The Worst Journey in the World quotes

… jobs as well as we were able just because we wished to do them well, helping one another with all our strength, and (I speak with personal humility) living a life of cooperation, in the face of hardships and dangers, which has seldom been surpassed.

The mutual conquest of difficulties is the cement of friendship, as it is the only lasting cement of matrimony.

We had plenty of difficulties; we sometimes failed, we sometimes won; we always faced them—we had to.

we always faced them—we had to. Consequently we have some friends who are better than all the wives in Muhammad’s paradise, and when I have asked for help in the making of this book I have never never asked in vain.

Talk of ex-soldiers: give me ex-antarcticists, unsoured and with their ideals intact: they could sweep the world.

The trouble is that they are inclined to lose their ideals in this complicated atmosphere of civilization. They run one another down like the deuce, and it is quite time that stopped.

There is after the event a good deal of criticism, of stocktaking, of checking of supplies and distances and so forth that cannot really be done without firsthand experience.

Out there we knew what was happening to us too well; but we did not and could not measure its full significance.

When I was asked to write a book by the Antarctic Committee I discovered that, without knowing it, I had intended to write one ever since I had realized my own experiences. Once started, I enjoyed the process.

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

It is the only form of adventure in which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, find them as clean as though they were new.

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

It is the only form of adventure in which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, find them as clean as though they were new.

It is more lonely than London, more secluded than any monastery, and the post comes but once a year.

It is the only form of adventure in which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, find them as clean as though they were new.

It is more lonely than London, more secluded than any monastery, and the post comes but once a year.

As men will compare the hardships of France, Palestine, or Mesopotamia, so it would be interesting to contrast the rival claims of the Antarctic as a medium of discomfort. A member of Campbell’s party tells me that the trenches at Ypres were a comparative picnic.

A member of Campbell’s party tells me that the trenches at Ypres were a comparative picnic. But until somebody can evolve a standard of endurance I am unable to see how it can be done.

Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin.

Even now the Antarctic is to the rest of the earth as the Abode of the Gods was to the ancient Chaldees, a precipitous and mammoth land lying far beyond the seas which encircled man’s habitation, and nothing is more striking about the exploration of …

During the latter half of the eighteenth century eagerness for scientific knowledge was added to the former striving after individual or State aggrandizement.

Cook, Ross and Scott: these are the aristocrats of the South.

It was the great English navigator James Cook who laid the foundations of our knowledge. In 1772 he sailed from Deptford in the Resolution, 462 tons, and the Adventure, 336 tons, ships which had been built at Whitby for the coal trade.

As they groped their way in the howling snowdrift the majority of the party either slipped or rolled down a steep slippery snow slope some thousand feet high ending in a precipitous ice-cliff, below which lay the open sea.

It is a nasty place on a calm summer day: in a blizzard it must be ghastly.

Yet only one man, named Vince, shot down the slope and over the precipice into the sea below. How the others got back heaven knows.

for at this time a spring journey was considered a dreadful experience. “Wait till you’ve had a spring journey” was the threat of the old stagers to us. A winter journey lasting nearly three times as long as a spring journey was not imagined.

I advise explorers to be content with imagining it in the future.

The hardest journey of this year was carried out by Scott with two seamen of whom much will be written in this history. Their names are Edgar Evans and Lashly. The object of the journey was to explore westwards into the interior of the plateau.

or when they got through the Te Deum without a hitch: or when they killed some penguins; or got a ration of mustard plaster from the medical stores.

Never was a more cheerful or good-tempered party. They set out to see the humorous side of everything, and, if they could not do so one day, at any rate they determined to see to it the next.

What is more they succeeded, and I have never seen a company of better welded men than that which joined us for those last two months in McMurdo Sound.

Before I had recovered from the heavy overdraft made on my strength by the expedition I found myself in Flanders looking after a fleet of armoured cars.

A war is like the Antarctic in one respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put one foot before the other.

I came back badly invalided; and the book had to wait accordingly.

Scott used to say that the worst part of an expedition was over when the preparation was finished.

So no doubt it was with a sigh of relief that he saw the Terra Nova out from Cardiff into the Atlantic on June 15, 1910.

… which was capable of standing without any friction the strains of nearly three years of crowded, isolated and difficult life, ably seconded by Victor Campbell, first officer, commonly called The Mate, in whose hands the routine and discipline of the ship was most efficiently maintained.

I was very frightened of Campbell.

Scott himself was unable to travel all the way out to New Zealand in the Terra Nova owing to the business affairs of the expedition, but he joined the ship from Simon’s Bay to Melbourne.

“

The crabs gathered round us in a circle, with their eyes turning towards us⁠—as if they were waiting for us to die to come and eat us.

One big fellow left his place in the circle and waddled up to my feet and examined my boots. First with one claw and then with the other he took a taste of my boot. He went away obviously disgusted:

One big fellow left his place in the circle and waddled up to my feet and examined my boots. First with one claw and then with the other he took a taste of my boot.

He went away obviously disgusted: one could almost see him shake his head.

“We collected, as well as our birds and eggs, some spiders, very large grasshoppers, woodlice, cockchafers, with big and small centipedes. In fact, the place teemed with insect life.

“When we first got down to the shore and things were looking nasty, Wilson sat down on the top of a rock and ate a biscuit in the coolest possible manner.

It was an example to avoid all panicking, for he did not want the biscuit.

“He remarked afterwards to me, apropos to Hooper, that it was a curious thing that a number of men, knowing that there was nothing they could do, could quietly watch a man fighting for his life, and he did not think that any but the …

The birds flying round the ship congregate for the main part in the wake, for here they find the scraps thrown overboard on which they feed.

I have seen six albatross all together trying to eat up an empty treacle tin.

As they fly to and fro their wings are liable to touch the line which is spread out over the sea.

He was a most beautiful bird, sooty black body, a great black head with a line of white over each eye and a gorgeous violet line running along his black beak.

He treated us with the greatest contempt, which, from such a beautiful creature, we had every appearance of deserving.

Another day a little later we caught a wandering albatross, a black-browed albatross, and a sooty albatross all together, and set them on the deck tethered to the ventilators while their photographs were taken.

Much of the hail must have been inches in circumference, and hurt even through thick clothes and oilskins. At the same time there were several waterspouts formed. The men on the topgallant yard had a beastly time.

Below on deck men made hail-balls and pretended they were snow.

From now onwards we ran on our course before a gale. By the early morning of October 12 Cape Otway light was in sight.

This was only a feint. Once at sea, he had told his men that he was going south instead of north; and when he reached Madeira he sent this brief telegram, which meant, “I shall be at the South Pole before you.”

It also meant, though we did not appreciate it at the time, that we were up against a very big man.

The Admiral Commanding the Australian Station came on board.

Round the world they go. I doubt whether they land more than once a year, and then they come to the islands of these seas to breed.

There are many other beautiful seabirds, but most beautiful of all are the Snowy petrels, which approach nearer to the fairies than anything else on earth.

They are quite white, and seemingly transparent.

The conditions became much worse during the night and things were complicated for some of us by seasickness. I have lively recollections of being aloft for two hours in the morning watch on Friday and being sick at intervals all the time.

For sheer downright misery give me a hurricane, not too warm, the yard of a sailing ship, a wet sail and a bout of seasickness.

It must have been about this time that orders were given to clew up the jib and then to furl it.

Characteristically Bowers ends his account:

“Under its worst conditions this earth is a good place to live in.”

Priestley wrote in his diary:

Priestley wrote in his diary:

“If Dante had seen our ship as she was at her worst, I fancy he would have got a good idea for another Circle of Hell, though he would have been at a loss to account for such a cheerful and ribald lot of Souls.”

The situation narrowed down to a fight between the incoming water and the men who were trying to keep it in check by baling her out.

But this does not mean that no ice will form.

So great is the wish of the sea to freeze, and so cold is the air, that the wind has only to lull for one instant and the surface is covered with a thin film of ice, as though by magic.

But the next blizzard tears it out by force or a spring tide coaxes it out by stealth, whether it be a foot thick or only a fraction of an inch.

… often see “a group of explorers on the poop, singing ‘She has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, and she shall have music wherever she goes,’ and so on at the top of their voices to an admiring group of Adélie penguins.”

Meares used to sing to them what he called “God save,” and declared that it would always send them headlong into the water. He sang flat: perhaps that was why.

Two or more penguins will combine to push a third in front of them against a skua gull, which is one of their enemies, for he eats their eggs or their young if he gets the chance.

Possibly we were too far east. Our progress was very slow, and often we were hung up for days at a time, motionless and immovable, the pack all close about us.

Patience and always more patience!

“From the masthead one can see a few patches of open water in different directions, but the main outlook is the same scene of desolate hummocky pack.” And again:

Exasperating as it is to see the tons of coal melting away with the smallest mileage to our credit, one has at least the satisfaction of active fighting and the hope of better fortune.

To wait idly is the worst of conditions.

You can imagine how often and how restlessly we climbed to the crow’s nest and studied the outlook. And strangely enough there was generally some change to note.

“The ship behaved splendidly—no other ship, not even the Discovery, would have come through so well. Certainly the Nimrod would never have reached the south water had she been caught in such pack. As a result I have grown strangely attached to the Terra Nova.

As she bumped the floes with mighty shocks, crushing and grinding a way through some, twisting and turning to avoid others, she seemed like a living thing fighting a great fight.

If only she had more economical engines she would be suitable in all respects.

The general result was that the watches were all over the place that night. At 4 a.m. Day whispered in my ear that there was nothing to do, and Pennell promised to call me if there was—so I remembered no more until past six.

And Crean’s rabbit gave birth to seventeen little ones, and it was said that Crean had already given away twenty-two.

We had stopped and banked fires against an immense composite floe on the evening of Christmas Eve. How we watched the little changes in the ice and the wind, and scanned the horizon for those black patches which meant open water ahead.

and also Kinchinjunga: only Michelangelo among men could have conceived such grandeur. But give me Erebus for my friend. Whoever made Erebus knew all the charm of horizontal lines, and the lines of Erebus are for the most part nearer the horizontal than the vertical.

And so he is the most restful mountain in the world, and I was glad when I knew that our hut would lie at his feet.

And always there floated from his crater the lazy banner of his cloud of steam.

And so he is the most restful mountain in the world, and I was glad when I knew that our hut would lie at his feet.

And always there floated from his crater the lazy banner of his cloud of steam.

Now we had reached the Barrier face some five miles east of the point at which it joins the basalt cliffs of Cape Crozier.

Hundreds of thousands of birds dotted the shore, and there were many thousands in the sea round the ship. As we came to know these rookeries better we came to look upon these quaint creatures more as familiar friends than as casual acquaintances.

Whatever a penguin does has individuality, and he lays bare his whole life for all to see. He cannot fly away.

And because he is quaint in all that he does, but still more because he is fighting against bigger odds than any other bird, and fighting always with the most gallant pluck, he comes to be considered as something apart from the ordinary bird—sometimes solemn, …

there were one or two definitely weak ponies like Blossom, Blücher and Jehu; and there were one or two strong but rather impossible beasts. One of these was soon known as Weary Willie. His outward appearance belied him, for he looked like a pony.

A brief acquaintance soon convinced me that he was without doubt a cross between a pig and a mule.

He was obviously a strong beast and, since he always went as slowly as possible and stopped as often as possible it was most difficult to form any opinion as to what load he was really able to draw.

In a moment Pennell was lying flat upon the floe on his chest, got his hand under Priestley’s arm, and so pulled him out.

All Priestley said was, ‘Day, here are your goggles.’

We all got back to the ship, but communication between the ship and the shore was interrupted for the rest of the day, when a solid road was found right up to the ship in another place.”

“Scott seems very cheery about things,” I find in my diary about this time. And well he might be. A man could hardly be better served.

We slaved until we were nearly dead-beat, and then we found something else to do until we were quite dead-beat.

Ship’s company and landing parties alike, not only now but all through this job, did their very utmost, and their utmost was very good. The way men worked was fierce.

“On the shelves of my cubicle are still stacked the magazines and paper brought down by the relief ship.

Nothing is changed at all except the company. It is almost dismal.

I expect to see people come in through the door after a walk over the surrounding hills.

A large lead in the sea-ice to the south of the Tongue necessitated some hours’ work in man-hauling all sledges along the back of the Tongue until a way could be found down on to safe ice. We then followed with the ponies.

“If a pony falls into one of these holes I shall sit down and cry,” said Oates.

Within three minutes my pony was wallowing, with only his head and forelegs visible, in a mess of brash and snow, which had concealed a crack in the sea-ice which was obviously not going to remain much longer in its present position.

It was different for the dogs. These fairly warm blizzards were only a rest for them. Snugly curled up in a hole in the snow they allowed themselves to be drifted over.

Bieleglas and Vaida, two half brothers who pulled side by side, always insisted upon sharing one hole, and for greater warmth one would lie on the top of the other. At intervals of two hours or so they fraternally changed places.

This blizzard lasted three days.

After doing twelve miles we had to camp, as it was impossible even to march straight in the white haze. We made five colossal walls and turned in, hoping for the best.

Fortune favours the reckless, as well as the brave, at times, and it did this time, as the blizzard still held off.

The signs of one impending were unmistakable notwithstanding. Weary Willie did less well on February 25, and as the surface became heavier, we had to camp after only doing eleven miles.

As we know now coal ran so short that it came to an alternative of dumping Campbell, his men and gear hastily on the beach at Cape Adare, or taking them back to New Zealand. As one member of the crew said:

“Exploring is all very well in its way, but it is a thing which can be very easily overdone.”

The ship was as ready to get rid of them as they were to get rid of the ship. They were landed, working to their waists in the surf, and the ship got safely back to New Zealand.

As one member of the crew said: “Exploring is all very well in its way, but it is a thing which can be very easily overdone.”

The ship was as ready to get rid of them as they were to get rid of the ship.

They were landed, working to their waists in the surf, and the ship got safely back to New Zealand.

“Scott, instead of blowing me up, was too relieved at our safety to be anything but pleased. I said: ‘What about the ponies and the sledges?’ He said:

‘I don’t care a damn about the ponies and sledges. It’s you I want, and I am going to see you safe here up on the Barrier before I do anything else.’

Cherry and I had got everything ready, so, dragging up two sledges, we dumped the gear off them, and using them as ladders, one down from the berg on to the buffer piece of ice, and the other up to the top of the Barrier, …

The blizzard that knocked out the beasts, the death of Weary, the misunderstanding of the dogs, everything, fitted in to place us on the sea-ice during the only two hours of the whole year that we could possibly have been in such a position.

Let those who believe in coincidence carry on believing. Nobody will ever convince me that there was not something more.

Perhaps in the light of next year we shall see what was meant by such an apparent blow to our hopes.

“Well, I’m going to try,” was Bowers’ answer, and, quixotic or no, he largely succeeded.

I never knew a man who treated difficulties with such scorn.

There must be some of my companions who look back upon Hut Point with a peculiar fondness, such as men get for places where they have experienced great joys and great trials. And Hut Point has an atmosphere of its own.

This theory I put into practice with great success. I don’t know whether everybody saw eye to eye with me over the idea of getting to the top without a spell.

After the second sledge was up Atkinson said: ‘I don’t mind you as a rule, but there are times when I positively hate you.’

”

After the second sledge was up Atkinson said: ‘I don’t mind you as a rule, but there are times when I positively hate you.’ ”

Defoe could have written another Robinson Crusoe with Hut Point instead of San Juan Fernandez.

Our sledging supplies were mostly exhausted and we depended upon the seals we could kill for food, fuel and light. We were smutty as sweeps from the blubber we burned; and a more blackguard-looking crew would have been hard to find.

Defoe could have written another Robinson Crusoe with Hut Point instead of San Juan Fernandez. Our sledging supplies were mostly exhausted and we depended upon the seals we could kill for food, fuel and light.

We were smutty as sweeps from the blubber we burned; and a more blackguard-looking crew would have been hard to find.

We spent our fine days killing, cutting up and carrying in seal when we could find them, or climbing the various interesting hills and craters which abound here, and our evenings in long discussions which seldom settled anything.

We must have spent a good twelve hours asleep in our bags every day after our six weeks’ sledging. And we rested. Perhaps this is not everybody’s notion of a very good time, but it was good enough for us.

The Weddell seal which frequents the seas which fringe the Antarctic continent was a standby for most of our wants;

for he can at a pinch provide not only meat to eat, fuel for your fire and oil for your lamp, but also leather for your finnesko and an antidote to scurvy.

for he can at a pinch provide not only meat to eat, fuel for your fire and oil for your lamp, but also leather for your finnesko and an antidote to scurvy.

As he lies out on the sea-ice, a great ungainly shape, nothing short of an actual prod will persuade him to take much notice of an Antarctic explorer. Even then he is as likely as not to yawn in your face and go to sleep again.

His instincts are all to avoid the water when alarmed, for he knows his enemies the killer whales live there:

The whole is then left to freeze in pieces on the snow, which are afterwards collected as rocklike lumps. The carcass can be cut up with an axe when needed and fed to the dogs. Nothing except entrails was wasted.

Lighting was literally a burning question.

I do not know that any lamp was better than a tin matchbox fed with blubber, with strands of lamp wick sticking up in it, but all kinds of patterns big and small were made by proud inventors;

And it continues to move. As you stand in the still cold air you may sometimes hear the silence broken by the sharp reports as the cold contracts it or its own weight splits it.

Nature is tearing up that ice as human beings tear paper.

The sea-cliff is not so high here, and is more broken up by crevasses and caves, and more covered with snow. Some five miles along the coast the white line is broken by a bluff and black outcrop of rock;

We wanted something sweet to eat: for preference tinned peaches in syrup! Well! That is the kind of sleep the Antarctic offers you at her worst, or nearly at her worst.

And if the worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than as a gruesome foe.

She treats you thus when you are in the extremity of peril and hardship;

One great danger threatened all our meals in this hut, namely that of a Cag.

A Cag is an argument, sometimes well informed and always heated, upon any subject under the sun, or temporarily in our case, the moon.

They ranged from the Pole to the Equator, from the Barrier to Portsmouth Hard and Plymouth Hoe. They began on the smallest of excuses, they continued through the widest field, they never ended;

… were taken, for, on the whole, it is better to be a little overbold than a little overcautious, while always there was a something inside urging you to do it just because there was a certain risk, and you hardly liked not to do it.

It is so easy to be afraid of being afraid!

Let me give one instance: it must be typical of many. It was thick as it could be, no moon, no stars, light falling snow, and not even a light breeze to keep in your face to give direction.

We had but few married officers, though I must say most survivors of the expedition hurried to remedy this single state of affairs when they returned to civilization. Only two of them are unmarried now.

Most of them will probably make a success of it, for the good Arctic explorer has most of the defects and qualities of a good husband.

On the top of the pianola, close to the head of the table, lived the gramophone; and under the one looking-glass we possessed, which hung on the bulkhead of Scott’s cubicle, was a homemade box with shelves on which lay our records.

His was a subtle character, full of lights and shades.

England knows Scott as a hero; she has little idea of him as a man.

He was certainly the most dominating character in our not uninteresting community: indeed, there is no doubt that he would carry weight in any gathering of human beings.

As it was he had moods and depressions which might last for weeks, and of these there is ample evidence in his diary. The man with the nerves gets things done, but sometimes he has a terrible time in doing them.

He cried more easily than any man I have ever known.

What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together. It would be stupid to say he had all the virtues:

He will go down to history as the Englishman who conquered the South Pole and who died as fine a death as any man has had the honour to die. His triumphs are many—but the Pole was not by any means the greatest of them.

Surely the greatest was that by which he conquered his weaker self, and became the strong leader whom we went to follow and came to love.

Scott had under him this first year in his Main Party a total of 15 officers and 9 men.

… the ship or in the hut, and most of all those who had the good fortune to sledge with him (for it is sledging which is far the greatest test) will all be dissatisfied, for I know that I cannot do justice to his value.

If you knew him you could not like him: you simply had to love him.

Bill was of the salt of the earth. If I were asked what quality it was before others that made him so useful, and so lovable, I think I should answer that it was because he never for one moment thought of himself.

If you knew him you could not like him: you simply had to love him.

Bill was of the salt of the earth.

If I were asked what quality it was before others that made him so useful, and so lovable, I think I should answer that it was because he never for one moment thought of himself.

there were times when I have almost hated him for his infernal cheerfulness. To those accustomed to judge men by the standards of their fashionable and corseted drawing-rooms Bowers appeared crude.

“You couldn’t kill that man if you took a poleaxe to him,” was the comment of a New Zealander at a dance at Christchurch.

Such men may be at a discount in conventional life;

… thrown aback, a sledge-party almost shattered, or one that has just upset their supper on to the floor-cloth of the tent (which is much the same thing), and I will lie down and cry for Bowers to come and lead me to food and safety.

Those whom the gods love die young.

The gods loved him, if indeed it be benevolent to show your favourites a clear, straight, shining path of life, with plenty of discomfort and not a little pain, but with few doubts and no fears.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “but that horse was the limit, he …” “Perhaps it was a jibber,” suggested her hostess to help her out. “No, he was a ⸻. I heard the cabby tell him so several times.”

Titus Oates was the most cheerful and lovable old pessimist that you could imagine.

Often, after tethering and feeding our ponies at a night camp on the Barrier, we would watch the dog-teams coming up into camp.

We came back from the Barrier, telling one another we loathed the place and nothing on earth should make us return. But now the Barrier comes back to us, with its clean, open life, and the smell of the cooker, and its soft sound sleep.

So much of the trouble of this world is caused by memories, for we only remember half.

We have forgotten—or nearly forgotten—how the loss of a biscuit crumb left a sense of injury which lasted for a week; how the greatest friends were so much on one another’s nerves that they did not speak for days for fear of quarrelling;

It seemed to me that these men ought to think themselves lucky to be down South at all: there were thousands who would have liked to take their place. But now I understand quite a lot more than I did then.

Science is a big thing if you can travel a Winter Journey in her cause and not regret it.

I am not sure she is not bigger still if you can have dealings with scientists and continue to follow in her path.

As we turned in he said, “Cherry, are you responsible for your actions?” and when I said Yes, he blew loudly on his whistle, and the last thing I remembered was that he woke up Meares to ask him whether he was fancy free.

It was a magnificent bust.

Five days later and three men, one of whom at any rate is feeling a little frightened, stand panting and sweating out in McMurdo Sound.

They talk of the heroism of the dying—they little know—it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep.

The trouble is to go on.

…

They talk of the heroism of the dying—they little know—it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on. …

It was the darkness that did it.

I don’t believe minus seventy temperatures would be bad in daylight, not comparatively bad, when you could see where you were going, where you were stepping, where the sledge straps were, the cooker, the primus, the food;

When we lunched the temperature was −61°. After lunch the little light had gone, and we carried a naked lighted candle back with us when we went to find our second sledge.

It was the weirdest kind of procession, three frozen men and a little pool of light.

Generally we steered by Jupiter, and I never see him now without recalling his friendship in those days.

Do things slowly, always slowly, that was the burden of Wilson’s leadership: and every now and then the question, Shall we go on? and the answer Yes. “I think we are all right as long as our appetites are good,” said Bill.

Always patient, self-possessed, unruffled, he was the only man on earth, as I believe, who could have led this journey.

That day we made 3¼ miles, and travelled 10 miles to do it. The temperature was −66° when we camped, and we were already pretty badly iced up.

Every night after that I treated such others as were ready in the same way until they gradually disappeared.

Sometimes it was difficult not to howl.

I did want to howl many times every hour of these days and nights, but I invented a formula instead, which I repeated to myself continually.

And they look back upon it as an experience to be remembered.

Well! of course as an experience of cold this can only be compared to eating a vanilla ice with hot chocolate cream after an excellent dinner at Claridge’s.

But in our present state we began to look upon minus fifties as a luxury which we did not often get.

We should all have walked into it, and the sledge would certainly have followed us down.

After that I felt we had a chance of pulling through: God could not be so cruel as to have saved us just to prolong our agony.

But at present we need not worry about crevasses;

To get the first light going in the morning was a beastly cold business, made worse by having to make sure that it was at last time to get up. Bill insisted that we must lie in our bags seven hours every night.

In civilization men are taken at their own valuation because there are so many ways of concealment, and there is so little time, perhaps even so little understanding.

Not so down South. These two men went through the Winter Journey and lived: later they went through the Polar Journey and died. They were gold, pure, shining, unalloyed. Words cannot express how good their companionship was.

Not so down South. These two men went through the Winter Journey and lived: later they went through the Polar Journey and died.

They were gold, pure, shining, unalloyed.

Words cannot express how good their companionship was.

Nor were they ever flurried, though always as quick as the conditions would allow in moments of emergency.

It is hard that often such men must go first when others far less worthy remain.

There are those who write of Polar Expeditions as though the whole thing was as easy as possible. They are trusting, I suspect, in a public who will say, “What a fine fellow this is!

The temperature that night was −75.8°, and

I will not pretend that it did not convince me that Dante was right when he placed the circles of ice below the circles of fire.

Still we slept sometimes, and always we lay for seven hours. Again and again Bill asked us how about going back, and always we said no. Yet there was nothing I should have liked better:

I was quite sure that to dream of Cape Crozier was the wildest lunacy. That day we had advanced 1½ miles by the utmost labour, and the usual relay work. This was quite a good march—and Cape Crozier is 67 miles from Cape Evans!

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what appears to be a commonsense certainty: he achieves the impossible.

We never spoke our thoughts: we discussed the Age of Stone which was to come, when we built our cosy warm rock hut on the slopes of Mount Terror, and ran our stove with penguin blubber, and pickled little Emperors in warmth and dryness.

The Barrier is moving against this land at a rate which is sometimes not much less than a mile in a year.

Perhaps you can imagine the chaos which it piles up: there are pressure ridges compared to which the waves of the sea are like a ploughed field.

These are worst at Cape Crozier itself, but they extend all along the southern slopes of Mount Terror, running parallel with the land, and the disturbance which Cape Crozier makes is apparent at Corner Camp some forty miles back on the Barrier in the crevasses …

Later we got frostbitten even as we lay in our sleeping-bags.

Things are getting pretty bad when you get frostbitten in your bag.

There was only a glow where the moon was; we stood in a moonlit fog, and this was sufficient to show the edge of another ridge ahead, and yet another on our left. We were utterly bewildered.

To the left rose the huge cliff of Cape Crozier, but we could not tell whether there were not two or three pressure ridges between us and it, and though we tried at least four ways, there was no possibility of getting forward.

And then we heard the Emperors calling.

Their cries came to us from the sea-ice we could not see, but which must have been a chaotic quarter of a mile away. They came echoing back from the cliffs, as we stood helpless and tantalized.

Thus he spent days and nights until, one night, he crawled towards the English trenches, to be fired at as usual. “Oh God! what can I do!” someone heard him say, and he was brought in.

Such extremity of suffering cannot be measured: madness or death may give relief.

But this I know: we on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend.

we on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend. As we groped our way back that night, sleepless, icy, and dog-tired in the dark and the wind and the drift, a crevasse seemed almost a friendly gift.

“Things must improve,” said Bill next day, “I think we reached bedrock last night.” We hadn’t, by a long way.

We moved into the igloo for the first time, for we had to save oil by using our blubber stove if we were to have any left to travel home with, and we did not wish to cover our tent with the oily black filth …

I got out and cut the green canvas outside the door, so as to get the roof cloth in under the stones, and then packed it down as well as I could with snow, and so blocked most of the drift coming in.

It is extraordinary how often angels and fools do the same thing in this life, and I have never been able to settle which we were on this journey.

I never heard an angry word: once only (when this same day I could not pull Bill up the cliff out of the penguin rookery) I heard an impatient one: and these groans were the nearest approach to complaint. Most men would have howled.

I do not know what time it was when I woke up. It was calm, with that absolute silence which can be so soothing or so terrible as circumstances dictate. Then there came a sob of wind, and all was still again.

Ten minutes and it was blowing as though the world was having a fit of hysterics.

The earth was torn in pieces: the indescribable fury and roar of it all cannot be imagined.

so we did not get very thirsty. A few ribbons of canvas still remained in the wall over our heads, and these produced volleys of cracks like pistol shots hour after hour. The canvas never drew out from the walls, not an inch.

The wind made just the same noise as an express train running fast through a tunnel if you have both the windows down.

I can well believe that neither of my companions gave up hope for an instant. They must have been frightened but they were never disturbed. As for me I never had any hope at all;

and after that the open sea. The chances, however, were that the tent had just been taken up into the air and dropped somewhere in this sea well on the way to New Zealand. Obviously the tent was gone.

Face to face with real death one does not think of the things that torment the bad people in the tracts, and fill the good people with bliss.

I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past.

but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted.

The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.

I wanted those years over again. What fun I would have with them: what glorious fun! It was a pity.

I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.

I wanted those years over again. What fun I would have with them: what glorious fun!

It was a pity. Well has the Persian said that when we come to die we, remembering that God is merciful, will gnaw our elbows with remorse for thinking of the things we have not done for fear of the Day of Judgment.

Not a bit heroic, and entirely true! Yes! comfortable, warm reader.

Men do not fear death, they fear the pain of dying.

And then quite naturally and no doubt disappointingly to those who would like to read of my last agonies (for who would not give pleasure by his death?) I fell asleep.

That and the snow which drifted over us made a pleasant wet kind of snipe marsh inside our sleeping-bags, and I am sure we all dozed a good bit.

There was so much to worry about that there was not the least use in worrying; and we were so very tired.

We were hungry, for the last meal we had had was in the morning of the day before, but hunger was not very pressing.

We had bad winds at Cape Evans this year, and we had far worse the next winter when the open water was at our doors. But I have never heard or felt or seen a wind like this.

I wondered why it did not carry away the earth.

In the early hours of Monday there was an occasional hint of a lull. Ordinarily in a big winter blizzard, when you have lived for several days and nights with that turmoil in your ears, the lulls are more trying than the noise:

But, as we searched, we heard a shout somewhere below and to the right. We got on a slope, slipped, and went sliding down quite unable to stop ourselves, and came upon Birdie with the tent, the outer lining still on the bamboos.

Our lives had been taken away and given back to us.

We were so thankful we said nothing.

… only −40° when we camped for the night we considered quite seriously that we were going to have a warm one, and that when we got up in the morning if the temperature was in the minus sixties we did not enquire what it was.

The day’s march was bliss compared to the night’s rest, and both were awful.

We were about as bad as men can be and do good travelling: but I never heard a word of complaint, nor, I believe, an oath, and I saw self-sacrifice standing every test.

with generous smiles for poor jests: with suggestions of happy beds to come. We did not forget the Please and Thank you, which mean much in such circumstances, and all the little links with decent civilization which we could still keep going.

I’ll swear there was still a grace about us when we staggered in. And we kept our tempers⁠—even with God.

We might reach Hut Point tonight: we were burning more oil now, that one-gallon tin had lasted us well: and burning more candle too; at one time we feared they would give out. A hell of a morning we had: −57° in our present state.

I am proud of that.

Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds. But this journey had beggared our language: no words could express its horror.

We trudged on for several more hours and it grew very dark. There was a discussion as to where Cape Evans lay. We rounded it at last:

We halted and stood there trying to get ourselves and one another out of our frozen harnesses—the usual long job. The door opened—“Good God! here is the Crozier Party,” said a voice, and disappeared.

Thus ended the worst journey in the world.

And now the reader will ask what became of the three penguins’ eggs for which three human lives had been risked three hundred times a day, and three human frames strained to the utmost extremity of human endurance.

my jaw had dropped when I came in, so they tell me. Then into my warm blanket bag, and I managed to keep awake just long enough to think that Paradise must feel something like this.

We slept ten thousand thousand years, were wakened to find everybody at breakfast, and passed a wonderful day, lazying about, half asleep and wholly happy, listening to the news and answering questions.

“We are looked upon as beings who have come from another world. This afternoon I had a shave after soaking my face in a hot sponge, and then a bath. Lashly had already cut my hair.

Hands itch a bit. We must be very weak and worn out, though I think Birdie is the strongest of us. He seems to be picking up very quickly. Bill is still very worn and rather haggard.

The kindness of everybody would spoil an angel.

”

He ought to have been blown into hundreds of little bits, but always like some hardy india-rubber ball he turns up again, a little dented, but with the same tough elasticity which refuses to be hurt.

And with the same quiet voice he volunteers for the next, and tells you how splendid everybody was except himself.

It was the blizzard of July 4, when we were lying in the windless bight on our way to Cape Crozier, and we knew it must be blowing all round us.

I am sure he must have been an untidy person to have in your tent: I feel equally sure that his tent-mates would have been sorry to lose him.

His gear took up more room than was strictly his share, and his mind also filled up a considerable amount of space.

He always bulked large, and when he returned to the Australian Government, which had lent him for the first two sledging seasons, he left a noticeable gap in our company.

The camp is very silent and cheerless, signs that things are going awry.” “The weather was horrid, overcast, gloomy, snowy. One’s spirits became very low.” “I expected these marches to be a little difficult, but not near so bad as today.”

Indefinite conditions always tried Scott most: positive disasters put him into more cheerful spirits than most.

In the big gale coming South when the ship nearly sank, and when we lost one of the cherished motors through the sea-ice, his was one of the few cheerful faces I saw.

Afterwards each tent was supplied with a small brush with which to perform this office. In addition to other obvious advantages this materially helped to keep clothing, finnesko, and sleeping-bags dry, and thus prolong the life of furs.

“After all is said and done,” said Wilson one day after supper, “the best sledger is the man who sees what has to be done, and does it⁠—and says nothing about it.”

Scott agreed. And if you were “sledging with the Owner” you had to keep your eyes wide open for the little things which cropped up, and do them quickly, and say nothing about them.

Scott agreed. And if you were “sledging with the Owner” you had to keep your eyes wide open for the little things which cropped up, and do them quickly, and say nothing about them.

There is nothing so irritating as the man who is always coming in and informing all and sundry that he has repaired his sledge, or built a wall, or filled the cooker, or mended his socks.

I moved into Scott’s tent for the first time in the middle of the Depot Journey, and was enormously impressed by the comfort which a careful routine of this nature evoked.

and when there is added some of the most wonderful scenery in the world it is hard to recall in the enjoyment of the present how irritable and weary you felt only twenty hours ago.

The whisper of the sledge, the hiss of the primus, the smell of the hoosh and the soft folds of your sleeping-bag: how jolly they can all be, and generally were.

I would that I could once again Around the cooker sit And hearken to its soft refrain And feel so jolly fit.

“Wednesday, December 6. Camp 30. Noon.

Miserable, utterly miserable. We have camped in the ‘Slough of Despond.’

The tempest rages with unabated violence. The temperature has gone to +33°; everything in the tent is soaking. People returning from the outside look exactly as though they had been in a heavy shower of rain. They drip pools on the floor-cloth.

it was certainly not so fit as the other two. In addition to these three sledges the two dog-teams, which had been doing splendid work, were carrying 600 lbs. of our weight as well as the provisions for the Lower Glacier Depot, weighing 200 lbs.

It began to look as if Amundsen had chosen the right form of transport.

The Gateway is a gap in the mountains, a side door, as it were, to the great tumbled glacier.

The monotonous march: the necessity to keep the mind concentrated to steer amongst disturbances: the relief of a steady plod when the disturbances cease for a time: then more pressure and more crevasses.

Always slog on, slog on. Always a fraction of a mile more.

… On December 30 he writes, “We have caught up Shackleton’s dates.”

Scott, wishing them a speedy return. Tomorrow we hope to see and reach the Barrier, and be clear of the Beardmore forever. We none of us minds the struggle we have been through to attain the amount of success so far reached.

It is all for the good of science, as Crean says.

We reached the depot at 6:45 p.m.

Dimitri and Crean are going to Cape Evans: the ship is nowhere in sight. Have had to get some seal meat and ice and prepare a meal. Mr. Evans is alright and asleep. We are looking for a mail now.

How funny we should always be looking for something else, now we are safe.

Crean has told me the story of his walk as follows:

Atkinson shouted ‘Hullo!’ and cried, ‘Cherry, they’re in.’ Keohane said, ‘Who’s cook?’ Someone lit a candle and left it in the far corner of the hut to give them light, and we all rushed out. But there was no one there.

It was the nearest approach to ghost work that I have ever heard, and it must have been a dog which sleeps in that window.

He must have shaken himself, hitting the window with his tail. Atkinson thought he heard footsteps!”

On the other hand we might go north, to find that Campbell’s men were safe, and as a consequence the fate of the Polar Party and the result of their efforts might remain forever unknown.

Were we to forsake men who might be alive to look for those whom we knew were dead?

These were the points put by Atkinson to the meeting of the whole party. He expressed his own conviction that we should go south, and then each member was asked what he thought. No one was for going north:

It is impossible to express and almost impossible to imagine how difficult it was to make this decision. Then we knew nothing: now we know all.

And nothing is harder than to realize in the light of facts the doubts which others have experienced in the fog of uncertainty.

Our winter routine worked very smoothly. Inside the hut we had a good deal more room than we needed, but this allowed of certain work being done in its shelter which would otherwise have had to be done outside.

Gulab was the biggest handful, and Williamson managed him with skill: some of them, especially Lal Khan, were very playful, running round and round their leaders and stopping to paw the ground:

Khan Sahib, on the other hand, was bored, yawning continually: it was suggested that he was suffering from polar ennui!

Altogether they reflected the greatest credit upon Lashly, who groomed them every day and took the greatest care of them. They were subject to the most violent fits of jealousy, being much disturbed if a rival got undue attention.

This was before they were in any way alarmed. But it was decided that life might be taken unnecessarily if they did this—and that winter this party nearly died of starvation.

And yet this country has allowed penguins to be killed by the million every year for Commerce and a farthing’s worth of blubber.

We never killed unless it was necessary, and what we had to kill was used to the utmost both for food and for the scientific work in hand.

He kept us busy for days: the zoologist got a museum skin, showing some variation from the usual coloration, a skeleton, and some useful observation on the digestive glands: the parasitologist got a new tapeworm: we all had a change of diet.

Many a pheasant has died for less.

There were plenty of Weddell seal round us this winter, but they kept out of the wind and in the water for the most part.

On the other hand, a seaman went out into North Bay to bathe from a boat, in the full sun of a midsummer day, and he was out almost as soon as he was in.

One of the most beautiful sights of this winter was to see the seals, outlined in phosphorescent light, swimming and hunting in the dark water.

We had lectures, but not as many as during the previous winter when they became rather excessive: and we included outside subjects. We read in many a polar book of the depressions and trials of the long polar night;

Having more imagination, they have a worse time than their more phlegmatic companions; but they get things done. And when the worst came to the worst, their strength of mind triumphed over their weakness of body.

If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires⁠—of steel. And if you can’t get both, sacrifice physique and bank on will.

A lecture given at this time by Wright on Barrier Surfaces is especially interesting with relation to the Winter Journey and the tragedy of the Polar Party.

The flowers were of snow, the rivers of ice, and if Stevenson had been to the Antarctic he would have made them so.

God sent His daylight to scatter the nightmares of the darkness. I can remember now the joy of an August day when the sun looked over the rim of the Barne Glacier, and my shadow lay clearcut upon the snow.

The flowers were of snow, the rivers of ice, and if Stevenson had been to the Antarctic he would have made them so.

God sent His daylight to scatter the nightmares of the darkness.

I can remember now the joy of an August day when the sun looked over the rim of the Barne Glacier, and my shadow lay clearcut upon the snow. It was wonderful what a friendly thing that ice-slope became.

Are we going to find blue ice this year where we found thick soft snow last? Well! I have got a regular bad needle again, just as I have had before. But somehow the needle has always worked off when we get right into it.

What a blessing it is that things are seldom as bad in the reality as you expect they are going to be in your imagination: though I must say the Winter Journey was worse even than I had imagined.

I remember that this time last year the thought of the Beardmore was very terrible: but the reality was never very bad.

The first was not in calf, the aggressor, however, was: this may have had something to do with it. They were both much cut about and bleeding.

A seal is never so pretty as when he is a baby.

With his grey woolly coat, which he keeps for a fortnight, his comparatively long flippers and tail, and his big dark eyes, he looks very clean and pussy-like.

We reached Hut Point the next day. Lappy’s feet were still bad, and Dimitri wrapped him in his windproof blouse and strapped him on to the sledge. All went well until we got on to the sea-ice, when Lappy escaped and arrived an easy first.

Dog-driving is the devil!

Before I started, my language would not have shamed a Sunday School, and now—if it were not Sunday I would tell you more about it. It takes all kinds to make a world and a dog-team.

Dog-driving is the devil! Before I started, my language would not have shamed a Sunday School, and now—if it were not Sunday I would tell you more about it.

It takes all kinds to make a world and a dog-team.

We had aristocrats like Osman, and Bolsheviks like Krisravitza, and lunatics like Hol-hol.

Then there was Stareek (which is the Russian for old man, starouka being old woman). “He is quite a ridiculous ‘old man,’ and quite the nicest, quietest, cleverest old dog I have ever come across.

He looks in face as though he knew all the wickedness of all the world and all its cares, and as if he were bored to death by them.

” He was the leader of Wilson’s team on the Depot Journey, but decided that he was not going out again. Thereafter when he thought there was no one looking he walked naturally;

Now there is a brilliant parhelion. Given sun, two days here are never alike.

Whatever the monotony of the Barrier may be, there is endless variety in the sky, and I do not believe that anywhere in the world such beautiful colours are to be seen.

I had a fair panic as we came up to the depot.

Not many will see Hut Point again, I think. Doubt if any would have got much farther than this if surfaces had been as bad this year as last.”

Though they would not eat oats, compressed fodder and oil-cake, they were quite willing to eat all kinds of other things.

If we could have arrived at the mule equivalent to a vegetarian diet they might have pulled to the Beardmore without stopping.

But supplies were very limited. They ate dog-biscuit as long as they thought we were not looking—but as soon as they realized they were meant to eat it they went on hunger-strike again.

But during halts at cairns Rani and Pyaree would stand solemnly chewing the same piece of rope from different ends.

Abdullah always led the line, and followed Wright’s ski tracks faithfully, so that if another man was ahead and Wright turned aside Abdullah always turned too. It was quite a manoeuvre for Wright to read the sledge-meter at the back of the sledge.

A steady southerly wind has been blowing here for three days now. The mules should get into Hut Point today.

It is the happiest day for nearly a year⁠—almost the only happy one.

During this plateau journey Scott logged wind force 5 and over on 23 occasions, and this wind was in their faces from the Beardmore to the Pole, and at their backs as they returned.

A low temperature when it is calm is paradise compared to a higher temperature with a wind, and it is this constant pitiless wind, combined with the altitude and low temperatures, which has made travelling on the Antarctic plateau so difficult.

While the mean velocity of wind during the two midsummer months seems to be fairly constant, there is a very rapid fall of temperature in January. The mean actual temperature found on the plateau this year in December was −8.6°, the minimum observed being −19.3°.

… Evans had such cold hands we camped for lunch … the wind is blowing hard, T. −21°, and there is that curious damp, cold feeling in the air which chills one to the bone in no time. …

Great God! this is an awful place.

…”

−21°, and there is that curious damp, cold feeling in the air which chills one to the bone in no time. … Great God! this is an awful place. …”

This is not a cry of despair. It is an ejaculation provoked by the ghastly facts.

Even now in January the temperature near the South Pole is about 24° lower than it is during the corresponding month of the year (July) near the North Pole, and if it is like this in midsummer, what is it like in midwinter?

So the spicule collections are only just visible. Our hands are never warm enough in camp to do any neat work now. The weather is always uncomfortably cold and windy, about −23°, but after lunch today I got a bit of drawing done.”

All the joy had gone from their sledging. They were hungry, they were cold, the pulling was heavy, and two of them were not fit.

As long ago as January 14 Scott wrote that Oates was feeling the cold and fatigue more than the others and again he refers to the matter on January 20. On January 19 Wilson wrote:

Directly they got into the warmer weather on the glacier their food satisfied them, “but we must march to keep on the full ration, and we want rest, yet we shall pull through all right, d.v. We are by no means worn out.”

There are no germs in the Antarctic, save for a few isolated specimens which almost certainly come down from civilization in the upper air currents.

You can sleep all night in a wet bag and clothing, and sledge all day in a mail of ice, and you will not catch a cold nor get any aches.

Stevenson has written of a traveller whose wife slumbered by his side what time his spirit re-adventured forth in memory of days gone by.

He was quite happy about it, and I suppose his travels had been peaceful, for days and nights such as these men spent coming down the Beardmore will give you nightmare after nightmare, and wake you shrieking—years after.

They did nearly ten miles that day, but on March 3 they had a terrible time. “God help us,” wrote Scott, “we can’t keep up this pulling, that is certain.

Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess.

Putting on footgear in the morning is getting slower and slower, therefore every day more dangerous.”

We mean to see the game through with a proper spirit, but it’s tough work to be pulling harder than we ever pulled in our lives for long hours, and to feel that the progress is so slow.

One can only say ‘God help us!’ and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable, though outwardly cheerful.

We talk of all sorts of subjects in the tent, not much of food now, since we decided to take the risk of running a full ration. We simply couldn’t go hungry at this time.”

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.

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.

“22 and 23. Blizzard bad as ever—Wilson and Bowers unable to start—tomorrow 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 depot with or without our effects and die in our tracks.

”

“

It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.

Last entry. “For God’s sake, look after our people.”

Last entry. “

For God’s sake, look after our people.

”

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.

Goodbye, my dear friend. Yours ever,

“

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.

”

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.

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.

… 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 businesslike 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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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;

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.

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;

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

;