6i6 
SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION 
leave one behind to follow on foot at leisure. I never did get left 
the whole of this depdt journey, but I was often very near it and 
several times had only time to seize a strap or a part of the sledge and 
be dragged along helter-skelter over everything that came in the way 
till the team got sick of galloping and one could struggle to one's 
feet again. One gets very wary and wide awake when one has to 
manage a team of eleven dogs and a sledge load by oneself, but it was 
a most interesting experience, and I had a delightful leader, ' Starcck ' 
by name — Russian for ' Old Man/ and he was the most wise old man. 
We have to use Russian terms with all our dogs. 1 Ki Ki ' means go to 
the right, ' Chui ' means go to the left, 1 Esh to ' means lie down — 
and the remainder arc mostly swear words which mean everything 
else which one has to say to a dog team. Dog driving like this in 
the orthodox manner is a very different thing to the beastly dog driving 
we perpetrated in the Discovery days. I got to love all my team 
and they got to know me well, and my old leader even now, six months 
after I have had anything to do with him, never fails to come and speak 
to me whenever he sees me, and he knows me and my voice ever so far 
off. lie is quite a ridiculous ' old man ' and quite the nicest, quietest, 
cleverest old dog I have ever come across. He looks in face as if he 
knew all the wickedness of all the world and all its cares and as if he 
were bored to death by them. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.] 
Note 13, p. 160. — February 15. There were also innumerable 
subsidences of the surface — the breaking of crusts over air spaces 
under them, large areas of dropping a J inch or so with a hushing 
sort of noise or muffled report. My leader Stareck, the nicest and 
wisest old dog in both teams, thought there was a rabbit under the 
crust every time one gave way close by him and he would jump side- 
ways with both feet on the spot and his nose in the snow. The action 
was like a flash and never checked the team — it was most amusing. 
1 have another funny little dog, Mukaka, small but very game and 
a good worker. He is paired with a fat, lazy and very greedy black 
dog, Nugis by name, and in every march this sprightly little Mukaka 
will once or twice notice that Nugis is not pulling and will jump over 
the trace, bite Nugis like a snap, and be back again in his own place 
before the fat dog knows what has happened. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.] 
Note 13a, p. 183. — Taking up the story from the point where eleven 
of the thirteen dogs had been brought to the surface, Mr. Cherry- 
Garrard's Diary records: 
This left the two at the bottom. Scott had several times wanted 
to go down. Bill said to me that he hoped he wouldn't, but now 
he insisted. We found the Alpine rope would reach, and then lowered 
Scott down to the platform, sixty feet below. I thought it very 
plucky. We then hauled the two dogs up on the rope, leaving Scott 
below. Scott said the dogs were very glad to sec him ; they had 
curled up asleep — it was wonderful they had no bones broken. 
