500 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



Our marching hours are nine per day. It is a long slog with 

 a well-loaded sledge, and more tiring for me than the 

 others, as I have no ski. However, as long as I can do my 

 share all day and keep fit it does not matter much one way 

 or the other. 



" We had our first northerly wind on the plateau to-day, 

 and a deposit of snow crystals made the surface like sand 

 latterly on the march. The sledge dragged like lead. In 

 the evening it fell calm, and although the temperature was 

 - 1 6° it was positively pleasant to stand about outside the 

 tent and bask in the sun's rays. It was our first calm since 

 we reached the summit too. Our socks and other damp 

 articles which we hang out to dry at night become im- 

 mediately covered with long feathery crystals exactly like 

 plumes. Socks, mitts and finnesko dry splendidly up here 

 during the night. We have little trouble with them com- 

 pared with spring and winter journeys. I generally spread 

 my bag out in the sun during the i^ hours of lunch time, 

 which gives the reindeer hair a chance to get rid of the 

 damage done by the deposit of breath and any perspiration 

 during the night." 1 



Plenty of sun, heavy surfaces, iridescent clouds . . . 

 the worst windcut sastrugi I have seen, covered with 

 bunches of crystals like gorse ... ice blink all round 

 . . . hairy faces and mouths dreadfully iced up on the 

 march . . . hot and sweaty days' work, but sometimes cold 

 hands in the loops of the ski sticks . . . windy streaky 

 cirrus in every direction, all thin and filmy and scrappy 

 . . . horizon clouds all being wafted about. . . . These are 

 some of the impressions here and there in Wilson's diary 

 during the first ten days of the party's solitary march. On 

 the whole he is enjoying himself, I think. 



You should read Scott's diary yourself and form your 

 own opinions, but I think that after the Last Return Party 

 left him there is a load off his mind. The thing had worked 

 so far, it was up to them now : that great mass of figures 

 and weights and averages, those years of preparation, those 

 months of anxiety — no one of them had been in vain. 



1 Bowers. 



