yo SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [AUGUST 



The chief result of this journey was to show that we must 

 expect very bad travelling surfaces up the coast and that I must 

 alter my original plan, which was to start about August 20 with 

 two units of three. I now saw that it would take a party of 

 four to get along over the pressure ice we must expect, so I de- 

 cided to take Priestley, Abbott, and Dickason -with six weeks' 

 provisions and do without a supporting party, leaving Levick 

 and Browning to carry on the work at Cape Adare. 



August 8. Levick, Priestley, Browning, and Dickason left 

 this morning for Warning Glacier to do geology. We had 

 depoted our outfit about 10 miles down the coast, only packing 

 our sleeping-bags, so they were able to go without a sledge, 

 taking their sleeping-bags on their backs. I remained at the hut 

 with Abbott, who was laid up with water on the knee, and I 

 was kept busy by the combined duties of cook and bottle-washer, 

 meteorologist, etc. 



August 10. Levick's party returned at 4 P.M., bringing in 

 all our equipment. They had had overcast weather and high 

 temperatures, and Levick had only been able to get six photo- 

 graphs, which were not good. 



August 1 6. We woke up this morning to find the ice had 

 gone out in the night. This was a bitter disappointment and a 

 blow to all my hopes of a western journey over the sea ice 

 the only comfort is that it came when it did, as had it come a 

 fortnight later, we should have gone out with it. Yesterday 

 a strong blizzard began to blow from the S.E., with lots of drift, 

 and the gale continued very hard all day. About 8 P.M. it lulled 

 a little, only to come on again with redoubled violence between 

 10 P.M. and midnight. 



The squalls were terrific, harder than anything we had yet 

 experienced, shaking the hut so that several things fell off the 

 shelves. The roof of our store house was torn off, and the two 

 gable ends which took all six of us to lift were slung about 20 

 yards away. 



This morning the water extended from our beach to the 

 coast of the mainland a little west of the Dugdale Glacier, and 

 as far as we could see to the westward. 



Three Antarctic and two snowy petrels, attracted no doubt 

 by the open water, were flying about the beach. 



On the iyth, Levick, Priestley, and I climbed Cape Adare 



