Discoveries in Antarctica

Abstract

A DISPATCH from the British Graham Land Expedition under the leadership of Mr. J. Rymill published in The Times of December 12 announces an important change in the map of Graham Land. In December 1928 Sir Hubert Wilkins in his flight over Graham Land reported the existence of two straits, Casey Channel and Stefansson Strait, in about latitudes 69 ° 45'S. and 71 ° S. respectively, across the area known as Graham Land which previously was thought to be united to the Antarctic Continent. Between the two straits he mapped roughly the Finley Archipelago. The British expedition, sledging along the west coast of Graham Land, to lat. 72 ° S., long. 67 ° W., or ninety miles south-west of where Sir H. Wilkins turned, found no trace of these two straits and believes that low glaciers must have been mistaken for ice-covered straits. Thus Graham Land south of Crane Channel in the Antarctic Circle is restored to its former continuity with the continent. A further discovery of importance is that Alexander I Land, discovered by Bellingshausen in 1821 and sighted by Charcot in 1909, is not a small island but a large land area at least two hundred and fifty miles from north to south and separated from Hearst Land by an ice-filled cleft-like strait fifteen miles wide and 200 miles long. The expedition charted the eastern coast line of this island. The strait appears to be a fault feature with the eruptive rocks of Graham Land on the east and fossiliferous sedimentary rocks on the west or island side.