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National Geographic : 1947 Oct
Contents
Our Navy Explores Antarctica lake. The waters contain countless billions of blue-green, green, red, and brown algae, single celled plants which are among the most primi tive living things on earth today. No Life but Algae and Birds Seen Both the green and the blue-green algae are the organisms which form the green scum on stagnant water everywhere. The brown and red, commonly known as rockweed, represent a long step upward in evolution. These algae were the only life found in a hasty survey, but it is not certain that higher forms might not be revealed by a more ex tensive search. The observers saw no plant life on the rocks. A few birds of undeter mined species were noted. Eventually these are likely to bring from the outside world seeds of higher plant life. The lake region was described as approxi mately square. The ice banks rise very abruptly about 100 feet on the east and south. North and west there is a more gradual rise. One of the lakes has a gently sloping beach several hundred yards long, described as well suited for a camp site. The water temperature was "comfortable." All the plane crew dragged their arms in the lake and testified it was much warmer than the approximately 30° temperature of Ant arctic ocean water. Analysis shows that it con tains about two-thirds as much salt as ordinary sea water. Floating about were a few small ice cakes broken from a large near-by glacier. The rock hills were of various brown shades. It was first reported that they contained iron ore. But this is only the opinion of the flight crew, without means of verifying their speculations. A reddish color means the pres ence of iron oxide, but not necessarily con centrated as ore. The area starts approximately five miles inland from what is assumed to be the coast. North of this coast is a band of open water about 20 miles wide, beyond which pack ice extends northward nearly 100 miles. The northern edge of this pack appears to be the closest approach for ships, since the ice is thick and with no discernible open water leads. The region would seem, how ever, to be easily accessible by air, with any one of the three large lakes affording a safe landing site. The simplest explanation of the oasis is that this is an area left bare by a retreating glacier which once reached as far as the Shackleton Shelf Ice. The reddish-brown rocks, once free of ice, would absorb considerable amounts of solar radiation during the perpetual daylight of the Antarctic summer. This heat then would be reradiated, thus constituting for the oasis Nature's own version of the new "radiant heated" home. The newly discovered lake region apparently differs from any of the other ice-free Antarctic areas in that it is surrounded by ice on all sides. Whatever the origin of the oasis, it is dis appointing that one of the most interesting areas, both scientifically and scenically, in Antarctica must be left for the present hardly more than a dot on the map. Two weeks later another flying boat of this same group, flying along the almost uncharted coast of Queen Maud Land, came unexpect edly on one of the scenic wonders of the world. This was a range of ice-crystal moun tains, luminously blue to the observers, more than two miles high and towering for many miles over an ice shelf (map, pages 436-7). While over these ice mountains, the plane was gale-tossed in the fury of early winter. Like a Landscape on Another Planet This had been intended as a last flight from the Currituck. Lts. W. R. Kreitzer and F. L. Reinbolt started on what was expected to be a routine photographic mission to map about 300 miles of coastline. They soon found themselves flying over a hitherto unobserved ice shelf, one of the most extensive in Antarctica. The blue walls of this shelf towered above the sea along what previ ously has been charted as coast. Thus, as a result of this flight, the old coast disappears from the map. Then the plane turned southward to the equally unanticipated mountains, which reached altitudes estimated at more than 12,000 feet. They were followed for nearly 100 miles and no break was found. This chain is apparently a major link in a still vaster range which may prove one of the greatest in the world. Beyond these moun tains lies the high plateau supposedly reach ing to the South Pole. The mountain range was interpreted as the actual coastline, constituting a seldom paralleled meeting of mountain and sea. There can be only a very narrow land shelf at the most in front of the gigantic, ice-covered precipices. "It was like a landscape on another planet," said one of the pilots. The last accomplishment of the group be fore early winter gales made further operations impossible was investigation of a previously known ice-free area covering more than 100 square miles. 499
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