APPENDIX 
631 
eight marches as against ten, showing the first slight slackening as 
P.O. Evans and Oates began to feel the cold ; from Upper Glacier to 
Lower Glacier Depot ten marches as against eleven, a stage broken by 
the Mid-Glacier Depot of three and a half days' provisions at the sixth 
march. Here there was little gain, partly owing to the conditions, 
but more to Evans' gradual collapse. 
The worst time came on the Barrier ; from Lower Glacier 
to Southern Barrier Depot (51 miles), 6 J marches as against 5 (two 
of which were short marches, so that the 5 might count as an easy 
4 in point of distance) ; from Southern Barrier to Mid Barrier 
Depot (82 miles), 6J marches as against 5J ; from Mid Barrier to 
Mt. Hooper (70 miles), 8 as against 4J, while the last remaining 8 
marches represent but 4 on the outward journey. (See table on next 
page.) 
As to the cause of the shortage, the tins of oil at the depots had 
been exposed to extreme conditions of heat and cold. The oil was 
specially volatile, and in the warmth of the sun (for the tins were 
regularly set in an accessible place on the top of the cairns) tended 
to become vapour and escape through the stoppers even without 
damage to the tins. This process was much accelerated by reason 
that the leather washers about the stoppers had perished in the great 
cold. Dr. Atkinson gives two striking examples of this. 
1. Eight one-gallon tins in a wooden case, intended for a depot at 
Cape Crozicr, had been put out in September 191 1. They were snowed 
up ; and when examined in December 1912 showed three tins full, 
three empty, one a third full, and one two-thirds full. 
2. When the search party reached One Ton Camp in November 191 2 
they found that some of the food, stacked in a canvas f tank ' at the 
foot of the cairn, was quite oily from the spontaneous leakage of the 
tins seven feet above it on the top of the cairn. 
The tins at the depots awaiting the Southern Party had of course 
been opened and the due amount to be taken measured out by the 
supporting parties on their way back. However carefully rc-stoppcred. 
they were still liable to the unexpected evaporation and leakage already 
described. Hence, without any manner of doubt, the shortage which 
struck the Southern Party so hard. 
Note 27, />. 594. — The Fatal Blizzard. Mr. Frank Wild, who led 
one wing of Dr. Mawson's Expedition on the northern coast of the 
Antarctic continent, Queen Mary's Land, many miles to the west of 
the Ross Sea, writes that 1 from March 21 for a period of nine days we 
were kept in camp by the same blizzard which proved fatal to Scott 
and his gallant companions' (Times, June 2, 1913). Blizzards, 
however, arc so local that even when, as in this case, two are nearly 
contemporaneous, it is not safe to conclude that they arc part of the 
same current of air. 
