THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



Ci^aptet: fiOne 



SOME NOTES ON THE SOUTHERN JOURNEY 



l^ZE brought back with us from the journey towards the 

 ^ ^ Pole vivid memories of how it feels to be intensely, 

 fiercely hungry. During the period from November 15, 

 1908, to February 23, 1909, we had but one full 

 meal, and that was on Christmas Day. Even then we 

 did not keep the sense of repletion for very long, for 

 within an hour or two it seemed to us that we were 

 as hungry as ever. Our daily allowance of food would 

 have been a small one for a city worker in a temperate 

 climate, and in our case hunger was increased by the 

 fact that we were performing vigorous physical labour 

 in a very low temperature. We looked forward to 

 each meal with keen anticipation, but when the food 

 was in our hands it seemed to disappear without making 

 us any the less ravenous. The evening meal at the 

 end of ten hours' sledging used to take us a long 

 time to prepare. The sledges had to be unpacked 

 and the camp pitched. Then the cooker was filled 

 with snow and the Primus lamp ht, often no easy 

 matter with our cold, frost-bitten fingers. The materials 

 for the thin hoosh would be placed in the boiling- 

 pot, with the addition, perhaps, of some pony maize, 

 and the allowance of tea was placed in the outer 

 boiler. The tea was always put in a strainer, con- 

 sisting of a small tin in which we had punched a 



1 



