THE POLAR JOURNEY 521 



live, if things are bad enough : we got to that stage on the 

 Winter Journey. I remember discussing this question with 

 Bowers, who had a scheme of doing himself in with a pick- 

 axe if necessity arose, though how he could have accom- 

 plished it I don't know : or, as he said, there might be a 

 crevasse and at any rate there was the medical case. I was 

 horrified at the time : I had never faced the thing out with 

 myself like that. 



They left the Upper Glacier Depot under Mount 

 Darwin on February 8. This day they collected the most 

 important of those geological specimens to which, at 

 Wilson's special request, they clung to the end, and which 

 were mostly collected by him. Mount Darwin and Buck- 

 ley Island, which are really the tops of high mountains, 

 stick out of the ice at the top of the glacier, and the course 

 ran near to both of them, but not actually up against them. 

 Shackleton found coal on Buckley Island, and it was clear 

 that the place was of great geological importance, for it was 

 one of the only places in the Antarctic where fossils could 

 be found, so far as we knew. The ice-falls stretched away 

 as far as you could see towards the mountains which bound 

 the glacier on either side, and as you looked upwards to- 

 wards Buckley Island they were like a long breaking wave. 

 One of the great difficulties about the Beardmore was that 

 you saw the ice-falls as you went up, and avoided them, but 

 coming down you knew nothing of their whereabouts until 

 you fell into the middle of pressure and crevasses, and then 

 it was almost impossible to say whether you should go right 

 or left to get out. 



Evans was unable to pull this day, and was detached 

 from the sledge, but this was not necessarily a very serious 

 sign : Shackleton on his return journey was not able to pull 

 at this place. Wilson wrote as follows : 



"February 8, Mt. Buckley Cliffs. A very busy day. We 

 had a very cold forenoon march, blowing like blazes from 

 the S. Birdie detached and went on ski to Mt. Darwin and 

 collected some dolerite, the only rock he could see on the 

 Nunatak, which was nearest. We got into a sort of crusted 

 surface where the snow broke through nearly to our knees 



