346 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [November 
was the mast of the sledge. The tent was practically on 
the line of cairns which we had built in the previous 
season. It was within a quarter of a mile of the remains 
of the cairn, which showed as a small hummock beneath 
the snow. 
Inside the tent were the bodies of Captain Scott, Doctor 
Wilson, and Lieutenant Bowers. They had pitched their 
tent well, and it had withstood all the blizzards of an 
exceptionally hard winter. Each man of the Expedition 
recognised the bodies. From Captain Scott's diary I 
found his reasons for this disaster. When the men had 
been assembled I read to them these reasons, the place 
of death of Petty Officer Evans, and the story of Captain 
Oates' heroic end. 
We recovered all their gear and dug out the sledge 
with their belongings on it. Amongst these were 35 lbs. 
of very important geological specimens which had been 
collected on the moraines of the Beardmore Glacier ; at 
Doctor Wilson's request they had stuck to these up to 
the very end, even when disaster stared them in the face 
and they knew that the specimens were so much weight 
added to what they had to pull. 
When everything had been gathered up, we covered 
them with the outer tent and read the Burial Service. 
From this time until well into the next day we started 
to build a mighty cairn above them. This cairn was 
finished the next morning, and upon it a rough cross was 
placed, made from the greater portion of two skis, and 
on either side were up-ended two sledges, and they were 
fixed firmly in the snow, to be an added mark. Between 
