THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



1005 



In the very cold days, when our 

 strength had begun to decrease, we found 

 great difficulty in hoisting the sail on 

 our sledge, for when we lifted our arms 

 above our heads in order to adjust the 

 sail the blood ran from our fingers and 

 they promptly froze. Ten minutes or a 

 quarter of an hour sometimes elapsed, 

 before we could get the sledge properly 

 rigged. Our troubles with frost-bite 

 were no doubt due in a measure to the 

 lightness of our clothing, but there was 

 compensation in the speed with which 

 we were able to travel. I have no doubt 

 at all that men engaged in polar explora- 

 tion should be clothed as lightly as is 

 possible, even if there is a danger of 

 frost-bite when they halt on the march. 



We would certainly not have traveled so 

 fast had we been wearing the regulation 

 pilot-cloth garment generally used in polar 

 exploration. Our experience made it 

 obvious that a party which hopes to reach 

 the pole must take more food per man 

 than we did, but how the additional 

 weight is to be provided for is a matter 

 of individual consideration. I would not 

 take cheese again, for although it is a 

 good food, we did not find it as palatable 

 as chocolate, which is practically as sus- 

 taining. Our other foods were all en- 

 tirely satisfactory. 



THE DIVISION OF WORK 



Each member of the southern party 

 had his own particular duties to perform. 

 Adams had charge of the meteorology, 

 and his work involved the taking of tem- 

 peratures at regular intervals, and the 

 boiling of the hypsometer, sometimes sev- 

 eral times in a day. He took notes dur- 

 ing the day, and wrote up the observa- 

 tions at night in the sleeping bag. Mar- 

 shall was the cosmographer and took the 

 angles and bearings of all the new land ; 

 he also took the meridian altitudes and 

 the compass variations as we went south. 

 When a meridian altitude was taken, I 

 generally had it checked by each member 

 of the party, so that the mean could be 

 taken. 



Marshall's work was about the most 

 uncomfortable possible, for at the end of 



a day's march, and often at lunch-time, 

 he would have to stand in the biting wind 

 handling the screws of the theodolite. 

 The map of the journey was prepared 

 by Marshall, who also took most of the 

 photographs. Wild attended to the re- 

 pair of the sledges and equipment, and 

 also assisted me in the geological ob- 

 servations and the collection of speci- 

 mens. It was he who found the coal 

 close to the Upper Glacier depot. I kept 

 the courses and distances, worked out 

 observations, and laid down our direc- 

 tions. We all kept diaries. I had two, 

 one my observation book and the other 

 the narrative diary, reproduced in the 

 first volume. 



To the biologist, no more uninviting 

 desert is imaginable than Cape Royds 

 seemed when we made our first landing, 

 and for long afterwards. Here is abso- 

 lute desolation, a black and white wilder- 

 ness, rugged ridges of lava alternating 

 with snowdrifts for a few miles, ending 

 to the north and south in crevassed 

 glaciers, and eastward in the snow-field 

 stretching up to the rocky crags of the 

 cone of Mount Erebus. 



On the very edge of the sea, the little 

 colony of Adelie penguins and the scat- 

 tered skua gulls relieved the monotony. 

 Beyond was no living creature.no blade of 

 grass, or tiniest patch of welcome green. 



Bleak and bare though it was, this 

 stretch of two or three miles of broken 

 country, where rocky peaks and ridges, 

 moraines and snow drifts diversified the 

 surface, was the field of operations for 

 the biologist. The white waste of glacier 

 and snow-field was hopeless ; the nearer 

 country seemed little more promising. 



The sea was there known to be teem- 

 ing with varied life, but it was inaccessi- 

 ble till the ice should bridge it over. 



Water-bears were found to live while 

 frozen in ice just as well as the rotifers 

 did. It is an interesting fact that the 

 only abundant species at Cape Royds is 

 an Arctic species (Macrobiotus arcticus) 

 which was only previously known in 

 Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land, and 

 which has not yet been detected in the 

 various collections made on the other 



