THE POLAR JOURNEY ^S 



hardly expecting to go on himself: I don't know what 

 the trouble is, but his foot is troubling him, and also, I 

 think, indigestion." x 



Scott just says in his diary, " I dreaded this necessity of 

 choosing — nothing could be more heartrending." And 

 then he goes on to sum up the situation, " I calculated our 

 programme to start from 85 10' with 12 units of food and 

 eight men. We ought to. be in this position to-morrow 

 night, less one day's food. After all our harassing trouble 

 one cannot but be satisfied with such a prospect." 2 



December 21. Upper Glacier Depot. "Started off 

 with a nippy S.Wly. wind in our faces, but bright sun- 

 shine. One's nose and lips being chapped and much 

 skinned with alternate heat and cold, a breeze in the face 

 is absolute agony until you warm up. This does not take 

 long, however, when pulling a sledge, so after the first 

 quarter of an hour more or less one is comfortable unless 

 the wind is very strong. 



"We made towards the only place where it seemed 

 possible to cross the mass of pressure ice caused by the 

 junction of the plateau with the glacier, and congested 

 between the nunatak [Buckley Island] and the Dominion 

 Range. Scott had considered at one time going up to 

 westward of the nunatak, but this appeared more chaotic 

 than the other side. We made for a slope close to the end 

 of the island or nunatak, where Shackleton must have got 

 up also ; it is obviously the only place when you look at it 

 from a commanding rise. We did not go quite so close to 

 the land as Shackleton did, and therefore, as had been the 

 case with us all the way up the glacier, found less diffi- 

 culties than he met with. Scott is quite wonderful in his 

 selections of route, as we have escaped excessive dangers 

 and difficulties all along. In this case we had fairly good 

 going, but got into a perfect mass of crevasses into which 

 we all continually fell ; mostly one foot, but often two, 

 and occasionally we went down altogether, some to the 

 length of their harness to be hauled out with the Alpine 

 rope. Most of them could be seen by the strip of snow on 



1 My own diary. 2 Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. p. 51 1-512. 



