200 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
food in times of hunger, or possibly of purely imaginary 
grievances, which may become distorted into real founda- 
tions of discord under the abnormal strain of living for 
months in the unrelieved company of three other men. If 
your companions have much the same tastes as yourself it 
is best to pool your allowance of weights and take one book 
which will offer a wide field of thought and discussion. I 
have heard Scott and Wilson bless the thought which led 
them to take Darwin’s Origin of Species on their first 
Southern Journey. Such is the object of your sledging 
book, but you often want the book which you read for half 
an hour before you go to sleep at Winter Quarters to take 
you into the frivolous fripperies of modern social life which 
you may not know and may never wish to know, but which 
it is often pleasant to read about, and never so much so as 
when its charms are so remote as to be entirely tantalizing. 
Scott, who always amazed me by the amount of work 
he got through without any apparent effort, was essenti- 
ally the driving force of the expedition: in the hut quietly 
organizing, working out masses of figures, taking the 
greatest interest in the scientific work of the station, and 
perhaps turning out, quite by the way, an elaborate paper 
on an abstruse problem in the neighbourhood ; fond of his 
pipe and a good book, Browning, Hardy (Tess was one of 
his favourites), Galsworthy. Barrie was one of his greatest 
friends. 
He was eager to accept suggestions if they were work- 
able, and always keen to sift even the most unlikely theories _ 
if by any means they could be shaped to the desired end: 
a quick and modern brain which he applied with thorough- 
ness to any question of practice or theory. Essentially an 
attractive personality, with strong likes and dislikes, he 
excelled in making his followers his friends by a few words | 
of sympathy or praise: I have never known anybody, man 
or woman, who could be so attractive when he chose. 
Sledging he went harder than any man of whom I have 
ever heard. Men never realized Scott until they had gone 
sledging with him. On our way up the Beardmore Glacier 
we were going at top pressure some seventeen hours out of 
