EXPLORING THE GREAT CONTINENT 



The homeward march began on January 19th. It 

 was hard work, for they had to rise one thousand feet 

 in the next week's marches. However, the stern wind 

 helped them somewhat. BHzzards slow^ed down their 

 speed and the surface ice deteriorated to ''sandy crys- 

 tals" with similar results. On February 7th they 

 reached the head of the Beardmore Glacier after seven 

 weeks of low temperatures and almost incessant wind. 

 Here Petty Officer Evans sustained concussion from a 

 bad fall, and as a result the strongest man of the party 

 became a drag on their progress. On the seventeenth 

 of February he fainted and died the same night, just 

 near Mount Hope at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. 

 The journey on the Ross Ice Shelf was marked by head 

 winds, bad surface and by very low temperatures, so 

 that a rise to —20° seemed a great improvement. 

 Oates was feeling the cold more than the others and 

 his feet were giving him great pain from frostbite. 

 On the seventeenth he walked out of the tent into the 

 blizzard and died in a vain effort to give his comrades 

 a better chance to reach safety. With a northerly wind 

 in their faces and a temperature of —40°, on the nine- 

 teenth of March they struggled to their last camping 

 ground, about eleven miles from One Ton Camp, wath 

 only two days' food. It is sad to realize that a dog 

 team with two men had been at One Ton Camp from 

 the third to the tenth of March, when the food for the 

 dogs was almost exhausted, and they had to return. 

 If the plans for relief had not been totally upset by 

 the illness of Lieutenant Evans, it is probable that a 

 longer relief journey could have been made and so 



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