Chapter I: Introduction

The great adventure of Scott’s last expedition has been given to the world in the faithful simplicity of the leader’s own words, as they were set down from day to day. His diaries were but the basis of the book that should have been written. We have not the half of what he could have told us. But in another sense, that half is greater than the whole. Here stand first impressions, not retouched: the ebb and flow of his hopes and fears, the lights and shadows of the moment, never reviewed in later perspective after the event; thumbnail sketches of character, vividly set down; notes of the day which reveal his spirit entering into the spirit of his men: and at the end, the singleness of heart that could give all and accept all for one high purpose. I have often liked to think—surely it is true—that the universal thrill awakened by his example strung up the soul of the nation unawares for the great call so soon to be made upon it.

The other half of the picture has been partly filled in. Others have given the history of outlying explorations with their tale of human resource and endurance; they have recorded scientific results or described special branches of natural history in the Antarctic. Something, however, is still left to be told. No one will forget Captain Scott’s almost incredulous delight at the goodwill and harmony of his little company under the trying conditions of Ross Island. It is for Mr. Griffith Taylor to tell of the daily life of that company from within, to tell in careless detail its lighthearted cheerfulness lining solid effort, which the cloud of English earnestness so constantly turns out upon the night.

The “other side of the shield” is too often a byword for irreconcilable contradictions. It is not so here. The reader is doubly grateful. He is grateful for the details of the daily round as it passed in the explorers’ hut; he is grateful for the sense that new testimony only bears out former report.

Nor are these personal impressions all, though they extend over a longer period than that covered in the “Last Expedition.” Mr. Griffith Taylor also gathers up what has in large measure appeared elsewhere, the story of his own explorations and much of his general scientific results in geology and physiography, so that his Antarctic experiences stand together as a union in thought and action of all that is typified by the old name and the new, Cambridge and Melbourne, each his Alma Mater.

The book makes its appearance in the midst of a great war, when books are too often regarded as a first luxury to be cut off. Nevertheless I hope that many will be able to find in its pages some refreshment of mind, some relaxation from the long strain, some strengthening of faith in the latent spirit of the Greater England which has sent its sons from the four quarters of the world to stand beside the Old Country in the hour of destiny.

LEONARD HUXLEY.

_February, 1916._

CONTENTS

I
PAGE
GETTING TO KNOW THE MEN 1

II
THE _TERRA NOVA_ GOES SOUTH 19
i. The Geologists visit the New Zealand Glaciers 21
ii. Ship Life in Calm and Storm 30
iii. Learning the Ropes 45
iv. Blocked by the Pack Ice 56
v. Through the Ross Sea 79
vi. Making Winter Quarters at Cape Evans 87

III
FIRST WESTERN EXPEDITION, JANUARY–MARCH, 1911 111

IV
A MONTH IN THE OLD _DISCOVERY_ HUT, MARCH–APRIL, 1911 187

V
IN WINTER QUARTERS WITH CAPTAIN SCOTT, APRIL–NOVEMBER, 1911 211

VI
GRANITE HARBOUR EXPEDITION 329

VII
THE VOYAGE BACK, FEBRUARY–MARCH, 1912 413

VIII
THE END OF THE EXPEDITION 437