574 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



extent which will never be appreciated, by Wilson : in the 

 last expedition by Bowers. I believe that there has never 

 been a finer sledge party than these three men, who com- 

 bined in themselves initiative, endurance and high ideals 

 to an extraordinary degree. And they could organize : 

 they did organize the Polar Journey and their organization 

 seemed to have failed. Did it fail? Scott said No. "The 

 causes of this disaster are not due to faulty organization, 

 but to misfortune in all risks which had to be undertaken." 

 Nine times out of ten, says the meteorologist, he would 

 have come through : but he struck the tenth. "We took 

 risks, we knew we took them ; things have come out 

 against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint." 

 No better epitaph has been written. 



He decided to use the only route towards the Pole 

 of which the world had any knowledge, that is to go up 

 the Beardmore Glacier, then the only discovered way up 

 through the mountains which divide the polar plateau 

 from the Great Ice Barrier : probably it is the only possible 

 passage for those who travel from McMurdo Sound. The 

 alternative was to winter on the Barrier, as Amundsen did, 

 so many hundred miles away from the coast-line that, in 

 travelling south, the chaos caused in the ice plain by the 

 Beardmore in its outward flow would be avoided. To do 

 so meant the abandonment of a great part of the scientific 

 programme, and Scott was not a man to go south just to 

 reach the Pole. Amundsen knew that Scott was going to 

 McMurdo Sound when he decided to winter in the Bay 

 of Whales : otherwise he might have gone to McMurdo 

 Sound. Probably no man would have refused the know- 

 ledge which had already been gained. 



I have said that there are those who say that Scott 

 should have relied on ski and dogs. If you read Shackle- 

 ton's account of his discovery and passage of the Beard- 

 more Glacier you will not be prejudiced in favour of dogs : 

 and as a matter of fact, though we found a much better way 

 up than Shackleton, I do not believe it possible to take 

 dogs up and down, and over the ice disturbances at the 

 junction with the plateau, unless there is ample time to 



