were of his mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that
his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his
death. We can testify to his bravery. He has borne intense suffering for
weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to
discuss outside subjects. He did not--would not--give up hope till the
very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the
night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the
morning--yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, 'I am just going
outside and may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard and we have
not seen him since.
"I take this opportunity of saying that we have stuck to our sick
companions to the last. In case of Edgar Evans, when absolutely out of
food and he lay insensible, the safety of the remainder seemed to demand
his abandonment, but Providence mercifully removed him at this critical
moment. He died a natural death, and we did not leave him till two hours
after his death. We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but
though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man
and an English gentleman. We all hope to meet the end with a similar
spirit, and assuredly the end is not far.
"I can only write at lunch and then only occasionally. The cold is
intense, -40° at mid-day. My companions are unendingly cheerful, but we
are all on the verge of serious frost-bites, and though we constantly
talk of fetching through I don't think any one of us believes it in his
heart.
"We are cold on the march now, and at all times except meals. Yesterday
we had to lay up for a blizzard and to-day we move dreadfully slowly. We
are at No. 14 Pony Camp, only two pony marches from One Ton Depôt. We
leave here our theodolite, a camera, and Oates' sleeping-bags. Diaries,
etc., and geological specimens carried at Wilson's special request, will
be found with us or on our sledge."
"_Sunday, March 18._ To-day, lunch, we are 21 miles from the depôt. Ill
fortune presses, but better may come. We have had more wind and drift
from ahead yesterday; had to stop marching; wind N.W., force 4, temp.
-35°. No human being could face it, and we are worn out _nearly_.
"My right foot has gone, nearly all the toes--two days ago I was proud
possessor of best feet.... Bowers takes first place in condition, but
there is not much to choose after all. The others are still confident of
getting through--or pretend to be--I don't know! We have the last _half_
fill of oil in our primus and a very small quantity of spirit--this alone
between us and thirst. The wind is fair for the moment, and that is
perhaps a fact to help. The mileage would have seemed ridiculously small
on our outward journey."
"_Monday, March 19. Lunch._ We camped with difficulty last night and were
dreadfully cold till after our supper of cold pemmican and biscuit and a
half pannikin of cocoa cooked over the spirit. Then, contrary to
expectation, we got warm and all slept well. To-day we started in the
usual dragging manner. Sledge dreadfully heavy. We are 15½ miles from the
depôt and ought to get there in three days. What progress! We have two
days' food but barely a day's fuel. All our feet are getting
bad--Wilson's best, my right foot worse, left all right. There is no
chance to nurse one's feet till we can get hot food into us. Amputation
is the least I can hope for now, but will the trouble spread? That is the
serious question. The weather doesn't give us a chance--the wind from N.
to N.W. and -40° temp, to-day."
"_Wednesday, March 21._ Got within 11 miles of depôt Monday night; had to
lay up all yesterday in severe blizzard. To-day forlorn hope, Wilson and
Bowers going to depôt for fuel."
"_22 and 23._ Blizzard bad as ever--Wilson and Bowers unable to
start--to-morrow last chance--no fuel and only one or two of food
left--must be near the end. Have decided it shall be natural--we shall
march for the depôt with or without our effects and die in our tracks."
"_Thursday, March 29._ Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale from
W.S.W. and S.W. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food
for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our
depôt _11 miles_ away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a
scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things
now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of
course, and the end cannot be far.
"It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.
R. SCOTT."
_Last entry._ "For God's sake, look after our people."
The following extracts are from letters written by Scott:
_To Mrs. E. A. Wilson_
MY DEAR MRS. WILSON. If this letter reaches you, Bill and I will have
gone out together. We are very near it now and I should like you to know
how splendid he was at the end--everlastingly cheerful and ready to
sacrifice himself for others, never a word of blame to me for leading him
into this mess. He is not suffering, luckily, at least only minor
discomforts.
His eyes have a comfortable blue look of hope and his mind is peaceful
with the satisfaction of his faith in regarding himself as part of the
great scheme of the Almighty. I can do no more to comfort you than to
tell you that he died as he lived, a brave, true man--the best of
comrades and staunchest of friends.
My whole heart goes out to you in pity. Yours,
R. SCOTT.
_To Mrs. Bowers_
MY DEAR MRS. BOWERS. I am afraid this will reach you after one of the
heaviest blows of your life.
I write when we are very near the end of our journey, and I am finishing
it in company with two gallant, noble gentlemen. One of these is your
son. He had come to be one of my closest and soundest friends, and I
appreciate his wonderful upright nature, his ability and energy. As the
troubles have thickened his dauntless spirit ever shone brighter and he
has remained cheerful, hopeful and indomitable to the end....
_To Sir J. M. Barrie_
MY DEAR BARRIE. We are pegging out in a very comfortless spot. Hoping
this letter may be found and sent to you, I write a word of farewell ...
Good-bye. I am not at all afraid of the end, but sad to miss many a
humble pleasure which I had planned for the future on our long marches. I
may not have proved a great explorer, but we have done the greatest march
ever made and come very near to great success. Good-bye, my dear friend.
Yours ever,
R. SCOTT.
We are in a desperate state, feet frozen, etc. No fuel and a long way
from food, but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our
songs and the cheery conversation as to what we will do when we get to
Hut Point.
_Later._ We are very near the end, but have not and will not lose our
good cheer. We have four days of storm in our tent and nowhere's food or
fuel. We did intend to finish ourselves when things proved like this, but
we have decided to die naturally in the track.[347]
The following extracts are from letters written to other friends:
" ... I want to tell you that I was _not_ too old for this job. It was
the younger men that went under first.... After all we are setting a good
example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by
facing it like men when we were there. We could have come through had we
neglected the sick."
"Wilson, the best fellow that ever stepped, has sacrificed himself again
and again to the sick men of the party...."
" ... Our journey has been the biggest on record, and nothing but the
most exceptional hard luck at the end would have caused us to fail to
return."
"What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey. How much better has
it been than lounging in too great comfort at home."
* * * * *
MESSAGE TO THE PUBLIC
The causes of the disaster are not due to faulty organization, but to
misfortune in all risks which had to be undertaken.
1. The loss of pony transport in March 1911 obliged me to start later
than I had intended, and obliged the limits of stuff transported to be
narrowed.
2. The weather throughout the outward journey, and especially the long
gale in 83° S., stopped us.
3. The soft snow in lower reaches of glacier again reduced pace.
We fought these untoward events with a will and conquered, but it cut
into our provision reserve.
Every detail of our food supplies, clothing and depôts made on the
interior ice-sheet and over that long stretch of 700 miles to the Pole
and back, worked out to perfection. The advance party would have returned
to the glacier in fine form and with surplus of food, but for the
astonishing failure of the man whom we had least expected to fail. Edgar
Evans was thought the strongest man of the party.
The Beardmore Glacier is not difficult in fine weather, but on our return
we did not get a single completely fine day; this with a sick companion
enormously increased our anxieties.
As I have said elsewhere, we got into frightfully rough ice and Edgar
Evans received a concussion of the brain--he died a natural death, but
left us a shaken party with the season unduly advanced.
But all the facts above enumerated were as nothing to the surprise which
awaited us on the Barrier. I maintain that our arrangements for returning
were quite adequate, and that no one in the world would have expected the
temperatures and surfaces which we encountered at this time of the year.
On the summit in lat. 85°-86° we had -20°, -30°. On the Barrier in lat.
82°, 10,000 feet lower, we had -30° in the day, -47° at night pretty
regularly, with continuous head-wind during our day marches. It is clear
that these circumstances come on very suddenly, and our wreck is
certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather, which does not
seem to have any satisfactory cause. I do not think human beings ever
came through such a month as we have come through, and we should have got
through in spite of the weather but for the sickening of a second
companion, Captain Oates, and a shortage of fuel in our depôts for which
I cannot account, and finally, but for the storm which has fallen on us
within 11 miles of the depôt at which we hoped to secure our final
supplies. Surely misfortune could scarcely have exceeded this last blow.
We arrived within 11 miles of our old One Ton Camp with fuel for one last
meal and food for two days. For four days we have been unable to leave
the tent--the gale howling about us. We are weak, writing is difficult,
but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that
Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as
great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took
them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for
complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our
best to the last. But if we have been willing to give our lives to this
enterprise, which is for the honour of our country, I appeal to our
countrymen to see that those who depend on us are properly cared for.
Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood,
endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the
heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must
tell the tale, but surely, surely a great rich country like ours will see
that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.--R.
SCOTT.[348]
[Illustration: THE POLAR JOURNEY--Apsley Cherry-Garrard, del. Emery
Walker Ltd., Collotypers.]
FOOTNOTES:
[341] Wilson.
[342] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 575-576.
[343] Ibid. p. 577.
[344] Wilson.
[345] See note at end of Chapter XIV.
[346] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 582, 583.
[347] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 584-599.
[348] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 605-607.
CHAPTER XIX
NEVER AGAIN
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my onely light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.
HERBERT.
I shall inevitably be asked for a word of mature judgment of the
expedition of a kind that was impossible when we were all close up to it,
and when I was a subaltern of 24, not incapable of judging my elders, but
too young to have found out whether my judgment was worth anything. I now
see very plainly that though we achieved a first-rate tragedy, which will
never be forgotten just because it was a tragedy, tragedy was not our
business. In the broad perspective opened up by ten years' distance, I
see not one journey to the Pole, but two, in startling contrast one to
another. On the one hand, Amundsen going straight there, getting there
first, and returning without the loss of a single man, and without having
put any greater strain on himself and his men than was all in the day's
work of polar exploration. Nothing more business-like could be imagined.
On the other hand, our expedition, running appalling risks, performing
prodigies of superhuman endurance, achieving immortal renown,
commemorated in august cathedral sermons and by public statues, yet
reaching the Pole only to find our terrible journey superfluous, and
leaving our best men dead on the ice. To ignore such a contrast would be
ridiculous: to write a book without accounting for it a waste of time.
First let me do full justice to Amundsen. I have not attempted to
disguise how we felt towards him when, after leading us to believe that
he had equipped the Fram for an Arctic journey, and sailed for the north,
he suddenly made his dash for the south. Nothing makes a more unpleasant
impression than a feint. But when Scott reached the Pole only to find
that Amundsen had been there a month before him, his distress was not
that of a schoolboy who has lost a race. I have described what it had
cost Scott and his four companions to get to the Pole, and what they had
still to suffer in returning until death stopped them. Much of that risk
and racking toil had been undertaken that men might learn what the world
is like at the spot where the sun does not decline in the heavens, where
a man loses his orbit and turns like a joint on a spit, and where his
face, however he turns, is always to the North. The moment Scott saw the
Norwegian tent he knew that he had nothing to tell that was not already
known. His achievement was a mere precaution against Amundsen perishing
on his way back; and that risk was no greater than his own. The Polar
Journey was literally laid waste: that was the shock that staggered them.
Well might Bowers be glad to see the last of Norskies' tracks as their
homeward paths diverged.
All this heartsickness has passed away now; and the future explorer will
not concern himself with it. He will ask, what was the secret of
Amundsen's slick success? What is the moral of our troubles and losses? I
will take Amundsen's success first. Undoubtedly the very remarkable
qualities of the man himself had a good deal to do with it. There is a
sort of sagacity that constitutes the specific genius of the explorer;
and Amundsen proved his possession of this by his guess that there was
terra firma in the Bay of Whales as solid as on Ross Island. Then there
is the quality of big leadership which is shown by daring to take a big
chance. Amundsen took a very big one indeed when he turned from the route
to the Pole explored and ascertained by Scott and Shackleton and
determined to find a second pass over the mountains from the Barrier to
the plateau. As it happened, he succeeded, and established his route as
the best way to the Pole until a better is discovered. But he might
easily have failed and perished in the attempt; and the combination of
reasoning and daring that nerved him to make it can hardly be overrated.
All these things helped him. Yet any rather conservative whaling captain
might have refused to make Scott's experiment with motor transport,
ponies and man-hauling, and stuck to the dogs; and to the use of ski in
running those dogs; and it was this quite commonplace choice that sent
Amundsen so gaily to the Pole and back: with no abnormal strain on men or
dogs, and no great hardship either. He never pulled a mile from start to
finish.
The very ease of the exploit makes it impossible to infer from it that
Amundsen's expedition was more highly endowed in personal qualities than
ours. We did not suffer from too little brains or daring: we may have
suffered from too much. We were primarily a great scientific expedition,
with the Pole as our bait for public support, though it was not more
important than any other acre of the plateau. We followed in the steps of
a polar expedition which brought back more results than any of its
forerunners: Scott's Discovery voyage. We had the largest and most
efficient scientific staff that ever left England. We were discursive. We
were full of intellectual interests and curiosities of all kinds. We took
on the work of two or three expeditions.
It is obvious that there are disadvantages in such a division of energy.
Scott wanted to reach the Pole: a dangerous and laborious exploit, but a
practicable one. Wilson wanted to obtain the egg of the Emperor penguin:
a horribly dangerous and inhumanly exhausting feat which is none the less
impracticable because the three men who achieved it survived by a
miracle. These two feats had to be piled one on top of the other. What
with the Depôt Journey and others, in addition to these two, we were
sledged out by the end of our second sledging season, and our worst year
was still to come. We, the survivors, went in search of the dead when
there was a possibly living party waiting in the ice somewhere for us to
succour them. That turned out all right, because when we got back, we
found Campbell's party self-extricated and waiting for us, alive and
well. But suppose they also had perished, what would have been said of
us?
The practical man of the world has plenty of criticism of the way things
were done. He says dogs should have been taken; but he does not show how
they could have been got up and down the Beardmore. He is scandalized
because 30 lbs. of geological specimens were deliberately added to the
weight of the sledge that was dragging the life out of the men who had to
haul it; but he does not realize that it is the friction surfaces of the
snow on the runners which mattered and not the dead weight, which in this
case was almost negligible. Nor does he know that these same specimens
dated a continent and may elucidate the whole history of plant life. He
will admit that we were all very wonderful, very heroic, very beautiful
and devoted: that our exploits gave a glamour to our expedition that
Amundsen's cannot claim; but he has no patience with us, and declares
that Amundsen was perfectly right in refusing to allow science to use up
the forces of his men, or to interfere for a moment with his single
business of getting to the Pole and back again. No doubt he was; but we
were not out for a single business: we were out for everything we could
add to the world's store of knowledge about the Antarctic.
Of course the whole business simply bristles with "ifs": If Scott had
taken dogs and succeeded in getting them up the Beardmore: if we had not
lost those ponies on the Depôt Journey: if the dogs had not been taken so
far and the One Ton Depôt had been laid: if a pony and some extra oil had
been depôted on the Barrier: if a four-man party had been taken to the
Pole: if I had disobeyed my instructions and gone on from One Ton,
killing dogs as necessary: or even if I had just gone on a few miles and
left some food and fuel under a flag upon a cairn: if they had been first
at the Pole: if it had been any other season but that.... But always the
bare fact remains that Scott could not have travelled from McMurdo Sound
to the Pole faster than he did except with dogs; all the king's horses
and all the king's men could not have done it. Why, then, says the
practical man, did we go to McMurdo Sound instead of to the Bay of
Whales? Because we gained that continuity of scientific observation which
is so important in this work: and because the Sound was the
starting-point for continuing the exploration of the only ascertained
route to the Pole, via the Beardmore Glacier.
I am afraid it was all inevitable: we were as wise as any one can be
before the event. I admit that we, scrupulously economical of our
pemmican, were terribly prodigal of our man-power. But we had to be: the
draft, whatever it may have been on the whole, was not excessive at any
given point; and anyhow we just had to use every man to take every
opportunity. There is so much to do, and the opportunities for doing it
are so rare. Generally speaking, I don't see how we could have done
differently, but I don't want to see it done again; I don't want it to be
necessary to do it again. I want to see this country tackle the job, and
send enough men to do one thing at a time. They do it in Canada: why not
in England too?
But we wasted our man-power in one way which could have been avoided. I
have described how every emergency was met by calling for volunteers, and
how the volunteers were always forthcoming. Unfortunately volunteering
was relied on not only for emergencies, but for a good deal of everyday
work that should have been organised as routine; and the inevitable
result was that the willing horses were overworked. It was a point of
honour not to ca' canny. Men were allowed to do too much, and were told
afterwards that they had done too much; and that is not discipline. They
should not have been allowed to do too much. Until our last year we never
insisted on a regular routine.
Money was scarce: probably Scott could not have obtained the funds for
the expedition if its objective had not been the Pole. There was no lack
of the things which could be bought across the counter from big business
houses--all landing, sledging, and scientific equipment was
first-class--but one of the first and most important items, the ship,
would have sent Columbus on strike, and nearly sent us to the bottom of
the sea.
People talk of the niggardly equipment of Columbus when he sailed west
from the Canaries to try a short-cut to an inhabited continent of
magnificent empires, as he thought; but his three ships were, relatively
to the resources of that time, much better than the one old tramp in
which we sailed for a desert of ice in which the evening and morning are
the year and not the day, and in which not even polar bears and reindeers
can live. Amundsen had the Fram, built for polar exploration _ad hoc_.
Scott had the Discovery. But when one thinks of these Nimrods and Terra
Novas, picked up second-hand in the wooden-ship market, and faked up for
the transport of ponies, dogs, motors, and all the impedimenta of a polar
expedition, to say nothing of the men who have to try and do scientific
work inside them, one feels disposed to clamour for a Polar Factory Act
making it a crime to ship men for the ice in vessels more fit to ply
between London Bridge and Ramsgate.
And then the begging that is necessary to obtain even this equipment.
Shackleton hanging round the doors of rich men! Scott writing begging
letters for months together! Is the country not ashamed?
Modern civilized States should make up their minds to the endowment of
research, which includes exploration; and as all States benefit alike by
the scientific side of it there is plenty of scope for international
arrangement, especially in a region where the mere grabbing of territory
is meaningless, and no Foreign Office can trace the frontier between King
Edward's Plateau and King Haakon's. The Antarctic continent is still
mostly unexplored; but enough is known of it to put any settlement by
ordinary pioneer emigration, pilgrim fathers and the like, out of the
question. Ross Island is not a place for a settlement: it is a place for
an elaborately equipped scientific station, with a staff in residence
for a year at a time. Our stay of three years was far too much: another
year would have driven the best of us mad. Of the five main journeys
which fell to my lot, one, the Winter Journey, should not have been
undertaken at all with our equipment; and two others, the Dog Journey and
the Search Journey, had better have been done by fresh men. It is no use
repeating that Englishmen will respond to every call and stick it to the
death: they will (some of them); but they have to pay the price all the
same; and the price in my case was an overdraft on my vital capital which
I shall never quite pay off, and in the case of five bigger, stronger,
more seasoned men, death. The establishment of such stations and of such
a service cannot be done by individual heroes and enthusiasts cadging for
cheques from rich men and grants from private scientific societies: it is
a business, like the Nares Arctic expedition, for public organization.
I do not suppose that in these days of aviation the next visit to the
Pole will be made by men on foot dragging sledges, or by men on sledges
dragged by dogs, mules or ponies; nor will depôts be laid in that way.
The pack will not, I hope, be broken through by any old coal-burning ship
that can be picked up in the second-hand market. Specially built ships,
and enough of them; specially engined tractors and aeroplanes; specially
trained men and plenty of them, will all be needed if the work is to be
done in any sort of humane and civilized fashion; and Cabinet ministers
and voters alike must learn to value knowledge that is not baited by
suffering and death. My own bolt is shot; I do not suppose I shall ever
go south again before I go west; but if I do it will be under proper and
reasonable conditions. I may not come back a hero; but I shall come back
none the worse; for I repeat, the Antarctic, in moderation as to length
of stay, and with such accommodation as is now easily within the means of
modern civilized Powers, is not half as bad a place for public service as
the worst military stations on the equator. I hope that by the time Scott
comes home--for he is coming home: the Barrier is moving, and not a trace
of our funeral cairn was found by Shackleton's men in 1916--the
hardships that wasted his life will be only a horror of the past, and his
_via dolorosa_ a highway as practicable as Piccadilly.
And now let me come down to tin tacks. No matter how well the thing is
done in future, its organizers will want to know at first all we can tell
them about oil, about cold, and about food. First, as to oil.
Scott complains of a shortage of oil at several of his last depôts. There
is no doubt that this shortage was due to the perishing of the leather
washers of the tins which contained the paraffin oil. All these tins had
been subjected to the warmth of the sun in summer and the autumn
temperatures, which were unexpectedly cold. In his Voyage of the
Discovery Scott wrote as follows of the tins in which they drew their oil
when sledging: "Each tin had a small cork bung, which was a decided
weakness; paraffin _creeps_ in the most annoying manner, and a good deal
of oil was wasted in this way, especially when the sledges were
travelling over rough ground and were shaken or, as frequently happened,
capsized. It was impossible to make these bungs quite tight, however
closely they were jammed down, so that in spite of a trifling extra
weight a much better fitting would have been a metallic screwed bung. To
find on opening a fresh tin of oil that it was only three-parts full was
very distressing, and of course meant that the cooker had to be used with
still greater care."[349] Amundsen wrote of his paraffin: "We kept it in
the usual cans but they proved too weak; not that we lost any paraffin,
but Bjaaland had to be constantly soldering to keep them tight."[350]
Our own tins were furnished with the metallic screwed stoppers which
Scott recommended. There was no trouble reported[351] until we came up to
One Ton Camp when on the Search Journey. Here was the depôt of food and
oil which I had laid in the previous autumn for the Polar Party, stowed
in a canvas 'tank' which was buried beneath seven feet of snow; the oil
was placed on the top of the snow, in order that the red tins might prove
an additional mark for the depôt. When we dug out the tank the food
inside was almost uneatable owing to the quantity of paraffin which had
found its way down through seven feet of snow during the winter and
spring.
We then found the Polar Party and learned of the shortage of oil. After
our return to Cape Evans some one was digging about the camp and came
across a wooden case containing eight one-gallon tins of paraffin. These
had been placed there in September 1911, to be landed at Cape Crozier by
the Terra Nova when she came down. The ship could not take them: they
were snowed up during the winter, lost and forgotten, until dug up
fifteen months afterwards. Three tins were full, three empty, one a third
full and one two-thirds full.
There can be no doubt that the oil, which was specially volatile, tended
to vaporize and escape through the stoppers, and that this process was
accelerated by the perishing, and I suggest also the hardening and
shrinking, of the leather washers. Another expedition will have to be
very careful on this point: they might reduce the risk by burying the
oil.
The second point about which something must be said is the unexpected
cold met by Scott on the Barrier, which was the immediate cause of the
disaster. "No one in the world would have expected the temperatures and
surfaces which we encountered at this time of the year.... It is clear
that these circumstances come on very suddenly, and our wreck is
certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather, which does not
seem to have any satisfactory cause."[352]
They came down the glacier in plus temperatures: nor was there anything
abnormal for more than a week after they got on to the Barrier. Then
there came a big drop to a -37° minimum on the night of February 26. It
is significant that the sun began to dip below the southern horizon at
midnight about this time. "There is no doubt the middle of the Barrier is
a pretty awful locality," wrote Scott.
Simpson, in his meteorological report, has little doubt that the
temperatures met by the Polar Party were abnormal. The records "clearly
bring to light the possibility of great cold at an extremely early period
in the year within a comparatively few miles of an open sea where the
temperatures were over 40 degrees higher." "It is quite impossible to
believe that normally there is a difference of nearly 40 degrees in March
between McMurdo Sound and the South of the Barrier." The temperatures
recorded by other sledge parties in March 1912 and those recorded at Cape
Evans form additional evidence, in Simpson's opinion, that the
temperatures experienced by Scott were not such as might be expected
during normal autumn weather.
Simpson's explanation is based upon the observations made in McMurdo
Sound by sending up balloons with self-recording instruments attached.
These showed that very rapid radiation takes place from the snow surface
in winter, which cools the air in the immediate neighbourhood: a cold
layer of air is thus formed near the ground, which may be many degrees
colder than the air above it. It becomes, as it were, colder than it
ought to be. This, however, can only happen during an absence of wind:
when a wind blows the cold layer is swept away, the air is mixed and the
temperature rises.
The absence of wind from the south noted by Scott was, in Simpson's
opinion, the cause of the low temperatures met by Scott: the temperature
was reduced ten degrees below normal at Cape Evans, and perhaps twenty
degrees where Scott was.[353]
The third question is that of food. It is this point which is most
important to future explorers. It is a fact that the Polar Party failed
to make their distance because they became weak, and that they became
weak although they were eating their full ration or more than their full
ration of food, save for a few days when they went short on the way down
the Beardmore Glacier. The first man to weaken was the biggest and
heaviest man in the expedition: "the man whom we had least expected to
fail."
The rations were of two kinds. The Barrier (B) ration was that which was
used on the Barrier during the outward journey towards the Pole. The
Summit (S) ration was the result of our experiments on the Winter
Journey. I expect it is the best ration which has been used to date, and
consisted of biscuits 16, pemmican 12, butter 2, cocoa 0.57, sugar 3 and
tea 0.86 ounces; total 34.43 ounces daily per man.
The twelve men who went forward started this S ration at the foot of the
Beardmore, and it was this ration which was left in all depôts to see
them home. It was much more satisfying than the Barrier ration, and men
could not have eaten so much when leading ponies or driving dogs in the
early stages of summer Barrier sledging: but man-hauling is a different
business altogether from leading ponies or driving dogs.
It is calculated that the body requires certain proportions of fat,
carbohydrates and proteins to do certain work under certain conditions:
but just what the absolute quantities are is not ascertained. The work of
the Polar Party was laborious: the temperatures (the most important of
the conditions) varied from comparative warmth up and down the glacier to
an average of about -20° in the rarefied air of the plateau. The
temperatures met by them on their return over the Barrier were not really
low for more than a week, and then there came quite commonly minus
thirties during the day with a further drop to minus forties at night,
when for a time the sun was below the horizon. These temperatures, which
are not very terrible to men who are fresh and whose clothing is new,
were ghastly to these men who had striven night and day almost
ceaselessly for four months on, as I maintain, insufficient food. Did
these temperatures kill them?
Undoubtedly the low temperatures caused their death, inasmuch as they
would have lived had the temperatures remained high. But Evans would not
have lived: he died before the low temperatures occurred. What killed
Evans? And why did the other men weaken as they did, though they were
eating full rations and more? Weaken so much that in the end they starved
to death?
I have always had a doubt whether the weather conditions were sufficient
to cause the tragedy. These men on full rations were supposed to be
eating food of sufficient value to enable them to do the work they were
doing, under the conditions which they actually met until the end of
February, without loss of strength. They had more than their full
rations, but the conditions in March were much worse than they imagined
to be possible: when three survivors out of the five pitched their Last
Camp they were in a terrible state. After the war I found that Atkinson
had come to wonder much as I, but he had gone farther, for he had the
values of our rations worked out by a chemical expert according to the
latest knowledge and standards. I may add that, being in command after
Scott's death, he increased the ration for the next year's sledging, so I
suppose he had already come to the conclusion that the previous ration
was not sufficient. The following are some of the data for which I am
indebted to him: the whole subject will be investigated by him and the
results published in a more detailed form.
According to the most modern standards the food requirements for
laborious work at a temperature of zero Fahr. (which is a fair Barrier
average temperature to take) are 7714 calories to produce 10,069
foot-tons of work. The actual Barrier ration which we used would generate
4003 calories, equivalent to 5331 foot-tons of work. Similar requirements
for laborious work at -10° Fahr. (which is a high average plateau
temperature) are 8500 calories to produce 11,094 foot-tons of work. The
actual Summit ration would generate 4889 calories, equivalent to 6608
foot-tons of work. These requirements are calculated for total absorption
of all food-stuffs: but in practice, by visual proof, this does not take
place: this is especially noticeable in the case of fats, a quantity of
which were digested neither by men, ponies, nor dogs.
Several things go to prove that our ration was not enough. In the first
case we were probably not as fit as we seemed after long sledge journeys.
There is no doubt that when sledging men developed an automaticity of
certain muscles at the expense of other muscles: for instance, a sledge
could be hauled all day at the expense of the arms, and we had little
power to lift weights at the end of several months of sledging. In
relation to this I would add that, when the relief ship arrived in
February 1912, four of us were at Cape Evans, but just arrived from three
months of the Polar Journey. The land party, we four among them, were
turned on to sledge stores ashore. This in practice meant twenty miles
every day dragging a sledge; a good deal of 'humping' heavy cases, from
five o'clock in the morning to very late at night; with uncertain meals
and no rests. I can remember now how hard that work was to myself and, I
expect, to those others who had been away sledging. The ship's party
sledged only every other day "because they were not used to it." This was
extremely bad organization, and in view of the possibility that some of
the men might be required for further sledging in the autumn, just silly.
Again, there is the experience of the man-hauling parties of the Polar
Journey. There was, you may remember, a man-hauling party on the way to
the Beardmore Glacier. They travelled with a light sledge but they lost
weight on the Barrier ration. It is significant that they picked up
condition when they started the Summit ration, especially Lashly.
The Polar Party and the two returning parties, who were on the Summit
ration from the foot of the Beardmore until the end of their journeys,
weakened, in Atkinson's opinion, more than they should have done had
their ration been sufficient. The First Return Party covered
approximately 1100 statute miles. At the end of their journey their
pulling muscles were all right, but Atkinson, who led the party,
considers that they were at least 70 per cent weaker in other muscles.
They all lost a great deal of weight, though they had the best conditions
of the three returning parties, and the temperatures met by them averaged
well over zero.
The Second Return Party faced much worse conditions. They were only three
men, and one of the three was so sick that for 120 miles he could not
pull and for 90 miles he had to be dragged on the sledge. The average
temperature approximated zero. They were extremely exhausted.
Scott makes constant reference to the increasing hunger of the Polar
Party: it is clear that the food did not compensate for the conditions
which were met in increasing severity. Yet they were eating rather more
than their full ration a considerable part of the time. It has to be
considered that the temperatures met by them averaged far below -10°:
that they did not absorb all their food: that increased heat was wanted
not only for energy to do extra work caused by bad surfaces and contrary
winds, but also to heat their bodies, and to thaw out their clothing and
sleeping-bags.
I believe it to be clear that the rations used by us must not only be
increased by future expeditions, but co-ordinated in different
proportions of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Taking into
consideration the fact that our bodies were not digesting the amount of
fats we had provided, Atkinson suggests that it is useless to increase
the fats at the expense of the protein and carbohydrates. He recommends
that fats should total about 5 ounces daily. The digestion of
carbohydrates is easy and complete, and though that of protein is more
complicated there are plenty of the necessary digestive ferments. The
ration should be increased by equal amounts of protein and carbohydrates;
both should be provided in as dry and pure a form as possible.
There is no censure attached to this criticism. Our ration was probably
the best which has been used: but more is known now than was known then.
We are all out to try and get these things right for the future.[354]
Campbell reached Hut Point only five days after we left it with the
dog-teams. A characteristic note left to greet us on our return regretted
they were too late to take part in the Search Journey. If I had lived
through ten months such as those men had just endured, wild horses would
not have dragged me out sledging again. But they were keen to get some
useful work done in the time which remained until the ship arrived.
We had the Polar records: Campbell and his men, unaided, had not only
survived their terrible winter, but had sledged down the coast after it.
We ourselves, faced by a difficult alternative, had fallen on our feet.
We never hoped for more than this: we seldom hoped for so much.
I wanted a series of Adélie penguin embryos from the rookery at Cape
Royds, but had not expected an opportunity of getting them because I was
away sledging during the summer months. Now the chance had come. Atkinson
wanted to work on parasites at the same place, and others to survey. But
the real job was an ascent of Erebus, the active volcano which rose from
our doors to some 13,400 feet in height. A party of Shackleton's men
under Professor David went up it in March, and managed to haul a sledge
up to 5800 feet, from which point they had to portage their gear. A year
before this Debenham, with the help of a telescope, selected a route by
which they could haul a sledge up to 9000 feet. There proved to be no
great difficulty about it; it was just a matter of legs and breath.
They were a cheery company, part-singing in the evenings and working hard
all day. It was an uneventful trip, Debenham said, and very harmonious:
the best trip he had down there. Both Debenham and Dickason suffered from
mountain sickness, however, and they were the two smokers! The clearness
of the air was marked. At 5000 feet they could plainly see Mount
Melbourne and Cape Jones, between two and three hundred miles away, and
several uncharted mountains over to the west, but they were unable to
plot them accurately because they could get direction rays from one point
only. The Sound itself was covered by cloud most of the time, but
Beaufort Island and Franklin Island were clear. Unlike David's party,
they could see no signs whatever of volcanic action on Mount Bird, which
is almost entirely covered with ice on which it was to be expected that
some mark might be left. At 9000 feet Terror looked very imposing, but
Mount Bird and Terra Nova were insignificant and uninteresting. The
valley between the old crater and the slopes of the second crater greatly
impressed them, and they found a fine little crevassed glacier in it.
Both Priestley and Debenham are of opinion that it is possible to get to
Terror by this valley, and that there are no crevassed areas or
impossible slopes on the way. All the same it would probably be more
sensible to go from Cape Crozier.
At a point about 9000 feet up, Priestley, Gran, Abbott and Hooper started
to make the ascent to the active crater on December 10. They packed the
tent, poles, bags, inner cooker and cooking gear, with four days'
provisions, and reached the second crater at about 11,500 feet, to be
hung up by cloud all the next day. At these altitudes the temperature
varied between -10° and -30°, though at sea-level simultaneously they
were round about freezing-point. By 1 A.M. on the 12th the conditions
were good--clear, with a southerly wind blowing the steam away from the
summit. The party got away as soon as possible and reached the lip of the
active crater in a few hours. Looking down they were unable to see the
bottom, for it was full of steam: the sides sloped at a steep angle for
some 500 feet, when they became sheer precipices: the opening appeared to
be about 14,000 paces round. The top is mostly pumice, but there is also
a lot of kenyte, much the same as at sea-level: the old crater was mostly
kenyte, proving that this is the oldest rock of the island: felspar
crystals must be continually thrown out, for they were lying about on the
top of the snow; I have one nearly 3½ inches long.
Two men went back to the camp, for one had a frost-bitten foot. This left
Priestley and Gran, who tried to boil the hypsometer but failed owing to
the wind, which was variable and enveloped them from time to time in
steam and sulphur vapour. They left a record on a cairn and started to
return. But when they had got 500 feet down Priestley found that he had
left a tin of exposed films on the top instead of the record. Gran said
he would go back and change it. He had reached the top when there was a
loud explosion: large blocks of pumice were hurled out with a big smoke
cloud; probably a big bubble had burst. Gran was in the middle of it,
heard it gurgle before it burst, saw "blocks of pumiceous lava, in shape
like the halves of volcanic bombs, and with bunches of long, drawn-out,
hair-like shreds of glass in their interior."[355] This was Pélé's hair.
Gran was a bit sick from sulphur dioxide fumes afterwards. They reached
Cape Royds on the 16th, the very successful trip taking fifteen days.
Meanwhile Shackleton's old hut was very pleasant at this time of year: in
winter it was a bit too draughty. With bright sunlight, a lop on the sea
which splashed and gurgled under the ice-foot, the beautiful mountains
all round us, and the penguins nesting at our door, this was better than
the Beardmore Glacier, where we had expected to be at this date. What
then must it have been to the six men who were just returned from the
very Gate of Hell? And the food: "Truly Shackleton's men must have fed
like turkey-cocks from all the delicacies here: boiled chicken, kidneys,
mushrooms, ginger, Garibaldi biscuits, soups of all kinds: it is a
splendid change. Best of all are the fresh-buttered skua's eggs which we
make for breakfast. In fact, life is bearable with all that has been
unknown so long at last cleared up, and our anxieties for Campbell's
party laid at rest."[356]
For three weeks I worked among the Adélie penguins at Cape Royds, and
obtained a complete series of their embryos. It was always Wilson's idea
that embryology was the next job of a vertebral zoologist down south. I
have already explained that the penguin is an interesting link in the
evolutionary chain, and the object of getting this embryo is to find out
where the penguins come in.[357] Whether or no they are more primitive
than other nonflying birds, such as the apteryx, the ostrich, the rhea
and the moa, which last is only just extinct, is an open question. But
wingless birds are still hanging on to the promontories of the southern
continents, where there is less rivalry than in the highly populated
land areas of the north. It may be that penguins are descended from
ancestors who lived in the northern hemisphere in a winged condition
(even now you may sometimes see them try to fly), and that they have been
driven towards the south.
If penguins are primitive, it is rational to infer that the most
primitive penguin is farthest south. These are the two Antarcticists, the
Emperor and the Adélie. The latter appears to be the more numerous and
successful of the two, and for this reason we are inclined to search
among the Emperors as being among the most primitive penguins, if not the
most primitive of birds now living: hence the Winter Journey. I was glad
to get, in addition, this series of Adélie penguins' embryos, feeling
somewhat like a giant who had wandered on to the wrong planet, and who
was distinctly in the way of its true inhabitants.
We returned too late to see the eggs laid, and therefore it was
impossible to tell how old the embryos were. My hopes rose, however, when
I saw some eggless nests with penguins sitting upon them, but later I
found that these were used as bachelor quarters by birds whose wives were
sitting near. I tried taking eggs from nests and was delighted to find
that new eggs appeared: these I carefully marked, and it was not until I
opened one two days later to find inside an embryo at least two weeks
old, that I realized that penguins added baby-snatching to their other
immoralities. Some of those from whom I took eggs sat upon stones of a
similar size and shape with every appearance of content: one sat upon the
half of the red tin of a Dutch cheese. They are not very intelligent.
All the world loves a penguin: I think it is because in many respects
they are like ourselves, and in some respects what we should like to be.
Had we but half their physical courage none could stand against us. Had
we a hundredth part of their maternal instinct we should have to kill our
children by the thousand. Their little bodies are so full of curiosity
that they have no room for fear. They like mountaineering, and joy-riding
on ice-floes: they even like to drill.
One day there had been a blizzard, and lying open to the view of all was
a deserted nest, a pile of coveted stones. All the surrounding rookery
made their way to and fro, each husband acquiring merit, for, after each
journey, he gave his wife a stone. This was the plebeian way of doing
things; but my friend who stood, ever so unconcerned, upon a rock knew a
trick worth two of that: he and his wife who sat so cosily upon the other
side.
The victim was a third penguin. He was without a mate, but this was an
opportunity to get one. With all the speed his little legs could compass
he ran to and fro, taking stones from the deserted nest, laying them
beneath a rock, and hurrying back for more. On that same rock was my
friend. When the victim came up with his stone he had his back turned.
But as soon as the stone was laid and the other gone for more, he jumped
down, seized it with his beak, ran round, gave it to his wife and was
back on the rock (with his back turned) before you could say Killer
Whale. Every now and then he looked over his shoulder, to see where the
next stone might be.
I watched this for twenty minutes. All that time, and I do not know for
how long before, that wretched bird was bringing stone after stone. And
there were no stones there. Once he looked puzzled, looked up and swore
at the back of my friend on his rock, but immediately he came back, and
he never seemed to think he had better stop. It was getting cold and I
went away: he was coming for another.
The life of an Adélie penguin is one of the most unchristian and
successful in the world. The penguin which went in for being a true
believer would never stand the ghost of a chance. Watch them go to bathe.
Some fifty or sixty agitated birds are gathered upon the ice-foot,
peering over the edge, telling one another how nice it will be, and what
a good dinner they are going to have. But this is all swank: they are
really worried by a horrid suspicion that a sea-leopard is waiting to eat
the first to dive. The really noble bird, according to our theories,
would say, "I will go first and if I am killed I shall at any rate have
died unselfishly, sacrificing my life for my companions"; and in time
all the most noble birds would be dead. What they really do is to try and
persuade a companion of weaker mind to plunge: failing this, they hastily
pass a conscription act and push him over. And then--bang,
helter-skelter, in go all the rest.
They take turns in sitting on their eggs, and after many days the fathers
may be seen waddling down towards the sea with their shirt-fronts
muddied, their long trick done. It may be a fortnight before they return,
well-fed, clean, pleased with life, and with a grim determination to
relieve their wives, to do their job. Sometimes they are met by others
going to bathe. They stop and pass the time of day. Well! Perhaps it
would be more pleasant, and what does a day or two matter anyhow. They
turn; clean and dirty alike are off to the seaside again. This is when
they say, "The women are splendid."
Life is too strenuous for them to have any use for the virtues of
brotherly love, good works, charity and benevolence. When they mate the
best thief wins: when they nest the best pair of thieves hatch out their
eggs. In a long unbroken stream, which stretches down below the sea-ice
horizon, they march in from the open sea. Some are walking on their human
feet: others tobogganing upon their shiny white breasts. After their long
walk they must have a sleep, and then the gentlemen make their way into
the already crowded rookery to find them wives. But first a suitor must
find, or steal, a pebble, for such are the penguin jewels: they are of
lava, black, russet or grey, with almond-shaped crystals bedded in them.
They are rare and of all sizes, but that which is most valued is the size
of a pigeon's egg. Armed with one of these he courts his maid, laying it
at her feet. If accepted he steals still more stones: she guards them
jealously, taking in the meantime any safe opportunity to pick others
from under her nearest neighbours. Any penguin which is unable to fight
and steal successfully fails to make a good high nest, or loses it when
made. Then comes a blizzard, and after that a thaw: for it thaws
sometimes right down by the sea-shore where the Adélies have their
nurseries. The eggs of the strong and wicked hatch out, but those of the
weak are addled. You must have a jolly good pile of stones to hatch eggs
after a blizzard like that in December 1911, when the rookeries were
completely snow-covered: nests, eggs, parents and all.
Once hatched the chicks grow quickly from pretty grey atoms of down to
black lumps of stomach topped by a small and quite inadequate head. They
are two or more weeks old, and they leave their parents, or their parents
leave them, I do not know which. If socialism be the nationalization of
the means of production and distribution, then they are socialists. They
divide into parents and children. The adult community comes up from the
open sea, bringing food inside them: they are full of half-digested
shrimps. But not for their own children: these, if not already dead, are
lost in a crowd of hungry tottering infants which besiege each
food-provider as he arrives. But not all of them can get food, though all
of them are hungry. Some have already been behindhand too long: they have
not managed to secure food for days, and they are weak and cold and very
weary.
"As we stood there and watched this race for food we were gradually
possessed with the idea that the chicks looked upon each adult coming up
full-bellied from the shore as not a parent only, but a food-supply. The
parents were labouring under a totally different idea, and intended
either to find their own infants and feed them, or else to assimilate
their already partially digested catch themselves. The more robust of the
young thus worried an adult until, because of his importunity, he was
fed. But with the less robust a much more pathetic ending was the rule. A
chick that had fallen behind in this literal race for life, starving and
weak, and getting daily weaker because it could not run fast enough to
insist on being fed, again and again ran off pursuing with the rest.
Again and again it stumbled and fell, persistently whining out its hunger
in a shrill and melancholy pipe, till at last the race was given up.
Forced thus by sheer exhaustion to stop and rest, it had no chance of
getting food. Each hurrying parent with its little following of hungry
chicks, intent on one thing only, rushed quickly by, and the starveling
dropped behind to gather strength for one more effort. Again it fails, a
robuster bird has forced the pace, and again success is wanting to the
runt. Sleepily it stands there, with half-shut eyes, in a torpor
resulting from exhaustion, cold, and hunger, wondering perhaps what all
the bustle round it means, a little dirty, dishevelled dot, in the race
for life a failure, deserted by its parents, who have hunted vainly for
their own offspring round the nest in which they hatched it, but from
which it may by now have wandered half a mile. And so it stands, lost to
everything around, till a skua in its beat drops down beside it, and with
a few strong, vicious pecks puts an end to the failing life."[358]
There is a great deal to be said for this kind of treatment. The Adélie
penguin has a hard life: the Emperor penguin a horrible one. Why not kill
off the unfit right away, before they have had time to breed, almost
before they have had time to eat? Life is a stern business in any case:
why pretend that it is anything else? Or that any but the best can
survive at all? And in consequence, I challenge you to find a more jolly,
happy, healthy lot of old gentlemen in the world. We _must_ admire them:
if only because they are so much nicer than ourselves! But it is grim:
Nature is an uncompromising nurse.
Nature was going to give us a bad time too if we were not relieved, and
on January 17, as there were still no signs of the ship, it was decided
to prepare for another winter. We were to go on rations; to cook with
oil, for nearly all the coal was gone; to kill and store up seal. On
January 18 we started our preparations, digging a cave to store more
meat, and so forth. I went off seal hunting after breakfast, and having
killed and cut up two, came back across the Cape at mid-day. All the men
were out working in the camp. There was nothing to be seen in the Sound,
and then, quite suddenly, the bows of the ship came out from behind the
end of the Barne Glacier, two or three miles away. We watched her
cautious approach with immense relief.
"Are you all well," through a megaphone from the bridge.
"The Polar Party died on their return from the Pole: we have their
records." A pause and then a boat.
Evans, who had been to England and made a good recovery from scurvy, was
in command: with him were Pennell, Rennick, Bruce, Lillie and Drake. They
reported having had a very big gale indeed on their way home last year.
We got some apples off the ship, "beauties, I want nothing better....
Pennell is first-class, as always...." "One notices among the ship's men
a rather unnatural way of talking: not so much in special instances, but
as a whole, contact with civilization gives it an affected sound: I
notice it in both officers and men."[359]
"_January 19. On board the Terra Nova._ After 28 hours' loading we left
the old hut for good and all at 4 P.M. this afternoon. It has been a bit
of a rush and little sleep last night. It is quite wonderful now to be
travelling a day's journey in an hour: we went to Cape Royds in about
that time and took off geological and zoological specimens. I should like
to sit up and sketch all these views, which would have meant long
travelling without the ship, but I feel very tired. The mail is almost
too good for words. Now, with the latest waltz on the gramophone, beer
for dinner and apples and fresh vegetables to eat, life is more bearable
than it has been for many a long weary week and month. I leave Cape Evans
with no regret: I never want to see the place again. The pleasant
memories are all swallowed up in the bad ones."[360]
Before the ship arrived it was decided among us to urge the erection of a
cross on Observation Hill to the memory of the Polar Party. On the
arrival of the ship the carpenter immediately set to work to make a great
cross of jarrah wood. There was some discussion as to the inscription, it
being urged that there should be some quotation from the Bible because
"the women think a lot of these things." But I was glad to see the
concluding line of Tennyson's "Ulysses" adopted: "To strive, to seek, to
find, and not to yield."
The open water stretched about a mile and a half south of Tent Island,
and here we left the ship to sledge the cross to Hut Point at 8 A.M. on
January 20. The party consisted of Atkinson, Wright, Lashly, Crean,
Debenham, Keohane and Davies, the ship's carpenter and myself.
"_Evening. Hut Point._ We had a most unpleasant experience coming in. We
struck wind and drift just about a mile from Hut Point: then we saw there
was a small thaw pool off the Point, and came out to give it a wide
berth. Atkinson put his feet down into water: we turned sharp out, and
then Crean went right in up to his arms, and we realized that the ice was
not more than three or four inches of slush. I managed to give him a hand
out without the ice giving, and we went on floundering about. Then Crean
went right in again, and the sledge nearly went too: we pulled the
sledge, and the sledge pulled him out. Except for some more soft patches
that was all, but it was quite enough. I think we got out of it most
fortunately."
"Crean got some dry clothes here, and the cross has had a coat of white
paint and is drying. We went up Observation Hill and have found a good
spot right on the top, and have already dug a hole which will, with the
rock alongside, give us three feet. From there we can see that this
year's old ice is in a terrible state, open water and open water slush
all over near the land--I have never seen anything like it here. Off Cape
Armitage and at the Pram Point pressure it is extra bad. I only hope we
can find a safe way back."
"You would not think Crean had had such a pair of duckings to hear him
talking so merrily to-night...."
"I really do think the cross is going to look fine."[361]
Observation Hill was clearly the place for it, it knew them all so well.
Three of them were Discovery men who lived three years under its shadow:
they had seen it time after time as they came back from hard journeys on
the Barrier: Observation Hill and Castle Rock were the two which always
welcomed them in. It commanded McMurdo Sound on one side, where they had
lived: and the Barrier on the other, where they had died. No more fitting
pedestal, a pedestal which in itself is nearly 1000 feet high, could have
been found.
"_Tuesday, January 22._ Rousing out at 6 A.M. we got the large piece of
the cross up Observation Hill by 11 A.M. It was a heavy job, and the ice
was looking very bad all round, and I for one was glad when we had got it
up by 5 o'clock or so. It is really magnificent, and will be a permanent
memorial which could be seen from the ship nine miles off with a naked
eye. It stands nine feet out of the rocks, and many feet into the ground,
and I do not believe it will ever move. When it was up, facing out over
the Barrier, we gave three cheers and one more."
We got back to the ship all right and coasted up the Western Mountains to
Granite Harbour; a wonderfully interesting trip to those of us who had
only seen these mountains from a distance. Gran went off to pick up a
depôt of geological specimens. Lillie did a trawl.
This was an absorbing business, though it was only one of a long and
important series made during the voyages of the Terra Nova. Here were all
kinds of sponges, siliceous, glass rope, tubular, and they were generally
covered with mucus. Some fed on diatoms so minute that they can only be
collected by centrifuge: some have gastric juices to dissolve the
siliceous skeletons of the diatoms on which they feed: they anchor
themselves in the mud and pass water in and out of their bodies:
sometimes the current is stimulated by cilia. There were colonies of
Gorgonacea, which share their food unselfishly; and corals and marine
degenerate worms, which started to live in little cells like coral, but
have gone down in the world. And there were starfishes, sea-urchins,
brittle-stars, feather-stars and sea-cucumbers. The sea-urchins are
formed of hexagonal plates, the centre of each of which is a ball, upon
which a spine works on a ball and socket joint. These spines are used for
protection, and when large they can be used for locomotion. But the real
means of locomotion are five double rows of water-tube feet, working by
suction, by which they withdraw the water inside a receptacle in the
shell, thereby forming a vacuum; starfishes do the same. We found a
species of sea-urchin which had such large spines that they practically
formed bars; the spines were twice as long as the sea-urchin and shaped
just like oars, being even fluted. A lobster grows by discarding his
suit, hiding and getting another, growing meanwhile. A snail or an oyster
retains his original shell, and adds to it in layers all the way down,
increasing one edge. But our sea-urchin grows by an increment of
calcareous matter all round the outside of each plate. As the animal
grows the plates get bigger.
There was a sea-cucumber which nurses its young, having a brood cavity
which is really formed out of the mouth: this is a peculiarity of a new
Antarctic genus found first on the Discovery. It has the most complex
water-tubes, which it uses as legs, and a few limy rods in its soft skin
instead of the bony calcareous plates of sea-urchins and starfish. After
them came the feather-stars, a relic of the old crinoids which used to
flourish in the carboniferous period, examples of which can be found in
the Derbyshire limestone; and there were thousands of brittle-stars, like
beautiful wheels of which the hubs and spokes remained, but not the
circumference. These spokes or legs are muscular, sensory and locomotive;
they differ from the starfishes in that they have no digestive glands in
their legs, and from the feather-stars in that they do not use their legs
to waft food into their mouths. Once upon a time they had a stalk and
were anchored to a rock, and there are still very rare old stalked
echinoderms living in the sea. This apparently geological thing was found
by Wyville Thomson in 1868 still living in the seas to the north of
Scotland, and this find started the Challenger Expedition for deep-sea
soundings in 1872. But the Challenger brought back little in this line.
Most of the species we found were peculiar to the Antarctic.
There were Polychaete worms by the hundred, showing the protrusable
mouth, which is shoved into the mud and then brought back into the body,
and the bristles on the highly developed projections which act as legs,
by which they get about the mud. These beasts have apparently given rise
to the Arthropods. In a modified and later form they had taken to living
in a tube, both for protection and because they found that they could not
go through the mud, which had become too viscous for them. So they stand
up in a tube and collect the sediment which is falling by means of
tentacles. They spread from one locality to another by going through a
plankton embryonic stage in their youth. They may be compared to the
mason worms, which also build tubes.
But as Lillie squatted on the poop surrounded by an inner ring of jars
and tangled masses of the catch, and an outer ring of curious scientists,
pseudo-scientists and seamen, no find pleased him so much as the frequent
discovery of pieces of Cephalodiscus rarus, of which even now there are
but some four jars full in the world. It is as interesting as it is
uncommon, for its ancestor was a link between the vertebrates and
invertebrates, though no one knows what it was like. It has been a
vertebrate and gone back, and now has the signs of a notochord in early
life, and it also has gills. First found on the Graham's Land side of the
Antarctic continent, it has only recently been discovered in the Ross
Sea, and occurs nowhere else in the world so far as is known.
We left Granite Harbour in the early morning of January 23, and started
to make our way out. Our next job was to pick up the geological specimens
at Evans Coves, where Campbell and his men had wintered in the igloo, and
also to leave a depôt there for future explorers. We met very heavy pack,
having to return at least twelve miles and try another way. "The sea has
been freezing out here, which seems an extraordinary thing at this time
of year. There was a thin layer of ice over the water between the floes
this morning, and I feel sure that most of these big level floes, of
which we have seen several, are the remains of ice which has frozen
comparatively recently."[362] The propeller had a bad time, constantly
catching up on ice. At length we were some thirty miles north of Cape
Bird making roughly towards Franklin Island. That night we made good
progress in fairly open water, and we passed Franklin Island during the
day. But the outlook was so bad in the evening (January 24) that we
stopped and banked fires. "We lay just where we stopped until at 5 A.M.
on January 25, when the ice eased up sufficiently for us to get along,
and we started to make the same slow progress--slow ahead, stop (to the
engine-room)--bump and grind for a bit--then slow astern, stop--slow
ahead again, and so on, until at 7 P.M., after one real big bump which
brought the dinner some inches off the table, Cheetham brought us out
into open water."[363]
Mount Nansen rose sheer and massive ahead of us with a table top, and at
3 A.M. on January 26 we were passing the dark brown granite headland of
the northern foothills. We were soon made fast to a stretch of some 500
yards of thick sea-ice, upon which the wind had not left a particle of
snow, and before us the foothills formed that opening which Campbell had
well named Hell's Gate.
I wish I had seen that igloo: with its black and blubber and beastliness.
Those who saw it came back with faces of amazement and admiration. We
left a depôt at the head of the bay, marked with a bamboo and a flag, and
then we turned homewards, counting the weeks, and days, and then the
hours. In the early hours of January 27 we left the pack. On January 29
we were off Cape Adare, "head sea, and wind, and fog, very ticklish work
groping along hardly seeing the ship's length. Then it lifts and there is
a fair horizon. Everybody pretty sea-sick, including most of the seamen
from Cape Evans. All of us feeling rotten."[364] Very thick that night,
and difficult going. At mid-day (lat. 69° 50´ S.) a partial clearance
showed a berg right ahead. By night it was blowing a full gale, and it
was not too easy to keep in our bunks. Our object was now to make east in
order to allow for the westerlies later on. We passed a very large number
of bergs, varied every now and then by growlers. On February 1, latitude
64° 15´ S. and longitude 159° 15´ E., we coasted along one side of a
berg which was twenty-one geographical miles long: the only other side of
which we got a good view stretched away until lost below the horizon. In
latitude 62° 10´ S. and longitude 158° 15´ E. we had "a real bad day:
head wind from early morning, and simply crowds of bergs all round. At 8
A.M. we had to wedge in between a berg and a long line of pack before we
could find a way through. Then thick fog came down. At 9.45 A.M. I went
out of the ward-room door, and almost knocked my head against a great
berg which was just not touching the ship on the starboard side. There
was a heavy cross-swell, and the sea sounded cold as it dashed against
the ice. After crossing the deck it was just possible to see in the fog
that there was a great Barrier berg just away on the port side." We
groped round the starboard berg to find others beyond. Our friend on the
opposite side was continuous and apparently without end. It was soon
clear that we were in a narrow alley-way--between one very large berg and
a number of others. It took an hour and a quarter of groping to leave the
big berg behind. At 4 P.M., six hours later, we were still just feeling
our way along. And we had hopes of being out of the ice in this latitude!
The Terra Nova is a wood barque, built in 1884 by A. Stephen & Sons,
Dundee; tonnage 764 gross and 400 net; measuring 187´ x 31´ x 19´;
compound engines with two cylinders of 140 nominal horse-power;
registered at St. Johns, Newfoundland. She is therefore not by any means
small as polar ships go, but Pennell and his men worked her short-handed,
with bergs and growlers all round them, generally with a big sea running
and often in darkness or fog. On this occasion we were spared many of the
most ordinary dangers. It was summer. Our voyage was an easy one. There
was twilight most of the night: there were plenty of men on board, and
heaps of coal. Imagine then what kind of time Pennell and his ship's
company had in late autumn, after remaining in the south until only a
bare ration of coal was left for steaming, until the sea was freezing
round them and the propeller brought up dead as they tried to force
their way through it. Pennell was a very sober person in his statements,
yet he described the gale through which the Terra Nova passed on her way
to New Zealand in March 1912 as seeming to blow the ship from the top of
one wave to the top of the next; and the nights were dark, and the bergs
were all round them. They never tried to lay a meal in those days, they
just ate what they could hold in their hands. He confessed to me that one
hour he did begin to wonder what was going to happen next: others told me
that he seemed to enjoy every minute of it all.
Owing to press contracts and the necessity of preventing leakage of news
the Terra Nova had to remain at sea for twenty-four hours after a cable
had been sent to England. Also it was of the first importance that the
relatives should be informed of the facts before the newspapers published
them.
And so at 2.30 A.M. on February 10 we crept like a phantom ship into the
little harbour of Oamaru on the east coast of New Zealand. With what
mixed feelings we smelt the old familiar woods and grassy slopes, and saw
the shadowy outlines of human homes. With untiring persistence the little
lighthouse blinked out the message, "What ship's that?" "What ship's
that?" They were obviously puzzled and disturbed at getting no answer. A
boat was lowered and Pennell and Atkinson were rowed ashore and landed.
The seamen had strict orders to answer no questions. After a little the
boat returned, and Crean announced: "We was chased, sorr, but they got
nothing out of us."
We put out to sea.
When morning broke we could see the land in the distance--greenness,
trees, every now and then a cottage. We began to feel impatient. We
unpacked the shore-going clothes with their creases three years old which
had been sent out from home, tried them on--and they felt unpleasantly
tight. We put on our boots, and they were positively agony. We shaved off
our beards! There was a hiatus. There was nothing to do but sail up and
down the coast and, if possible, avoid coastwise craft.
In the evening the little ship which runs daily from Akaroa to Lyttelton
put out to sea on her way and ranged close alongside. "Are all well?"
"Where's Captain Scott?" "Did you reach the Pole?" Rather unsatisfactory
answers and away they went. Our first glimpse, however, of civilized
life.
At dawn the next morning, with white ensign at half-mast, we crept
through Lyttelton Heads. Always we looked for trees, people and houses.
How different it was from the day we left and yet how much the same: as
though we had dreamed some horrible nightmare and could scarcely believe
we were not dreaming still.
The Harbour-master came out in the tug and with him Atkinson and Pennell.
"Come down here a minute," said Atkinson to me, and "It's made a
tremendous impression, I had no idea it would make so much," he said. And
indeed we had been too long away, and the whole thing was so personal to
us, and our perceptions had been blunted: we never realized. We landed to
find the Empire--almost the civilized world--in mourning. It was as
though they had lost great friends.
To a sensitive pre-war world the knowledge of these men's deaths came as
a great shock: and now, although the world has almost lost the sense of
tragedy, it appeals to their pity and their pride. The disaster may well
be the first thing which Scott's name recalls to your mind (as though an
event occurred in the life of Columbus which caused you to forget that he
discovered America); but Scott's reputation is not founded upon the
conquest of the South Pole. He came to a new continent, found out how to
travel there, and gave knowledge of it to the world: he discovered the
Antarctic, and founded a school. He is the last of the great geographical
explorers: it is useless to try and light a fire when everything has been
burned; and he is probably the last old-fashioned polar explorer, for, as
I believe, the future of such exploration is in the air, but not yet. And
he was strong: we never realized until we found him lying there dead how
strong, mentally and physically, that man was.
In both his polar expeditions he was helped, to an extent which will
never be appreciated, by Wilson: in the last expedition by Bowers. I
believe that there has never been a finer sledge party than these three
men, who combined in themselves initiative, endurance and high ideals to
an extraordinary degree. And they could organize: they did organize the
Polar Journey and their organization seemed to have failed. Did it fail?
Scott said No. "The causes of this disaster are not due to faulty
organization, but to misfortune in all risks which had to be undertaken."
Nine times out of ten, says the meteorologist, he would have come
through: but he struck the tenth. "We took risks, we knew we took them;
things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for
complaint." No better epitaph has been written.
He decided to use the only route towards the Pole of which the world had
any knowledge, that is to go up the Beardmore Glacier, then the only
discovered way up through the mountains which divide the polar plateau
from the Great Ice Barrier: probably it is the only possible passage for
those who travel from McMurdo Sound. The alternative was to winter on the
Barrier, as Amundsen did, so many hundred miles away from the coast-line
that, in travelling south, the chaos caused in the ice plain by the
Beardmore in its outward flow would be avoided. To do so meant the
abandonment of a great part of the scientific programme, and Scott was
not a man to go south just to reach the Pole. Amundsen knew that Scott
was going to McMurdo Sound when he decided to winter in the Bay of
Whales: otherwise he might have gone to McMurdo Sound. Probably no man
would have refused the knowledge which had already been gained.
I have said that there are those who say that Scott should have relied on
ski and dogs. If you read Shackleton's account of his discovery and
passage of the Beardmore Glacier you will not be prejudiced in favour of
dogs: and as a matter of fact, though we found a much better way up than
Shackleton, I do not believe it possible to take dogs up and down, and
over the ice disturbances at the junction with the plateau, unless there
is ample time to survey a route, if then. "Dogs could certainly have
come up as far as this," I heard Scott say somewhere under the
Cloudmaker, approximately half-way up the glacier, but the best thing you
could do with dogs in pressure such as we all experienced on our way down
would be to drop them into the nearest chasm. If you can avoid such
messes well and good: if not, you must not rely on dogs, and the people
who talk of these things have no knowledge.
If Scott was going up the Beardmore he was probably right not to take
dogs: actually he relied on ponies to the foot of the glacier and
man-haulage on from that point. Because he relied on ponies he was not
able to start before November: the experience of the Depôt Journey showed
that ponies could not stand the weather conditions before that date. But
he could have started earlier if he had taken dogs, in place of ponies,
to the foot of the glacier. This would have gained him a few days in his
race against the autumn conditions when returning.
Such tragedies inevitably raise the question, "Is it worth it?" What is
worth what? Is life worth risking for a feat, or losing for your country?
To face a thing because it was a feat, and only a feat, was not very
attractive to Scott: it had to contain an additional object--knowledge. A
feat had even less attraction for Wilson, and it is a most noteworthy
thing in the diaries which are contained in this book, that he made no
comment when he found that the Norwegians were first at the Pole: it is
as though he felt that it did not really matter, as indeed it probably
did not.
It is most desirable that some one should tackle these and kindred
questions about polar life. There is a wealth of matter in polar
psychology: there are unique factors here, especially the complete
isolation, and four months' darkness every year. Even in Mesopotamia a
long-suffering nation insisted at last that adequate arrangements must be
made to nurse and evacuate the sick and wounded. But at the Poles a man
must make up his mind that he may be rotting of scurvy (as Evans was) or
living for ten months on half-rations of seal and full rations of
ptomaine poisoning (as Campbell and his men were) but no help can reach
him from the outside world for a year, if then. There is no chance of a
'cushy' wound: if you break your leg on the Beardmore you must consider
the most expedient way of committing suicide, both for your own sake and
that of your companions.
Both sexually and socially the polar explorer must make up his mind to be
starved. To what extent can hard work, or what may be called dramatic
imagination, provide a substitute? Compare our thoughts on the march; our
food dreams at night; the primitive way in which the loss of a crumb of
biscuit may give a lasting sense of grievance. Night after night I bought
big buns and chocolate at a stall on the island platform at Hatfield
station, but always woke before I got a mouthful to my lips; some
companions who were not so highly strung were more fortunate, and ate
their phantom meals.
And the darkness, accompanied it may be almost continually by howling
blizzards which prevent you seeing your hand before your face. Life in
such surroundings is both mentally and physically cramped; open-air
exercise is restricted and in blizzards quite impossible, and you realize
how much you lose by your inability to see the world about you when you
are out-of-doors. I am told that when confronted by a lunatic or one who
under the influence of some great grief or shock contemplates suicide,
you should take that man out-of-doors and walk him about: Nature will do
the rest. To normal people like ourselves living under abnormal
circumstances Nature could do much to lift our thoughts out of the rut of
everyday affairs, but she loses much of her healing power when she cannot
be seen, but only felt, and when that feeling is intensely uncomfortable.
Somehow in judging polar life you must discount compulsory endurance; and
find out what a man can shirk, remembering always that it is a sledging
life which is the hardest test. It is because it is so much easier to
shirk in civilization that it is difficult to get a standard of what your
average man can do. It does not really matter much whether your man
whose work lies in or round the hut shirks a bit or not, just as it does
not matter much in civilization: it is just rather a waste of
opportunity. But there's precious little shirking in Barrier sledging: a
week finds most of us out.
There are many questions which ought to be studied. The effect upon men
of going from heat to cold, such as Bowers coming to us from the Persian
Gulf: or vice versa of Simpson returning from the Antarctic to India;
differences of dry and damp cold; what is a comfortable temperature in
the Antarctic and what is it compared to a comfortable temperature in
England, the question of women in these temperatures...? The man with the
nerves goes farthest. What is the ratio between nervous and physical
energy? What is vitality? Why do some things terrify you at one time and
not at others? What is this early morning courage? What is the influence
of imagination? How far can a man draw on his capital? Whence came
Bowers' great heat supply? And my own white beard? and X's blue eyes: for
he started from England with brown ones and his mother refused to own him
when he came back? Growth and colour change in hair and skin?
There are many reasons which send men to the Poles, and the Intellectual
Force uses them all. But the desire for knowledge for its own sake is the
one which really counts and there is no field for the collection of
knowledge which at the present time can be compared to the Antarctic.
Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion.
And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to
give it physical expression, go out and explore. If you are a brave man
you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but
cowards have need to prove their bravery. Some will tell you that you are
mad, and nearly all will say, "What is the use?" For we are a nation of
shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not
promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge
nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers:
that is worth a good deal. If you march your Winter Journeys you will
have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.
FOOTNOTES:
[349] Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. i. p. 449.
[350] Amundsen, _The South Pole_, vol. ii. p. 19.
[351] Lashly's diary records that the Second Return Party found a
shortage of oil at the Middle Barrier Depôt (see p. 395).
[352] Scott, "Message to the Public."
[353] A full discussion of these and other Antarctic temperatures
is to be found in the scientific reports of the British
Antarctic Expedition, 1910-13, "Meteorology," vol. i. chap.
ii., by G. C. Simpson.
[354] Modern research suggests that the presence or absence of
certain vitamines makes a difference, and it may be a very
great difference, in the ability of any individual to profit
by the food supplied to him. If this be so this factor must
have had great influence upon the fate of the Polar Party,
whose diet was seriously deficient in, if not absolutely
free from, vitamines. The importance of this deficiency to
the future explorer can hardly be exaggerated, and I suggest
that no future Antarctic sledge party can ever set out to
travel inland again without food which contains these
vitamines. It is to be noticed that, although the Medical
Research Council's authoritative publication on the true
value of these accessory substances was not available when
we went South in 1910, yet Atkinson insisted that fresh
onions, which had been brought down by the ship, be added to
our ration for the Search Journey. Compare recent work of
Professor Leonard Hill on the value of ultra-violet rays in
compensating for lack of vitamines.--A. C.-G.
[355] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. ii. p. 356.
[356] My own diary.
[357] See p. 234.
[358] Wilson, _Nat. Ant. Exp., 1901-1904_, "Zoology," Part ii. pp.
44-45.
[359] My own diary.
[360] Ibid.
[361] My own diary.
[362] My own diary.
[363] My own diary.
[364] Ibid.
GLOSSARY
BLIZZARD. An Antarctic blizzard is a high southerly wind generally
accompanied by clouds of drifting snow, partly falling from above, partly
picked up from the surface. In the daylight of summer a tent cannot be
seen a few yards off: in the darkness of winter it is easy to be lost
within a few feet of a hut. There is no doubt that a blizzard has a
bewildering and numbing effect upon the brain of any one exposed to it.
BRASH. Small ice fragments from a floe which is breaking up.
CLOUD. The commonest form of cloud, and also that typical of blizzard
conditions, was a uniform pall stretching all over the sky without
distinction. This was logged by us as _stratus_. _Cumulus_ clouds are the
woolly billows, flat below and rounded on top, which are formed by local
ascending currents of air. They were rare in the south and only formed
over open water or mountains. _Cirrus_ are the "mare's tails" and similar
wispy clouds which float high in the atmosphere. These and their allied
forms were common. Generally speaking, the clouds were due to
stratification of the air into layers rather than to ascending currents.
CRUSTS. Layers of snow in a snow-field with air space between them.
FINNESKO. Boots made entirely of fur, soles and all.
FROST SMOKE. Condensed water vapour which forms a mist over open sea in
cold weather.
ICE-FOOT. Fringes of ice which skirt many parts of the Antarctic shores:
many of them have been formed by sea-spray.
NUNATAK. An island of land in a snow-field. Buckley Island is the top of
a mountain sticking out of the top of the Beardmore Glacier.
PIEDMONT. Stretches of ancient ice which remain along the Antarctic
coasts.
PRAM. A Norwegian skiff, with a spoon bow.
SAENNEGRASS. A kind of Norwegian hay used as packing in finnesko.
SASTRUGI are the furrows or irregularities formed on a snow plain by the
wind. They may be a foot or more deep and as hard and as slippery as
ice: they may be quite soft: they may appear as great inverted pudding
bowls: they may be hard knots covered with soft powdery snow.
SLEDGING DISTANCES. All miles are geographical miles unless otherwise
stated, 1 statute or English mile = 0.87 geographical mile: 1
geographical mile = 1.15 statute miles.
TANK. A canvas "hold-all" strapped to the sledge to contain food bags.
TIDE CRACK. A working crack between the land ice and the sea ice which
rises and falls with the tide.
WIND. Wind forces are logged according to the Beaufort scale, which is as
follows:
Mean velocity
No. Description. in miles per hour.
0. Calm 0
1. Light air 1
2. Light breeze 4
3. Gentle breeze 9
4. Moderate breeze 14
5. Fresh breeze 20
6. Strong breeze 26
7. Moderate gale 33
8. Fresh gale 42
9. Strong gale 51
10. Whole gale 62
11. Storm 75
12. Hurricane 92
INDEX
Abbott, George P., lv, lvii, 558
Adam Mountains, 361
Adare, Cape, xxiii, xxix, xxxiv, 409, 570
Adélie Land, xxii
Adélie penguins. _See_ Penguins, Adélie
Adventure, the, xviii
Albatross, capture of, 39
Alexander Land, xxi
Alexandra, Queen, 507
Amundsen, Roald,
telegram to Scott, 41
arrives in Bay of Whales, 128
character, 134
letter to King of Norway, 482
forestalls Scott at Pole, 506
reason of success, 544
'Antarctic Adventures' (Priestley), lxi
Antarctic Continent, theories of, xxi
'Antarctic Penguins' (Levick), lxi
Antarctic regions,
early explorations, xviii
Ross's expedition, xxv
importance of Scott's work, lxii
marine life, 568
Anton (pony boy), 224, 429
Aptenodytes forsteri. _See_ Penguin, Emperor
Archer, W. W., 429, 438, 472
Arctic regions, exploration in, xxix-xxxiii
Arethusa. _See_ Portuguese man-of-war
Armitage, Cape, 108, 566
Arrival Bay, xlvi
Arrival Heights, 98, 185
Atkinson, Edward L.,
his responsibilities, 1
on the Terra Nova, 3
character, 4
on South Trinidad, 19
accident to foot, 111
lecture on scurvy, 215
lost in blizzard, 303
Barrier Journey, 324
in command of First Return Party, 381
meets Lashly and Evans, 404
difficulties during Scott's absence, 411
attempts to find Scott, 426
in command of Main Party, 427
journey to Hutton Cliffs, 428
sledge journey, 429
fish-trap, 444
spring journey, 467
reads Burial Service over Scott, 481
lands in New Zealand, 572
Atmosphere, observations on, 35
Aurora borealis, 244
Balloon Bight, xxxiv, 130
Barne Glacier, 184, 307, 459
Barrie, Sir J. M., Scott's letter to, 540
Barrier, the,
Ross's journey, xxiii
Scott's survey, 1902, xxxiv
first arrival at, 81
Scott's paper on, 214
snow surface, 239
Wright's lecture, 455
movement, 468
Beardmore Glacier, journey across, 350-367
Beaufort Island, 557
Bellingshausen, xxi
Bernacchi, Cape, 425
Biology, marine,
importance of Ross's expedition, xxvii
Terra Nova observations, 7, 567
Bird, Cape, xxiv
Bird, Mt., 558
Bird Peninsula, 409
Biscuit Depôt, 473
Black Island, xxv
Blacksand Beach, 100
Blizzards, 112, 447
Blubber, uses of, lvi
Bluff Depôt, 114, 119, 418
Borchgrevink, xxviii
Bowers, Lieut. H. R.,
on Terra Nova, 3
character and personality, 4, 208
at South Trinidad, 16
on Depôt Journey, 105
on Winter Journey, 234
trip to Western Mountains, 306
commencement of Polar Journey, 325
passage of the Beardmore Glacier, 351
_seq._ Plateau Journey, 368 _seq._
body discovered, 480
journey to Pole, 496
_seq._ return from Pole, 511 _seq._
Bowers, Mrs., Scott's letter to, 539
Browning, Frank V., lv, lvi, lvii, lviii
Brown Island, xxv
Bruce, Wilfred M., 565
Buckley Island, 362
Butter Point, 425
Campbell, Victor,
at Inexpressible Island, lii _seq._
on Terra Nova, 2
character, 4
Terra Nova attempts to relieve, 409
possibility of rescuing, 441
rescued, 493
Cardiff, Wales, 1
Castle Rock, xxxv, 152, 185, 434
Cephalodiscus rarus, 569
Challenger Expedition, xxviii, 568
Cherry-Garrard, Apsley,
functions, 2
on Winter Journey, 233 _seq._
Beardmore Glacier Journey, 351 _seq._
journey with dogs, 416 _seq._
illness, 427
work on penguins, 559
Christmas Day celebration, 1911, 373
Clissold, Thomas, 309, 383, 429
Cloudmaker, 356, 359, 382
Colbeck, Cape, 129
Cook, Captain James, Antarctic explorations, xviii, xix, xx, xxi
Corner Camp, 112, 122, 135, 166, 306, 468, 473
Crater Heights, 98, 162
Crean, Thomas,
Depôt Journey, 104 _seq._
Beardmore Glacier Journey, 351 _seq._
Plateau Journey, 368 _seq._
snow-blindness, 385
journey for help, 406
duties, 438
on search journey, 472
Crozier, Capt., xxix
Crozier, Cape, discovery, xxiii, xl, 252, 558
Darwin, Mt., 366, 388
David, Professor, xlvii
Davies, Francis, 92
Day, Bernard C., 310, 383, 429
Debenham, Frank, 217, 309, 437, 438, 465, 472, 557
Dellbridge Islands, 169
De Long, G. W., xxix
Derrick Point, 98
Dickason, Harry, liv, lviii, 557
Diet,
Cook's precautions, xviii
experiments on Winter Journey, 256
importance of good cooking, 330
effects of unsuitability, 552
Dimitri (dog boy), 104, 310, 323, 404, 419, 420, 428, 467
Disaster Camp, 160
Discovery, Mt., 151, 186
Discovery Expedition, 1901-1904, xxxiii _seq._, 456
Discovery hut, 97, 185
Dogs,
on Scott's first expedition, xxxvi
on board ship, 49
effect of blizzards, 113
ponies as food for, 339
successful use, 353
rate of return, 383
new batch, 410
hospital, 437
behaviour in camp, 440
accommodation, 450
diet, 452
disease among, 453
behaviour while driving, 469
Dolphins, observations on, 37
Dominion Range, 362, 370
Drake, Frank, 3, 97, 565
Drygalski Ice Tongue, lviii
Dunedin, N.Z., 48
Dunlop Island, 307
D'Urville, Dumont, xxii
Emperor Penguin. _See_ Penguin, Emperor
Enderby, Messrs., xxi
Equator, crossing of, 10
Erebus, Mt.,
discovery, xxiii
first glimpse of, 81
activity, 184
ascent of, 557
Erebus, the, xxii, xxix
Eskers, the, 432
Evans, Lieut. Edward,
functions, 2
character, 4
on Depôt Journey, 104 _seq._
lectures, 217
Beardmore Glacier Journey, 351 _seq._
Plateau Journey, 368 _seq._
snow-blindness, 391
symptoms of scurvy, 393
illness, 399
sent home, 423
returns on Terra Nova, 565
Evans, Seaman Edgar,
on Discovery Expedition, xxxix
as Neptune, 10
trip to Western Mountains, 306 _seq._
Beardmore Glacier Journey, 351 _seq._
Plateau Journey, 368 _seq._
accident to hand, 378
journey to Pole, 496 _seq._
return from Pole, 511 _seq._
death, 528
Evans, Cape, xlviii, 86, 96, 181, 317, 434, 444, 447, 493, 502
Evans Coves, l, liii, 409, 569
Fahrt, 458
Ferrar Glacier, xxxviii
Fire, outbreaks of, 462
Fodder Depôt, 109
Forde, Robert, 104, 306, 429
Forster, Mr., xx
Fram, the, xxix _seq._, xlviii, 46, 133
Franklin, Sir John, xxix
Franklin Island, 557, 570
Franz Josef Land, xxxii
Funchal, Madeira, 3.
Gap, the, 98
Gateway, the, 339, 351
Geelmuyden, Professor, xxxi
Glacier Tongue, 152, 185, 430, 449
Gran, Tryggve, 4, 104 _seq._, 429, 434, 438, 447, 472, 558, 567
Granite Harbour, lviii, 409, 567
Granite Pillars, 393
Great Razorback Island, 169, 186
Greely, A. W., xxix, xxx
Haig, Sir Douglas, Scott's letter to, 410
Halley, Edmund, 11
Hare, xxxv
Hell's Gate, 570
Helminthology, 17
High Peak, 183
Hobart, Tasmania, xxii
Hooker, Sir Joseph D., xxv
Hooker, Mt., 186
Hooper, F. J., 15, 28, 310, 383, 438, 472, 477, 558
Hooper, Mt. _See_ Upper Barrier Depôt
Hope, Mt., 343, 393
Hope Island, xlvii
Horses. _See_ Ponies, Manchurian
Horseshoe Bay, 98
Hut Point, lix, 97, 157, 461, 566
Hut Point Peninsula, xxiv, xxxiv, 185
Hutton Cliffs, 169, 185, 428
Hyperoodon rostrata. _See_ Whale, bottle-nosed
Ice,
Cook's observations, xx
the Fram, xxx
formation of pack, 59
movement, 440
Ice cap, Antarctic, xxxviii
Icebergs, 61, 570
"Igloo back," lvii
Inaccessible Island, 186, 434
Inexpressible Island, conditions on, liii
Island Lake, 182
Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition, xxxii, 216
Jeannette, the, xxix
Johansen, Lieut., xxx, 132
Jones, Cape, 557
Kayaks, Nansen's use of, xxxi
Keltie Glacier, 358
Keohane, Patrick, 104 _seq._, 353, 382, 426, 428, 434, 438, 473
Killer whale. _See_ Whale, killer
King Edward VII.'s Land, xxxiv, xlviii
Kinsey, Mr. J. J., 48
Knight, E. F., 12, 18
Knoll, the, xl, 252, 260
Kyffin, Mt., 352
Land crabs, at South Trinidad, 14, 18
Lashly, W.,
on Discovery Expedition, xxxviii
diary, 311 _seq._
Beardmore Glacier Journey, 351 _seq._
nurses Lieut. Evans, 393 _seq._
duties, 438
on Search Journey, 472
Levick, G. Murray, liii, 3
Lillie, Denis G., 4, 565, 569
Lister, Mt., 186
Little Razorback Island, 171, 186, 449
Lower Glacier Depôt, 352
Lyttelton, N.Z., 2, 44, 573
M'Clintock, Sir F. L., xxix
McMurdo Sound, xxiv, xxxiv, 409
Magnetic Pole, South, xxii, xxv
Markham, Sir Clements, xxix
Markham, Mt., 337
Marshall Mountains, 362
Meares, Cecil H., 97, 104, 213, 310, 323, 347, 353, 382, 429
Melbourne, Mt., l, 557
Middle Barrier Depôt, 338
Mill Glacier, 362
Milne, A. A., on Scott's character, lx
Minna Bluff, xxiv, 186
Mirage, 118, 386, 423
Morning, Mt., 186
Morning, the, xxxvii
Mules, use of, 410, 450, 462, 473, 475, 478, 490
Nansen, Fridtjof,
Arctic explorations, xxix _seq._
on scurvy, 216
on equipment, 456
Nansen, Mt., 570
Nares, Sir G. S., xxix
Neale, W. H., 28
Nelson, Edward W., 4, 215, 383, 438, 445, 472, 477
North Bay, 172, 438, 444, 445
Oamaru, N.Z., 572
Oates, Capt. L. E. G.,
on Terra Nova, 2, 4
Depôt Journey, 104 _seq._
care of ponies, 179, 318
lecture on horses, 217
Beardmore Glacier Journey, 351
Plateau Journey, 369
suggests use of mules, 410
death, 485
commemorative inscription, 487
journey to Pole, 497
Observation Hill, 98, 565
Oestrelata arminjoniana. _See_ Petrel, black-breasted
Oestrelata trinitatis. _See_ Petrel, white-breasted
Oil, shortage of, 550
Oil fuel, its advantages, 46
One and a Half Degree Depôt, 502
One Ton Depôt, 116, 314, 326, 383, 398, 413, 418
Orca gladiator. _See_ Whale, killer
Pagoda Cairn, 117
Parry, Sir W. E., xxix
Peary, R. E., xlviii
Penguin, Adélie,
appearance, xxxix
Levick's book, lxi
habits, 63, 561
rookery discovered, 83
curiosity, 86
embryos obtained, 559
breeding, 562
feeding of young, 563
Penguin, Emperor,
eggs, xxii, 299
habits and breeding, xxxix _seq._, 82
embryology, 234
discovery of rookery, 252, 268
care of young, 269
eagerness to sit, 270
Pennell, Harry L. L., liii, 3, 4, 8, 565, 572
Petrel, Antarctic, 63
Petrel, black-breasted, 13
Petrel, giant, 50
Petrel, snowy, xix, 50
Petrel, white-breasted, 13
Plankton, 6, 69
Pole, South,
Scott's final arrangements, 379
altitude, 502
Amundsen's arrival, 506
Scott's arrival, 506
characteristics of area, 508
Polheim (camp), 507
Polychaete worms, 568
Ponies, Manchurian,
on board ship, 49
their uses, 88
effect of blizzards on, 113
Scott's care of, 114
behaviour on ice, 141
fodder, 179
exercising, 190
treatment and diseases, 218
Scott's decision, 327
weights lightened, 331
difficulties on march, 342
destroyed, 349
Ponting, Herbert G., 90, 173, 213, 320, 429
Portuguese man-of-war, 7
Pram, 17, 19
Pram Point, 98, 162, 466, 566
Priestley, Raymond E., liii, 130, 558
Ptomaine poisoning, lvii
Pulleyn, Lieut. George, 410
Ramp, the, 168
Rennick, H. E. de P., 3, 565
Resolution, the, xviii
Roberts, Cape, lviii, 425
Ross, Sir James C., xxii, 11, 12
Ross Island, xxiii
Ross Sea, xxiii, xxviii, xlii
Royal Society Range, 493
Royds, Cape, xlv, xlvii, 98, 183, 461, 559
Sabine, Mt., xxiii, 80
Safety Camp, 110, 122, 136, 306
St. Paul, island, 33
Scott, Capt. R. F.,
on early explorations, xx
on Ross, xxvii
first expedition, 1901-1904, xxxiii
excellence of equipment, lxii
commencement of second expedition, 1
visits South Trinidad, 1901, 12
joins Terra Nova, 31
Depôt Journey, 104
character and achievements, 200, 573
paper on Barrier, 214
trip to Western Mountains, 306
Barrier stage of Polar Journey, 319 _seq._
Beardmore Glacier Journey, 350 _seq._
Plateau Journey, 368
strength of team, 377
alteration in units, 379
tries new sledge runners, 457
body discovered, 480
burial, 483
his account of journey to Pole, 496 _seq._
return from Pole, 511 _seq._
message to the public, 541
drawbacks of his plan, 545
'Scott's Last Expedition,' lix
Scurvy, lvii, 215, 393
Sea, freezing of, 448
Sea-cucumber, 568
Sea-leopard, 65, 66
Sea-urchins, 567
Seal, 66, 67, 162
Seal, crab-eating, 67, 68
Seal, Ross, 66
Seal, Weddell, 66, 67, 161, 464, 466
Shackleton, Sir Ernest, xxxvii, xlvii
Shambles Camp, 349, 502
Simon's Bay, 31
Simpson, G. C., 4, 215, 306 _seq._, 429, 502, 504
Ski, use of, 355, 458, 498
Ski Slope, 152
Skua gulls, 464, 499
Skua Lake, 95, 182
Sledge meters, 385, 417, 461
Sledge runners, Nansen on, 456, 457
Sledges,
Nansen's innovation, xxx
motor, 88, 92, 321
Smoking, limitations on, 195
Snow-blindness, 353
South Bay, 447
'South Polar Times,' 437, 445
South Trinidad,
landing, 13
bird life, 13, 14
land crabs, 14
difficulty of leaving, 15, 18
Southern Barrier Depôt, 338
Sverdrup, O. N., xxx
Taylor, Griffith, lxi, 215, 307, 308, 317, 429
Temperature,
of polar plateau, 505
effect on Polar party, 553
Tent Island, 186, 439, 566
Terra Australis, belief in existence of, xviii
Terra Nova Bay, 493
Terra Nova, the,
on Scott's first expedition, xlv
commencement of voyage, 1910, 1
crew, 2
arrangement of cabins, 3
defects in pumps, 5, 28
plankton nets, 6
fire on board, 6
biological observations, 7
lack of fresh water, 8
refits at Lyttelton, 44
overloading, 50
suitability for ice work, 73
anchorage, 101
arrival with mails, 409
defects, 548
expedition finally relieved, 564
trawling, 567
Terror, Mt., xxiii, xxiv, xli, 252, 558
Terror, the, xxii, xxix
Terror Point, 253
Tersio peronii, 37
Three Degree Depôt, 502
Tremasome, parasitic growth on, 444
Turk's Head, 185
Turtleback Island, 434
Upper Barrier Depôt, 333
Upper Glacier Depôt, 369, 502
Victoria Land, xxxiv
Vince's Cross, xxxv
Waves, height of, 58
Weddell, James, xxv
Western Mountains, 151, 306, 567
Whale, 37
Whale, blue, 70, 71
Whale, bottle-nosed, 156
Whale, killer, 69, 90, 142, 154
Whale, piked, 70
Whales, Bay of, xlviii, 128, 130
White Island, xxiv, 111, 493
Wild, Frank, xxxv
Wild Mountains, 362
Wilkes, Charles, xxii
Williamson, Thomas S., 429, 438, 472
Wilson, Dr. E. A.,
on Emperor penguins, xli
functions, 2
character and personality, 4, 203
Depôt Journey, 104
Winter Journey, 233 _seq._
Beardmore Glacier Journey, 351
Plateau Journey, 368
body discovered, 480
journey to Pole, 496 _seq._
return from Pole, 512 _seq._
Wilson, Mrs., Scott's letter to, 539
Wind Vane Hill, 95, 182
Wright, Charles S., 4, 215, 319, 351, 381, 382, 429, 434, 438, 447,
455, 472, 481, 489
X Cairn, 120
THE END
_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh._