AN ANTARCTIC PARTNERSHIP

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22941, 10 February 1940, Page 16

AN ANTARCTIC PARTNERSHIP

Two Men in the Antarctic: An Expedition to Graham Land, 1930-lWSta. By Thomas Wyatt Bagshawc. Cambridge University Press. 292 pp. {ls/- net.) Four men projected an expedition to Graham Land, where they expected to extend the results of Nordenskjold’s expedition of 1901OS. The two seniors, also the two who had had previous polar experience, reviewed the prospects of the venture at their Antarctic startingpoint and found the and other impediments too heavy. Their juniors, young and inexperienced, geologist and marine officer, resolved to go on independently. They proposed, as Professor Frank Debenham, Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, says in his foreword, “to winter on a tiny islet . . . in a disused boat with a handful of instruments and a scanty stock of provisions.” When they listed their equipment, like a pair of Robinson Crusoes, they had “a hammer and a saw, packing cases and odd nails, lots of ideas and whole ship loads of hope. For luxuries they had an ample supply of unreliable matches, plenty of cigarettes and boxes of creme de menthe sweets.” They had whisky, too, but they kept that as a present for the whalers who were to pick them Up ... . They proposed to take their chance against the difficulties and hardships of existence which were promised them; they proposed more than that, They were determined to carry on the scientific work that; had drawn them there; and the records of it appear in appendices to this book —records astounding in extent and (on Professor Debenham’s word) in quality. But the narrative, matter-of-fact, systematic, modest, is one of day-to-day experience:, housebuilding and housekeeping, foraging, laying qp firewood and stores, dogtending, rigging and working apparatus, Studying their penguin neighbours* and so on. Later chapters, after they were picked up, give a good account of whaling in Antarctic waters. But it is (again the essential reference) the Grusoe interest of the islanders’ life that will grip readers most strongly, the interest of self-adaptation to environment through experience, of accidents breaking perilously through safe routine, of the strange reconciliation between insecurity and content in a solitude so noble, Besides, Bagshawe and his partner are fallows Who disclose themselves in a hundred charming glimpses. They were “sentimental about the eggs” of the penguins, and “could never collect them, except for scientific purposes, from nests where they, had. a good chance of survival.” So, for their omelettes, they restricted themselves to eggs they found “in the mud or lying totally neglected.” The photographs in this excellent book are good as illustrations rather than as pictures.