THE POLAR JOURNEY 381 



Party : the second to return, a month after starting the 

 Summit Rations, was known as the Last Supporting Party. 

 Of the two dog-teams under Meares, which had already 

 turned homewards at the bottom of the glacier after having 

 been brought forward farther than had been intended, I 

 will speak later. 1 



I am going to say very little about the First Return 

 Party, which consisted of Atkinson, Wright, Keohane and 

 myself. Atkinson was in command, and before we left 

 Scott told him to bring the dog-teams out to meet the Polar 

 Party if, as seemed likely, Meares returned home. Atkin- 

 son is a naval surgeon and you will find this party referred 

 to in Lashly's diary as " the Doctor's." 



" It was a sad job saying good-bye. It was thick, snow- 

 ing and drifting clouds when we started back after making 

 the depot, and the last we saw of them as we swung the 

 sledge north was a black dot just disappearing over the 

 next ridge and a big white pressure wave ahead of them. 

 . . . Scott said some nice things when we said good-bye. 

 Anyway he has only to average seven miles a day to get to 

 the Pole on full rations — it's practically a cert for him. I 

 do hope he takes Bill and Birdie. The view over the ice- 

 falls and pressure by the Mill Glacier from the top of the 

 ice-falls is one of the finest things I have ever seen. Atch 

 is doing us proud." 2 



No five hundred mile journey down the Beardmore and 

 across the Barrier can be uneventful, even in midsummer. 

 We had the same dreary drag, the same thick weather, 

 fears and anxieties which other parties have had. A touch 

 of the same dysentery and sickness : the same tumbles and 

 crevasses : the same Christmas comforts, a layer of plum 

 pudding at the bottom of our cocoa, and some rocks col- 

 lected from a moraine under the Cloudmaker : the same 

 groping for tracks : the same cairns lost and found, the 

 same snow -blindness and weariness, nightmares, food 

 dreams. . . . Why repeat ? Comparatively speaking it was 

 a very little journey : and yet the distance from Cape Evans 



1 See pp. 382, 383, 410, 412. 

 2 My own diary, December 22, 191 1. 



