THE FIRST WINTER 07 
Now unless a man believes that such a view is wrong he 
kas no business to be ‘down South.’ Our magnetic and 
meteorological work may, I suppose, have a fairly imme- 
diate bearing upon commerce and shipping: otherwise 
I cannot imagine any branch of our labours which will do 
more at present than swell the central pool of unapplied 
knowledge. ‘The members of this expedition believed that 
it was worth while to discover new land and new life, to 
reach the Southern Pole of the earth, to make elaborate 
meteorological and magnetic observations and extended 
geological surveys with all the other branches of research 
for which we were equipped. They were prepared to suffer 
great hardship; and some of them died for their beliefs. 
Without such ideals the spirit which certainly existed in 
our small community would have been impossible. 
But if the reasons for this happy state of our domestic 
life were due largely to the adaptability and keenness of the 
members of our small community, I doubt whether the 
frictions which have caused other expeditions to be less 
comfortable than they might have been, would have been 
avoided in our case, had it not been for the qualities in 
some of our men which set a fashion of hard work without 
any thought of personal gain. 
With all its troubles it is a good life. We came back 
from the Barrier, telling one another we loathed the place 
and nothing on earth should make us return. But now the 
Barrier comes back to us, with its clean, open life, and the 
smell of the cooker, and its soft sound sleep. So much of 
the trouble of this world is caused by memories, for we 
only remember half. 
We have forgotten—or nearly forgotten—how the loss 
of a biscuit crumb left a sense of injury which lasted for 
a week ; how the greatest friends were so much on one 
another’s nerves that they did not speak for days for fear of 
quarrelling ; how angry we felt when the cook ran short 
on the weekly bag ; how sick we were after the first meals 
when we could eat as much as we liked ; how anxious we 
were when a man fell ill many hundreds of miles from 
home, and we had a fortnight of thick weather and had to 
