds we had not observed a similar phenomenon, we had at times seen the great steam cloud shoot up suddenly, in the space of a minute or so, to a height of fully 2,000 feet above the mountain top. This sudden uprush was obviously the result of a vast steam explosion in the interior of the volcano, and proved that it still possessed considerable activity.
Although several expeditions had been in its neighbourhood, Erebus had never been ascended. For us, living under its shadow, the longing to climb it, and penetrate the mysteries beyond the veil soon became irresistibly strong. But there were difficulties in the way. In the first place, the only party who had ascended the foothills of Erebus had found their path barred by heavily crevassed ice. That party consisted of E. E. Joyce, F. Wild, and A. Pillbeam, of the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901 – 04. Starting from Cape Barne, in January 1904, they worked their way inland towards Erebus, for about a mile, and estimated that they climbed to about 3,000 feet above sea level. Joyce and Wild informed us that in this direction the ice, owing to crevasses, was practically impassable for sledges. Then too, the winter was fast approaching, bringing with it blizzards, and temperatures likely to be specially low at high altitudes on Mount Erebus.
After careful consideration, Lieutenant Shackleton decided a reconnaissance in the direction of Erebus might be made, and that, if the risk did not appear to be too great, an attempt might be made to reach the summit of the mountain. He fixed the date for starting for the following morning, March 5th, and selected the first part of the route to be followed. After this every one bustled and hustled, and our winter quarters literally rang with the clang of preparation. Provisions, cooking utensils with primus lamps, cooking pots and snow melters and paraffin oil, deer skin sleeping bags, tents and poles, ice axes, alpine rope, ski-boots, finneskoes and sennegraes, and crampons were all got ready in hot haste. The crampons had to be specially made for the occasion. They are stout leather soles, each furnished with seven iron spikes, and provided with loops, so that they can be strapped on to the finneskoes, to prevent the wearer slipping on hard snow or ice. It was past midnight before the last spike was riveted.
On March 5th, after breakfast at 6 a. m., the packing of the 11 ft. sledge was completed; its total weight, with its load, being about five hundredweights.
The sledging party, arrayed in their antarctic costumes, including Burbery suits, then got into their sledging harness, and were photographed by Lieutenant Shackleton. The sledgers, six in number, were divided into parties of three each. The party for the ascent consisted of Dr. A. F. Mackay, D. Mawson, and Professor David, and was provisioned for eleven days.
The supporting party was formed of Lieut. J. B. Adams, Dr. E. S. Marshall and Sir Phillip Brocklehurst, and was provisioned for six days. The arrangement was that the supporting party were to assist the main party, until the ground became impracticable for a sledge. The former were then to return to winter quarters, unless they saw that it was practicable for them to continue the ascent with the main party, without lessening the latter’s Chances of reaching the summit.
A start was made at a quarter to nine a. m. All hands accompanied the sledging party across the rocky ridge at the back of our hut, and along the slopes of Backdoor Bay to the Blue Lake, half a mile distant. There we bade farewell to our comrades.
We steered first straight up a snow slope, then skirted closely some rocky ridges and moraines, in order to avoid crevassed glaciers.
About a mile out, and 400 feet above sea level, a glacial moraine barred our path, and we had to portage the sledge over it by slipping our ice-axes under the load between the runners and the ‘bearers’ of the' sledge, and lifting it bodily over the obstruction. On the further side of the moraine was a sloping surface of ice and névé, on which the sledge soon capsized, but was quickly righted. Light snow was falling, and there was a slight wind.
Pulling the sledge proved fairly heavy work in places; at one spot, on the steep slope of a small glacier, we were struggling for some time, mostly on our hands and knees, in our efforts to drag the sledge up the surface of smooth blue ice thinly Coated with loose snow. This difficulty surmounted, we made the acquaintence of some obstructive ‘sastrugi’, which impeded our progress not a little. Occasionally we came to blows, but these were dealt accidentally by a long armed finneskoe-shod cramponless sledger, who whirled his arms like a windmill in his desperate efforts to keep his balance after slipping. On such occasions the silence of our march was broken by a few words, more crisp than courteous, from the smitten one, and then once more nothing was to be heard but the soft pad of the finneskoes, the scrunch of the ski-boots, and the gentle sawing sound of the sledge-runners on the hard snow.
Soon after six p. m. we reached a small nunatak of black rock, 2,750 feet above sea level, and about seven miles distant from our winter quarters, and decided to camp there for the night. Our little green tents were quickly set up on their bamboo poles, and their skirts were speedily loaded with snow shovelled on them in place of pegs, to hold them down against the wind. The two primus lamps were soon singing merrily, snow was melted down, and in a few minutes we were each furnished, for the first time in our lives, with brimming bowls of hot ‘hoosh’, that is, pemmican boiled up with snow water, with chips of plasmon biscuit, or some emergency rations, or both, added. We had all developed a sledging appetite, and found the ‘hoosh’ delicious. By mistake, as he subsequently asserted, a knowing one put three times the maximum allowance of pemmican into the ‘hoosh’ of the three dwellers in one of the tents. He declared that this amount contained the irreducible minimum of food fuel needed to keep the lamp of life alight within us, so we ate earnestly that we might live; one of us, however, utterly failed to consume his treble ration, but the knowing one, after finishing the whole of his own allowance, came to the assistance of his distressed tents. fellow, and finished all his ‘hoosh’ for him, down to the fatty end. A man after such a meal, in any but a polar climate, would have seen in his sleep ‘more devils than vast hell can hold,’ but it speaks volumes for the climate, as well as for the strength of the quintuple-whacker’s digestion, that on this occasion he slept soundly till dawn, and that too, with a volume of Paradise Lost in his pocket, without once seeing a vision of the swart hero of Milton’s epic.