THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE 
WORLD 
CHAPIER I 
FROM ENGLAND TO SOUTH AFRICA 
‘Take a bowsy short leave of your nymphs on the shore, 
And silence their mourning with vows of returning, 
‘Though never intending to visit them more. : 
Dido and Aeneas. 
ScotTr used to say that the worst part of an expedition was 
over when the preparation was finished. So no doubt it 
was with a sigh of relief that he saw the Terra Nova out 
from Cardiff into the Atlantic on June 15, 1910. Cardiff 
had given the expedition a most generous and enthusiastic 
send-off, and Scott announced that it should be his first 
port on returning to England. Just three years more and 
the Terra Nova, worked back from New Zealand by Pen- 
nell, reached Cardiff again on June 14, 1913, sit paid off 
here. 
From the first everything was informal and wee pleas- 
ant, and those who had the good fortune to help in working 
the ship out to New Zealand, under steam or sail, must, 
in spite of five months of considerable discomfort and very 
hard work, look back upon the voyage as one of the very 
happiest times of the expedition. To some of us perhaps 
the voyage out, the three weeks in the pack ice going 
South, and the Robinson Crusoe life at Hut Point are the 
pleasantest of many happy memories. 
Scott made a great point that so far as was possible the 
personnel of the expedition must go out with the Terra 
I B 
