SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION 
where it was. It was a curious fact that with as much clean ice to 
live on as they could have wished for, these destitute derelicts of a 
flourishing colony now gone north to sea on floating bay ice should 
have preferred to remain standing on the only piece of bay ice left, 
a piece about ten feet square and now pressed up six feet above water 
level, evidently wondering why it was so long in starting north with 
the general exodus which must have taken place just a month ago. 
The whole incident was most interesting and full of suggestion as to 
the slow working of the brain of these queer people. Another point was 
most weird to see, that on the under side of this very dirty piece of 
sea ice, which was about two feet thick and which hung over the 
water as a sort of cave, we could sec the legs and lower halves of dead 
Emperor chicks hanging through, and even in one place a dead adult. 
I hope to make a picture of the whole quaint incident, for it was a 
corner crammed full of Imperial history in the light of what we already 
knew, and it would otherwise have been about as unintelligible as any 
group of animate or inanimate nature could possibly have been. As 
it is, it throws more light on the life history of this strangely primitive 
bird. . . . 
We were joking in the boat as we rowed under these cliffs and 
saying it would be a short-lived amusement to sec the overhanging cliff 
part company and fall over us. So we were glad to find that we were 
rowing back to the ship and already 200 or 300 yards away from the 
place and in open water when there was a noise like crackling thunder 
and a huge plunge into the sea and a smother of rock dust like the 
smoke of an explosion, and we realised that the very thing had happened 
which we had just been talking about. Altogether it was a very 
exciting row, for before we got on board we had the pleasure of seeing 
the ship shoved in so close to these cliffs by a belt of heavy pack ice 
that to us it appeared a toss-up whether she got out again or got 
forced in against the rocks. She had no time or room to turn and 
get clear by backing out through the belt of pack stern first, getting 
heavy bumps under the counter and on the rudder as she did so, for 
the ice was heavy and the swell considerable. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.] 
Note 9, p. 119. — Dr. Wilson writes in his Journal: January 14. 
He also told me the plans for our depot journey on which we shall 
be starting in about ten days* time. He wants me to be a dog 
driver with himself, Mcarcs, and Tcddic Evans, and this is what I 
would have chosen had I had a free choice at all. The dogs run in 
two teams and each team wants two men. It means a lot of running 
as they arc being driven now, but it is the fastest and most 
interesting work of all, and we go ahead of the whole caravan with 
lighter loads and at a faster rate ; moreover, if any traction except 
ourselves can reach the top of Bcardmorc Cflacicr, it will be the dogs, 
and the dog drivers arc therefore the people who will have the best 
chance of doing the top piece of the ice cap at 10,000 feet to the Pole. 
