io WITH SCOTT: THE SILVER LINING 



Lady Scott was coming out to Australia, and was much in- 

 terested in the political and social questions of the " British 

 continent." She had done some long tramps in Switzerland, 

 and told us much about the Fabian Society and about her art 

 life. She had heard of our tramp to London. " Did you 

 really walk sixty miles in ten hours ? " So had rumour 

 reported it. It was mortifying to confess to a bare fifty miles 

 in twelve hours ! Birdie Bowers appeared in the full insignia 

 of a Lieutenant of the Indian Marine. He was at this time 

 so busy loading the ship at the docks that I did not see him 

 again until I joined the Terra Nova in New Zealand. 



On the 1 2th of May I joined the Orontes and I reached 

 Melbourne at the end of June. For the next three months I 

 was busy at the new Federal capital — then unnamed, — where 

 I carried out various surveys for the Commonwealth. 



In July Professor David sent me some microscope slides 

 made from a limestone obtained by Shackleton's party on the 

 Beardmore Glacier. To our delight I was able to identify 

 them as fossil " corals " of Cambrian age, of the same genus 

 as those from South Australia on which I had been working 

 at Cambridge. Some account of these Antarctic fossils which 

 Wright also discovered in some of his specimens from the 

 Beardmore is given in the account of our life at headquarters. 



Professor David gave me invaluable advice on Antarctic 

 matters. At the School of Geology at the University of 

 Sydney is a large " Antarctic Room " filled with specimens 

 collected on the 1907 Expedition. Here Priestley had been 

 working out results for many months, and here he presided 

 over informal " tea " at 4.30 every afternoon ! Here I met 

 Alan Thomson, a geological scholar from Oxford, who was to 

 have been one of us, but that he developed lung trouble at 

 the last moment. In consequence of Thomson's illness, 

 Priestley obtained Shackleton's permission by cable, and 

 thereupon accepted Captain Scott's offer to join us. Many 

 were the yarns Priestley told us of his 1908 experiences. He 

 said that the young Eskimo dogs, born down there, never 

 knew water, yet they held out a water-can for a drink when 

 they saw it ! More credible was the story of how they buried 

 the water-can (containing a future drink) and were profoundly 

 disgusted on digging it up to find that their refreshment had 

 vanished ! The yarn which I fear I completely disbelieved — 



