At the Mountains of Madness | Page 2

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 the depth of any considerable amount
of mere 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 of 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 - besides sixteen assistants: seven
graduate students from Miskatonic and nine skilled mechanics. Of these sixteen, twelve
were qualified aeroplane 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 ex-whalers, 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 - table-like 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 including 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 ranging, 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