lx WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
their crowded life with a humour with which, perhaps, we 
hardly credited him, and with a simplicity which many 
writers of children’s stories might envy. If you think 
your own life hard, and would like to leave it for a short 
hour I recommend you to beg, borrow or steal this tale, 
and read and see how the penguins live. It is all quite 
true. 
So there is already a considerable literature about the 
expedition, but no connected account of it as a whole. 
Scott’s diary, had he lived, would merely have formed the 
basis of the book he would have written. As his personal 
diary it has an interest which no other book could have had. 
But a diary in this life is one of the only ways in which a 
man can blow off steam, and so it is that Scott’s book accen- 
tuates the depression which used to come over him some- 
times. 
We have seen the importance which must attach to the 
proper record of improvements, weights and methods of 
each and every expedition. We have seen how Scott took 
the system developed by the Arctic Explorers at the point 
of development to which it had been brought by Nansen, 
and applied it for the first time to Antarctic sledge travel- 
ling. Scott’s Voyage of the Discovery gives a vivid picture 
of mistakes rectified, and of improvements of every kind. 
Shackleton applied the knowledge they gained in his first 
expedition, Scott in this, his second and last. On the whole 
I believe this expedition was the best equipped there has 
ever been, when the double purpose, exploratory and scien- 
tific, for which it was organized, is taken into considera- 
tion. It is comparatively easy to put all your eggs into 
one basket, to organize your material and to equip and 
choose your men entirely for one object, whether it be the 
attainment of the Pole, or the running of a perfect series 
of scientific observations. Your difficulties increase many- 
fold directly you combine the one with the other, as was 
done in this case. Neither Scott nor the men with him 
would have gone for the Pole alone. Yet they considered 
the Pole to be an achievement worthy of a great attempt, 
and “‘ We took risks, we knew we took them; things have 
