434 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [October 
night and day and bringing woeful accounts of their 
small ailments into the hut. 
' X. . . . has a positive passion for helping others — 
it is extraordinary what pains he will take to do a kind 
thing unobtrusively. 
* One sees the need of having one's heart in one's work. 
Results can only be got down here by a man desperately 
eager to get them. 
4 Y. . . . works hard at his own work, taking extra- 
ordinary pains with it, but with an astonishing lack of 
initiative he makes not the smallest effort to grasp the 
work of others ; it is a sort of character which plants 
itself in a corner and will stop there. 
' The men are equally fine. Edgar Evans has proved 
a useful member of our party ; he looks after our sledges 
and sledge equipment with a care of management and 
a fertility of resource which is truly astonishing — on 
■ trek ' he is just as sound and hard as ever and has an 
inexhaustible store of anecdote. 
* Crcan is perfectly happy, ready to do anything and 
go anywhere, the harder the work, the better. Evans and 
Crean are great friends. Lashly is his old self in every 
respect, hard working to the limit, quiet, abstemious, and 
determined. You see altogether I have a good set of 
people with me, and it will go hard if we don't achieve 
something. 
' The study of individual character is a pleasant pastime 
