IQI2] 
FARKWKU, UTTKRS 
601 
some day. I want to thank you lor the friendship you 
gave mc of late years, and to tell you how extraordinarily 
pleasant I found it to serve under you. I want to tell 
you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger 
men that went under first. . . . After all we arc setting 
a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into 
a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. 
We could have come through had we neglected the sick. 
Good-bye, and good-bye to dear Lady Bridgcman. 
Yours ever, 
R. Scott. 
Excuse writing — it is -40, and has been for nigh a 
month. 
To Vice-Admiral Sir George le Clerc Egerton, K.C./t. 
My niiAK Sir Gborgb, 
I fear wc have shot our bolt — but we have been 
to Pole and done the longest journey on record. 
I hope these letters may find their destination some 
day. 
Subsidiary reasons of our failure to return arc due to 
the sickness of different members of the party, but the 
real thing that has stopped us is the awful weather and 
unexpected cold towards the end of the journey. 
This traverse of the Barrier has been quite three times 
as severe as any experience wc had on the summit. 
There is no accounting for it, but the result has thrown 
out my calculations, and here wc arc little more than 
100 miles from the base and petering out. 
