The public knows of the Miskatonic Expedition through our frequent reports to the Arkham Advertiser and Associated Press[79], and through the later articles of Pabodie and myself. There were four men from the University Pabodie, Lake of the biology department[80], Atwood of the physics department[81] also a meteorologist and myself. I was representing geology and was a nominal leader. There were also sixteen assistants: seven graduate students from Miskatonic and nine skilled mechanics. Of these sixteen, twelve were qualified aeroplane pilots. Most of them were competent wireless operators as well. Eight of them understood navigation with compass and sextant, as did Pabodie, Atwood, and I. In addition, of course, our two ships were fully manned[82].
The Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation[83] financed the expedition. The dogs, sledges, machines, camp materials, and unassembled parts of our five planes were delivered in Boston. There our ships were loaded. We were marvelously well-equipped for our specific purposes. As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston Harbor on September 2nd, 1930. We took a leisurely course down the coast and through the Panama Canal, and stopped at Samoa and Hobart, Tasmania [84]. There we got final supplies. Our ship captains were J. B. Douglas[85], commanding the brig Arkham, and Georg Thorfinnssen[86], commanding the Miskatonic. They both were veteran whalers in Antarctic waters.
At about 62° South Latitude we noticed our first icebergs. These were table-like objects with vertical sides. Just before reaching the Antarctic circle[87], which we crossed on October 20th with appropriately ceremonies, field ice [88] considerably troubled us. The falling temperature bothered me considerably after our long voyage through the tropics. Very often the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly. Distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles.
We were pushing through the ice. Finally, we regained open water at South Latitude 67°, East Longitude 175°. On the morning of October 26th, a snow-clad mountain chain appeared on the south. That was an outpost of the great unknown continent and its cryptic world of frozen death. These peaks were obviously the Admiralty Range discovered by Ross[89]. Our task was to round Cape Adare[90] and sail down the east coast of Victoria Land[91] to our base on the shore of McMurdo Sound[92], at the foot of the volcano Erebus in South Latitude 77° 9.
The last part of the voyage was vivid and fancy-stirring. Great barren peaks of mystery, white snow, bluish ice and water lanes, and black bits of exposed granite slope. Something about the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich[93], and of the disturbing descriptions of the evil plateau of Leng[94]. These descriptions appear in the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred[95]. I was rather sorry, later on, that I looked into that monstrous book at the college library.
On the 7th of November, we passed Franklin Island[96]. The next day the cones of Mts. Erebus and Terror on Ross Island[97] appeared, with the long line of the Parry Mountains[98] beyond. There was a white line of the great ice barrier. It was rising perpendicularly to a height of two hundred feet like the rocky cliffs of Quebec. It marked the end of southward navigation. In the afternoon we entered McMurdo Sound and stood off the coast near the Mt. Erebus. Beyond it rose the white, ghostlike height of Mt. Terror, ten thousand, nine hundred feet in altitude.
One of the graduate assistants a brilliant young fellow named Danforth[99] noticed lava on the snowy slope. On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the background, myriads of grotesque penguins walked.
We used small boats and landed on Ross Island shortly after midnight on the morning of the 9th. Then we prepared to unload supplies. Our camp on the frozen shore below the volcanos slope was only a provisional one. Headquarters were situated aboard the Arkham. We landed all our drilling apparatus, dogs, sledges, tents, provisions, gasoline tanks, experimental ice-melting outfit[100], cameras, both ordinary and aerial, aeroplane parts, and other accessories, including three small portable wireless devices besides those in the planes. These devices helped us to communicate with the Arkhams large device from any part of the Antarctic continent that we wanted to visit. The ships radio was communicating with the outside world. It was able to convey press reports to the Arkham Advertisers powerful wireless station on Kingsport Head, Massachusetts[101]. We hoped to complete our work during an Antarctic summer. Otherwise we planned to winter on the Arkham and send the Miskatonic north for another summers supplies.
I need not repeat what the newspapers already published about our early work. The health of our party twenty men and fifty-five Alaskan sledge dogs was remarkable. Of course we did not encounter really destructive temperatures or windstorms.
We reached Beardmore Glacier[102], the largest valley glacier in the world. The frozen sea changed to a mountainous coast line. We were 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.
In certain sandstones we found some highly interesting fossil fragments. We found ferns, seaweeds, and mollusks. They were very important for the regions primordial history. There was also a queer triangular, striated marking[103], about a foot in greatest diameter. Lake, as a biologist, found these curious marking unusually puzzling and provocative. To my geological eye it looked not unlike some of the ripple effects common in the sedimentary rocks[104]. Since slate is no more than a metamorphic formation, I saw no reason for extreme wonder.
On January 6th, 1931, Lake, Pabodie, Danforth, the other six students, and myself flew directly over the South pole in two planes. There was a high wind. This was, as the papers said, one of several observation flights. Distant mountains floated in the sky as enchanted cities. Often the whole white world dissolved into a gold, silver, and scarlet land of dreams under the magic of the low midnight sun.
We resolved to carry out our original plan. We wanted to fly five hundred miles eastward and establish a new base. Our health remained excellent. It was now midsummer. With haste and care we will be able to conclude work by March and avoid a tedious wintering through the long Antarctic night. There were some severe windstorms but we escaped the damage. No doubt, we had our good luck. But this good luck was almost strange.
Lake insisted on a westward or rather, northwestward trip before our shift to the new base. He was too much interested in that triangular marking in the slate. He was strangely convinced that the marking was the print of some bulky, unknown, and unclassifiable organism of advanced evolution. Lake thought that this rock was probably Cambrian or even pre-Cambrian. It meant that this advanced organism existed in times when there was only unicellular life[105]. So these fragments, with their odd marking, were five hundred million a thousand million years old.
II
The journey of January 11th to 18th with Pabodie and five others brought up more and more of the Archaean slate[106]. Even I was interested in evident fossil markings in that unbelievably ancient stratum. These markings, however, were of very primitive life forms. Therefore I did not like Lakes idea to explore further. However I did not say no to his idea. But I decided not to accompany the northwestward party despite Lakes plea for my geological advice. While they were gone, I remained at the base with Pabodie and five men. We were working out final plans for the eastward shift[107].