1 86 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [JANUARY 



So little Blackie reigned supreme 



Until one day when he was fed 



By the kind and humane leader, 



Foster father, foster feeder, 



On rich and tasty lumps of blubber 



His little tummy stretched like rubber, 



Stretched too much . . . and now he's dead. 



The skuas are the most quarrelsome birds I know. They 

 would fight for hours over the carcase of a freshly killed seal 

 before they realised there was enough food for ten times as 

 many skuas and by this time the flesh would be frozen so hard 

 they could make no impression on it. The penguins have their 

 own peculiar propensities, while the seals used to amaze us by 

 their callousness. The day after we reached Cape Roberts we 

 killed a large seal and cut it up while another twenty yards away 

 watched us quite casually and did not budge for hours. 



There was nothing much to do on the cape. It was triangular 

 in shape, and about half a mile long. It rose about 50 feet above 

 the sea ice. The broad base of the triangle was covered with 

 snow which gradually merged into the Piedmont Glacier. There 

 was no ice wall here, so that the glacier was presumably stag- 

 nant at this corner. The great granite tors of the cape were 

 all flattened, showing that they had been planed off by a 

 former extension of the ice sheet. Debenham spent some time 

 making a detailed plane table survey. I fixed several theodolite 

 stations, but as the days went by our life settled into a monoto- 

 nous round. 



I cut the meals down to two a day. We had plenty of seal 

 meat and biscuit, but all the other stores were approaching their 

 last week. 



We used to have supper about 7 P.M. Every other day it 

 consisted of a half ration of pemmican for though seal meat 

 is not so black as it's painted (and it's very black indeed), yet 

 we had eaten little else for a month, and were all heartily sick 

 of it. Then we turned in and used to yarn or read till about 

 3 A.M., when we managed to get to sleep. We turned out at 

 noon and had a biscuit and seal lunch. During the afternoon we 

 used to walk over the cape and inspect the cracks in the sea ice. 

 One man was kept fairly busy cutting up seal meat, while the 

 cook coaxed the stove to cook the fry. 



