[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Stories February, March, April 1936.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow
my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that
I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the
antarctic--with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and
melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more reluctant because my
warning may be in vain.
Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet,
if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would
be nothing left. The hitherto withheld photographs, both ordinary
and aërial, will count in my favor, for they are damnably vivid and
graphic. Still, they will be doubted because of the great lengths to
which clever fakery can be carried. The ink drawings, of course, will
be jeered at as obvious impostures; notwithstanding a strangeness and
technique which art experts ought to remark and puzzle over.
In the end I must rely on the judgment and standing of the few
scientific leaders who have, on the one hand, sufficient independence
of thought to weigh my data on its own hideously convincing merits or
in the light of certain primordial and highly baffling myth cycles;
and on the other hand, sufficient influence to deter the exploring
world in general from any rash and over-ambitious program in the region
of those mountains of madness.
It is an unfortunate fact that relatively obscure men like myself and
my associates, connected only with a small university, have little
chance of making an impression where matters of a wildly bizarre or
highly controversial natures are concerned.
It is further against us that we are not, in the strictest sense,
specialists in the fields which came primarily to be concerned. As a
geologist, my object in leading the Miskatonic University Expedition
was wholly that of securing deep-level specimens of rock and soil from
various parts of the antarctic continent, aided by the remarkable drill
devised by Professor Frank H. Pabodie of our engineering department.
I had no wish to be a pioneer in any other field than this, but I did
hope that the use of this new mechanical appliance at different points
along previously explored paths would bring to light materials of a
sort hitherto unreached by the ordinary methods of collection.
Pabodie's drilling apparatus, as the public already knows from our
reports, was unique and radical in its lightness, portability, and
capacity to combine the ordinary Artesian drill principle with the
principle of the small circular rock drill in such a way as to cope
quickly with strata of varying hardness.
Steel head, jointed rods, gasoline motor, collapsible wooden derrick,
dynamiting paraphernalia, cording, rubbish-removal auger, and sectional
piping for bores five inches wide and up to one thousand feet deep all
formed, with needed accessories, no greater load than three seven-dog
sledges could carry. This was made possible by the clever aluminum
alloy of which most of the metal objects were fashioned.
Four large Dornier aëroplanes, designed especially for the tremendous
altitude flying necessary on the antarctic plateau and with added
fuel-warming and quick-starting devices worked out by Pabodie, could
transport our entire expedition from a base at the edge of the great
ice barrier to various suitable inland points, and from these points a
sufficient quota of dogs would serve us.
We planned to cover as great an area as one antarctic season--or
longer, if absolutely necessary--would permit, operating mostly in the
mountain ranges and on the plateau south of Ross Sea; regions explored
in varying degree by Shackleton, Amundsen, Scott, and Byrd. With
frequent changes of camp, made by aëroplane and involving distances
great enough to be of geological significance, we expected to unearth a
quite unprecedented amount of material--especially in the pre-Cambrian
strata of which so narrow a range of antarctic specimens had previously
been secured.
We wished also to obtain as great as possible a variety of the upper
fossiliferous rocks, since the primal life history of this bleak realm
of ice and death is of the highest importance to our knowledge of the
earth's past. That the antarctic continent was once temperate and
even tropical, with a teeming vegetable and animal life of which the
lichens, marine fauna, arachnida, and penguins of the northern edge are
the only survivors, is a matter of common information; and we hoped to
expand that information in variety, accuracy, and detail. When a simple
boring revealed fossiliferous signs, we would enlarge the aperture by
blasting, in order to get specimens of suitable size and condition.
Our borings, of varying depth according to the promise held out by the
upper soil or rock, were to be confined to exposed, or nearly exposed,
land surfaces--these inevitably being slopes and ridges because of the
mile or two-mile thickness of solid ice overlying the lower levels.
We could not afford to waste drilling depth on any considerable amount
of more glaciation, though Pabodie had worked out a plan for sinking
copper electrodes in thick clusters of borings and melting off limited
areas of ice with current from a gasoline-driven dynamo.
It is this plan--which we could not put into effect except
experimentally on an expedition such as ours--that the coming
Starkweather-Moore Expedition proposes to follow, despite the warnings
I have issued since our return from the antarctic.
* * * * *
The public knows of the Miskatonic Expedition through our frequent
wireless reports to the _Arkham Advertiser_ and Associated Press, and
through the later articles by Pabodie and myself. We consisted of four
men from the University--Pabodie, Lake of the biology department,
Atwood of the physics department--also a meteorologist--and myself,
representing geology and having nominal command, also sixteen
assistants: seven graduate students from Miskatonic and nine skilled
mechanics.
Of these sixteen, twelve were qualified aëroplane pilots, all but two
of whom were competent wireless operators. Eight of them understood
navigation with compass and sextant, as did Pabodie, Atwood and I. In
addition, of course, our two ships--wooden exwhalers, reinforced for
ice conditions and having auxiliary steam--were fully manned.
The Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation, aided by a few special
contributions, financed the expedition; hence our preparations were
extremely thorough, despite the absence of great publicity.
The dogs, sledges, machines, camp materials, and unassembled parts of
our five planes were delivered in Boston, and there our ships were
loaded.
We were marvelously well-equipped for our specific purposes, and in
all matters pertaining to supplies, regimen, transportation, and camp
construction we profited by the excellent example of our many recent
and exceptionally brilliant predecessors. It was the unusual number and
fame of these predecessors which made our own expedition--ample though
it was--so little noticed by the world at large.
As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston Harbor on September 2nd,
1930, taking a leisurely course down the coast and through the Panama
Canal, and stopping at Samoa and Hobart, Tasmania, at which latter
place we took on final supplies.
None of our exploring party had ever been in the polar regions before,
hence we all relied greatly on our ship captains--J. B. Douglas,
commanding the brig _Arkham_, and serving as commander of the sea
party, and Georg Thorfinnssen, commanding the barque _Miskatonic_--both
veteran whalers in antarctic waters.
As we left the inhabited world behind the sun sank lower and lower in
the north, and stayed longer and longer above the horizon each day.
At about 62° South Latitude we sighted our first icebergs--tablelike
objects with vertical sides--and just before reaching the antarctic
circle, which we crossed on October 20th with appropriately quaint
ceremonies, we were considerably troubled with field ice.
The falling temperature bothered me considerably after our long voyage
through the tropics, but I tried to brace up for the worse rigors to
come. On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me
vastly; these included a strikingly vivid mirage--the first I had ever
seen--in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable
cosmic castles.
Pushing through the ice, which was fortunately neither extensive
nor thickly packed, we regained open water at South Latitude 67°,
East Longitude 175°. On the morning of October 26th a strong land
blink appeared on the south, and before noon we all felt a thrill of
excitement at beholding a vast, lofty, and snow-clad mountain chain
which opened out and covered the whole vista ahead. At last we had
encountered an outpost of the great unknown continent and its cryptic
world of frozen death.
These peaks were obviously the Admiralty Range discovered by Ross, and
it would now be our task to round Cape Adare and sail down the east
coast of Victoria Land to our contemplated base on the shore of McMurdo
Sound, at the foot of the volcano Erebus in South Latitude 77° 9´.
* * * * *
The last lap of the voyage was vivid and fancy-stirring. Great barren
peaks of mystery loomed up constantly against the west as the low
northern sun of noon or the still lower horizon-grazing southern sun of
midnight poured its hazy reddish rays over the white snow, bluish ice
and water lanes, and black bits of exposed granite slope.
Through the desolate summits swept raging, intermittent gusts of
the terrible antarctic wind, whose cadences sometimes held vague
suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping, with notes
extending over a wide range, and which for some subconscious mnemonic
reason seemed to me disquieting and even dimly terrible.
Something about the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing
Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich, and of the still stranger and more
disturbing descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng which
occur in the dreaded _Necronomicon_ of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. I
was rather sorry, later on, that I had ever looked into that monstrous
book at the college library.
On the 7th of November, sight of the westward range having been
temporarily lost, we passed Franklin Island; and the next day descried
the cones of Mts. Erebus and Terror on Ross Island ahead, with the long
line of the Parry Mountains beyond. There now stretched off to the east
the low, white line of the great ice barrier, rising perpendicularly
to a height of two hundred feet like the rocky cliffs of Quebec, and
marking the end of southward navigation.
In the afternoon we entered McMurdo Sound and stood off the coast in
the lee of smoking Mt. Erebus. The scoriaceous peak towered up some
twelve thousand seven hundred feet against the eastern sky, like a
Japanese print of the sacred Fujiyama, while beyond it rose the white,
ghostlike height of Mt. Terror, ten thousand nine hundred feet in
altitude, and now extinct as a volcano.
Puffs of smoke from Erebus came intermittently, and one of the graduate
assistants--a brilliant young fellow named Danforth--pointed out what
looked like lava on the snowy slope, remarking that this mountain,
discovered in 1840, had undoubtedly been the source of Poe's image
when he wrote seven years later:
"--the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole--
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole."
Danforth was a great reader of bizarre material, and had talked a
good deal of Poe. I was interested myself because of the antarctic
scene of Poe's only long story--the disturbing and enigmatical _Arthur
Gordon Pym_. On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the
background, myriad of grotesque penguins squawked and flapped their
fins, while many fat seals were visible on the water, swimming or
sprawling across large cakes of slowly drifting ice.
Using small boats, we effected a difficult landing on Ross Island
shortly after midnight, on the morning of the 9th, carrying a line of
cable from each of the ships and preparing to unload supplies by means
of a breeches-buoy arrangement.
Our sensations on first treading antarctic soil were poignant and
complex, even though at this particular point the Scott and Shackleton
expeditions had preceded us.
Our camp on the frozen shore below the volcano's slope was only a
provisional one, headquarters being kept aboard the _Arkham_. We landed
all our drilling apparatus, dogs, sledges, tents, provisions, gasoline
tanks, experimental ice-melting outfit, cameras, both ordinary and
aërial, aëroplane parts, and other accessories, including three small
portable wireless outfits--besides those in the planes--capable of
communicating with the _Arkham's_ large outfit from any part of the
antarctic continent that we would be likely to visit.
The ship's outfit, communicating with the outside world, was to convey
press reports to the _Arkham Advertiser's_ powerful wireless station
on Kingsport Head, Mass. We hoped to complete our work during a single
antarctic summer; but if this proved impossible we would winter on the
_Arkham_, sending the _Miskatonic_ north before the freezing of the ice
for another summer's supplies.
* * * * *
I need not repeat what the newspapers have already published about our
early work: of our ascent of Mt. Erebus; our successful mineral borings
at several points on Ross Island and the singular speed with which
Pabodie's apparatus accomplished them, even through solid rock layers;
our provisional test of the small ice-melting equipment; our perilous
ascent of the great barrier with sledges and supplies; and our final
assembling of five huge aëroplanes at the camp atop the barrier.
The health of our land party--twenty men and fifty-five Alaskan sledge
dogs--was remarkable, though of course we had so far encountered no
really destructive temperatures or windstorms.
For the most part, the thermometer varied between zero and 20° or 25°
above, and our experience with New England winters had accustomed us to
rigors of this sort. The barrier camp was semipermanent, and destined
to be a storage cache for gasoline, provisions, dynamite, and other
supplies.
Only four of our planes were needed to carry the actual exploring
material, the fifth being left with a pilot and two men, from the
ships, at the storage cache to form a means of reaching us from the
_Arkham_ in case all our exploring planes were lost.
Later, when not using all the other planes for moving apparatus, we
would employ one or two in a shuttle transportation service between
this cache and another permanent base on the great plateau from six
hundred to seven hundred miles southward, beyond Beardmore Glacier.
Despite the almost unanimous accounts of appalling winds and tempests
that pour down from the plateau, we determined to dispense with
intermediate bases, taking our chances in the interest of economy and
probable efficiency.
Wireless reports have spoken of the breathtaking, four-hour, nonstop
flight of our squadron on November 21st over the lofty shelf ice, with
vast peaks rising on the west, and the unfathomed silences echoing to
the sound of our engines.
Wind troubled us only moderately, and our radio compasses helped us
through the one opaque fog we encountered. When the vast rise loomed
ahead, between Latitudes 83° and 84°, we knew we had reached Beardmore
Glacier, the largest valley glacier in the world, and that the frozen
sea was now giving place to a frowning and mountainous coast line.
At last we were truly entering the white, æon-dead world of the
ultimate south. Even as we realized it we saw the peak of Mt. Nansen
in the eastern distance, towering up to its height of almost fifteen
thousand feet.
The successful establishment of the southern base above the glacier in
Latitude 86° 7´, East Longitude 174° 23´, and the phenomenally rapid
and effective borings and blastings made at various points reached by
our sledge trips and short aëroplane flights, are matters of history;
as is the arduous and triumphant ascent of Mt. Nansen by Pabodie and
two of the graduate students--Gedney and Carroll--on December 13th to
15th.
We were some eight thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. When
experimental drillings revealed solid ground only twelve feet down
through the snow and ice at certain points, we made considerable use of
the small melting apparatus and sunk bores and performed dynamiting at
many places, where no previous explorer had ever thought of securing
mineral specimens.
The pre-Cambrian granites and beacon sandstones thus obtained confirmed
our belief that this plateau was homogeneous, with the great bulk of
the continent to the west, but somewhat different from the parts lying
eastward below South America--which we then thought to form a separate
and smaller continent divided from the larger one by a frozen junction
of Ross and Weddell Seas, though Byrd has since disproved the report.
In certain of the sandstones, dynamited and chiseled after boring
revealed their nature, we found some highly interesting fossil markings
and fragments; notably ferns, seaweeds, trilobites, crinoids, and such
mollusks as linguellæ and gastropods--all of which seemed of real
significance in connection with the region's primordial history. There
was also a queer triangular, striated marking, about a foot in greatest
diameter, which Lake pieced together from three fragments of slate
brought up from a deep-blasted aperture.
These fragments came from a point to the westward, near the Queen
Alexandra Range; and Lake, as a biologist, seemed to find their curious
marking unusually puzzling and provocative, though to my geological eye
it looked not unlike some of the ripple effects reasonably common in
the sedimentary rocks.
Since slate is no more than a metamorphic formation into which a
sedimentary stratum is pressed, and since the pressure itself produces
odd distorting effects on any markings which may exist, I saw no reason
for extreme wonder over the striated depression.
* * * * *
On January 6, 1931, Lake, Pabodie, Daniels, all six of the students,
four mechanics, and myself flew directly over the south pole in two
of the great planes, being forced down once by a sudden high wind,
which, fortunately, did not develop into a typical storm. This was,
as the papers have stated, one of several observation flights, during
others of which we tried to discern new topographical features in areas
unreached by previous explorers.
Our early flights were disappointing in this latter respect, though
they afforded us some magnificent examples of the richly fantastic and
deceptive mirages of the polar regions, of which our sea voyage had
given us some brief foretastes.
Distant mountains floated in the sky as enchanted cities, and often the
whole white world would dissolve into a gold, silver, and scarlet land
of Dunsanian dreams and adventurous expectancy under the magic of the
low midnight sun.
On cloudy days we had considerable trouble in flying, owing to the
tendency of snowy earth and sky to merge into one mystical opalescent
void with no visible horizon to mark the junction of the two.
At length we resolved to carry out our original plan of flying five
hundred miles eastward with all four exploring planes and establishing
a fresh sub-base at a point which would probably be on the smaller
continental division, as we mistakenly conceived it. Geological
specimens obtained there would be desirable for purposes of comparison.
Our health so far had remained excellent--lime juice well offsetting
the steady diet of tinned and salted food, and temperatures generally
above zero enabling us to do without our thickest furs.
It was now midsummer, and with haste and care we might be able to
conclude work by March and avoid a tedious wintering through the long
antarctic night. Several savage windstorms had burst upon us from the
west, but we had escaped damage through the skill of Atwood in devising
rudimentary aëroplane shelters and windbreaks of heavy snow blocks, and
in reinforcing the principal camp buildings with snow. Our good luck
and efficiency had indeed been almost uncanny.
The outside world knew, of course, of our program, and was told also
of Lake's strange and dogged insistence on a westward--or rather,
northwestward--prospecting trip before our radical shift to the new
base.
It seems that he had pondered a great deal and with alarmingly radical
daring over that triangular striated marking in the slate; reading into
it certain contradictions in nature and geological period which whetted
his curiosity to the utmost, and made him avid to sink more borings
and blastings in the west-stretching formation to which the exhumed
fragments evidently belonged.
He was strangely convinced that the marking was the print of some
bulky, unknown, and radically unclassifiable organism of considerably
advanced evolution, notwithstanding that the rock which bore it was of
so vastly ancient a date--Cambrian if not actually pre-Cambrian--as to
preclude the probable existence not only of all highly evolved life,
but of any life at all above the unicellular or at most the trilobite
stage. These fragments, with their odd marking, must have been five
hundred million to a thousand million years old.