If there has one man, one adventurer who fired the imagination about the possibility of finding the entrance to a hollow Earth, it was Richard Byrd–Hollow Earth explorer extraordinaire.

 

His findings were hardly calculated to bring cheer to die-hard hollow-earthers. Byrd reported that he flew an enormous triangle around the South Pole and, “surveyed nearly 10,000 square miles of the country around and beyond the pole” and found nothing.

 

“Although it is somewhat disappointing to report,” he wrote,

 

“There was no observable feature of any significance beyond the pole. There was only the rolling white desert from horizon to horizon.”

 

Elsewhere on the continent, the landscape appeared more varied. Byrd found jagged mountains of coal black and brick red, where ice-covered rocks reflected the sun

 

“In an indescribable complex of colors, blends of blues, purple, and greens such as man seldom has seen before.”

 

Greatly impressed by this natural beauty, Byrd became almost lyrical:

 

“At the bottom of this planet lies an enchanted continent in the sky. Sinister and beautiful, she lies in her frozen slumber, her billowy white robes of snow weirdly luminous with amethysts and emeralds of ice.”

 

Byrd’s discoveries did little to end speculations about a hollow earth, open at the poles; on the contrary, believers were stimulated to new heights of endeavor-and confusion over dates and places-to discredit Byrd’s reports.