THE POLAR JOURNEY 325 



a little difficult, but not near so bad as to-day." 1 Indefi- 

 nite conditions always tried Scott most: positive disasters 

 put him into more cheerful spirits than most. In the big 

 gale coming South when the ship nearly sank, and when 

 we lost one of the cherished motors through the sea-ice, his 

 was one of the few cheerful faces I saw. Even when the 

 ship ran aground off Cape Evans he was not despondent. 

 But this kind of thing irked him. Bowers wrote : "The 

 unpleasant weather and bad surface, and Chinaman's in- 

 disposition, combined to make the outlook unpleasant, and 

 on arrival [in camp] I was not surprised to find that Scott 

 had a grievance. He felt that in arranging the consump- 

 tion of forage his own unit had not been favoured with the 

 same reduction as ours, in fact accused me of putting upon 

 his three horses to save my own. We went through the 

 weights in detail after our meal, and, after a certain amount 

 of argument, decided to carry on as we were going. I can 

 quite understand his feelings, and after our experience of 

 last year a bad day like this makes him fear our beasts 

 are going to fail us. The Talent [i.e. the doctors] exam- 

 ined Chinaman, who begins to show signs of wear. Poor 

 ancient little beggar, he ought to be a pensioner instead 

 of finishing his days on a job of this sort. Jehu looks pretty 

 rocky too, but seeing that we did not expect him to reach 

 the Glacier Tongue, and that he has now done more than 

 100 miles from Cape Evans, one really does not know 

 what to expect of these creatures. Certainly Titus thinks, 

 as he has always said, that they are the most unsuitable 

 scrap-heap crowd of unfit creatures that could possibly be 

 got together." 2 



"The weather was about as poisonous as one could 

 wish ; a fresh breeze and driving snow from the E. with 

 an awful surface. The recently fallen snow thickly covered 

 the ground with powdery stuff that the unfortunate ponies 

 fairly wallowed in. If it was only ourselves to consider I 

 should not mind a bit, but to see our best ponies being hit 

 like this at the start is most distressing. A single march 

 like that of last night must shorten their usefulness by 



1 Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. p. 461. 2 Bowers. 



