416 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
consequence of previous experience. A vast addition 
to the happiness of life was brought about by the use of 
brilliant acetylene lamps in the living rooms. The winter 
passed happily and surprisingly quickly, and there was 
not a single case of illness. 
With early spring sledge parties began to go out on 
excursions of various length, and intensely bitter cold 
was experienced, vying with any met with by Arctic ex- 
plorers and rarely exceeded even in northern Siberia. 
The temperature for days together kept below — 50° F. 
and once fell as low as — 68°. After many preliminary 
trips the main journey was started on October 26th, when 
Captain Scott led a party including Mr. Skelton and at 
first Mr. Ferrar. The route lay nearly due west, ascend- 
ing one of the great though much shrunken glaciers to 
the vast plateau beyond the mountains. The high altitude 
and the fatigue told heavily on some of the party, and on 
November 22nd Skelton started back to the ship with 
several of the worn-out men, while Scott pushed forward 
with the two hardiest. Although about 9,000 feet above 
sea level the flatness of the ice-surface was hardly 
broken, and the most careful observations with a levelled 
theodolite could just detect the slight inequalities. There 
were no dogs on this expedition and so everything had 
to be hauled by hand on sledges. On November 30th, 
1903, Scott reached his farthest point and fixed the posi- 
tion as 77 0 59' S. and 146° 33' E., a distance of 300 
miles from the ship, toward the centre of the continent 
of Antarctica. The return journey was rapid, and the 
Discovery was safely reached on Christmas Eve after an 
absence of 59 days, the average daily journey having 
thus been about T o miles, as compared with a daily aver- 
age of 8 miles on the great southern journey over the 
