5o 4 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



we all felt considerably, but temperature was only - i8° 

 at lunch and - I £° in the evening. Now just over 40 miles 

 from the Pole." Scott wrote the same day : "Again we 

 noticed the cold ; at lunch to-day all our feet were cold but 

 this was mainly due to the bald state of our finnesko. I put 

 some grease under the bare skin and found it make all the 

 difference. Oates seems to be feeling the cold and fatigue 

 more than the rest of us, but we are all very fit." And on 

 January 15, lunch : "We were all pretty done at camp- 

 ing." 1 And Wilson : " We made a depot [The Last 

 Depot] of provisions at lunch time and went on for our 

 last lap with nine days' provision. We went much more 

 easily in the afternoon, and on till 7.30 p.m. The surface 

 was a funny mixture of smooth snow and sudden patches 

 of sastrugi, and we occasionally appear to be on a very 

 gradual down gradient and on a slope down from the west 

 to east." In the light of what happened afterwards I be- 

 lieve that the party was not as fit at this time as might have 

 been expected ten days before, and that this was partly the 

 reason why they felt the cold and found the pulling so hard. 

 The immediate test was the bad surface, and this was the 

 result of the crystals which covered the ground. 



Simpson has worked out 2 that there is an almost con- 

 stant pressure gradient driving the air on the plateau north- 

 wards parallel to the 146 E. meridian, and parallel also to 

 the probable, edge of the plateau. The mean velocity for 

 the months of this December and January was about 1 1 

 miles an hour. During this plateau journey Scott logged 

 wind force 5 and over on 23 occasions, and this wind was 

 in their faces from the Beardmore to the Pole, and at their 

 backs as they returned. A low temperature when it is calm 

 is paradise compared to a higher temperature with a wind, 

 and it is this constant pitiless wind, combined with the 

 altitude and low temperatures, which has made travelling 

 on the Antarctic plateau so difficult. 



While the mean velocity of wind during the two mid- 

 summer months seems to be fairly constant, there is a very 



1 Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. pp. 541-542. 

 2 Simpson, B.A.E., rgio-igrj, " Meteorology," vol. i. pp. 144-146. 



