Geographic Exploration

C

Exploration of Australia

Unlike Africa, Australia has few large rivers. When British navigator Matthew Flinders—an admirer of Captain Cook—undertook his charting expeditions around this southern continent from 1798 to 1803, he found many fewer large river mouths than he expected. This gave rise to speculation that the rivers that ran to the west of the Great Dividing Range might run to some large inland sea or lake—a potential solution for the region’s drought problems. In the 1820s and 1830s British explorers Charles Sturt and Thomas Mitchell traced the courses of these rivers and found that they all merged with the Murray River, which empties into the Indian Ocean on the southern coast of Australia. In the late 1830s and 1840s Australian sheep farmer Edward Eyre explored the southern coast and also traveled deep into the outback. The German scientist Ludwig Leichhardt explored northern Australia but died in 1848 trying to cross the continent from east to west.

Australia was similarly unforgiving to those who tried to cross it from south to north in the early 1860s. In 1861 Irish explorer Robert O’Hara Burke and his companion, English surveyor William John Wills, both died in the attempt. Scottish explorer John McDouall Stuart succeeded in making the 3,250-km (2,020-mi) crossing only on his third attempt, in 1862, after numerous clashes with Aboriginal Australian peoples defending their territory and provisions.

Other explorers, often guided by Aboriginal Australians whose ancestors had been crossing Australia for thousands of years, mapped the remaining parts of the vast land. British brothers Francis and Augustus Gregory explored the Northern Territory, Australian explorer John Forrest explored Western Australia, and Australian explorer William Gosse became the first European to sight the massive rock formation called Uluru (Ayers Rock) in 1873.

D

Great Trigonometrical Survey of India

British commercial and colonial power in India grew over the course of the 18th century. To better understand the region, the British government initiated the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in 1800. The Survey was responsible for mapping the entire Indian subcontinent and adjoining lands north of the Himalayas, a process that took 70 years. The teams of surveyors started at Chennai (Madras), on the eastern coast, fanning out north and south and finally reaching the Himalayas, under the directorship of Sir George Everest (for whom Mount Everest is named) and his successor, Andrew Waugh. British surveyors were barred from entering Nepal and Tibet, so they enlisted the help of Indians to penetrate the areas disguised as Buddhist pilgrims. Trained to walk one mile in exactly 2,000 paces and equipped with surveying equipment hidden in prayer wheels, explorers such as Nain Singh, Kishen Singh, and Kintup secretly mapped the vast areas at great personal danger. The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was probably the greatest geographical project undertaken anywhere in the 19th century.

---

---

E

Reaching the Poles

The forbidding conditions at the extreme northern and southern regions of the globe turned away explorers for centuries. By the dawn of the 20th century, the North and South poles were the last great prizes for explorers.

E

1

Arctic Exploration

British admiral William Parry led an 1827 expedition by sledge to within 800 km (500 mi) of the North Pole. This remained the closest any person had come to the pole until an expedition of British naval officer George Nares from 1875 to 1876. Norwegian scientist Fridtjof Nansen built a special little ship, called the Fram, with a tough, saucer-shaped hull designed to withstand the pressure of polar sea ice. In 1893 Nansen purposefully stuck the Fram in pack ice and drifted aimlessly across the Arctic Ocean north of Russia. Setting out from the ship with kayaks and dogsleds, Nansen got to about 400 km (about 250 mi) from the pole before having to turn back.

American naval officer Robert Peary undertook seven Arctic expeditions in the late 19th and early 20th century. In 1909 Peary and assistant Matthew Henson used dogsleds to reach what Peary believed to be the North Pole based on his calculations. Upon the team’s return to the United States, another American, Frederick Cook, claimed to have reached the North Pole a year earlier. Both Peary and Cook may have exaggerated their claims or miscalculated their coordinates, although Peary certainly came very close to the pole at the very least. Examination by experts established that Cook’s claim was false, and Peary's records were accepted as genuine.

E

2

Antarctic Exploration

The race to the South Pole proved even more dramatic. British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott commanded the expedition on the Discovery, from 1901 to 1904, which reached nearer the South Pole than any previous explorer and also did admirable scientific work. A member of Scott’s team, Ernest Shackleton, led an expedition from 1907 to 1909 that reached within 179 km (111 mi) of the pole. Shackleton’s next expedition in 1914 achieved a miracle of survival when its ship, the Endurance, sank after becoming trapped in Antarctic pack ice. The crew was forced to cross the icy sea in open boats to the deserted South Shetland Islands. A smaller group, including Shackleton, rowed 1,300 km (800 mi) across the storm-swept South Atlantic Ocean to the island of South Georgia, traversed the glaciers of the desolate island to a whaling station, and summoned help for the rest of the crew. Not a single life was lost.

Antarctic exploration culminated in 1911 and 1912 in the famous race to the South Pole between Scott and Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Scott’s small team man-hauled sledges along Shackleton’s 1907-1909 route, reaching the pole in January 1912. There they were greeted by the Norwegian flag and a message from their rival Amundsen. He had reached the most southerly point on Earth some five weeks earlier by an efficient plan using huskies, who pulled the sledges and were periodically killed and fed to the surviving animals. Amundsen’s team made its return trip safely. Scott and his team covered most of the return journey, hauling precious geological samples, before exhaustion and cold led to their deaths in a frozen tent.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain