“THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3596, 13 February 1923, Page 49

“THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD.”

ANOTHER STORY OF SCOTT’S EXPEDITION. CHARACTER OF THE LEADER. MR CTfE R RY-O A R RA R D ON THE WINTER EXPEDITION. (Fbom Ooe Own Cobbespondent.) LONDON, December 20. In taking up a new volume setting out the wonderful etory of the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-1913. one is bound to wonder what phase of this epic of adventure

and endurance another writer can deal with that has not been touched upon before. Mr Apsley Cherry-Garravd’s The Worst Journey in the World,” in two volumes (Constable, 635), is undoubtedly a great addition to records of Polar exploration generally, but, more than that, it throws a vivid light upon Scott’s expedition, which no writer hitherto has either desired or dared to deal with. Mr Cherry-G arrard was one of the youngest of the party Had he written his book soon after their return from the Antarctic he would not have done justice to himself nor to the expedition. As it is, he has had 10 years in which to mature his judgment, and he writes with the perspective that the passing years have provided, and with the knowledge of human nature that the war and all pertaining to it have helped him to obtain. This is a book not written in baste. The author has had access to unpublished diaries, letters, and illustrations, and feeling that the recording of the dull routine has already been done by others, he allows himself a freer hand. For the first time the details of ‘‘The Worst Jonrney in the World” have been told. Certainly, Mr Cherry-Garrard provided a modest account of the winter journey in Volume JI of “Scott’s Last Expedition,” and Capta/in Evans mentions it briefly in his “South With Scott,” but this is the first time this journey, undertaken in the darkness of the Polar winter to secure the eggs of the Emperor penguins, is recounted in full. LASHLY’S DIARY. Another outstanding feature of the volumes is the reproduction for the first time of Lashly’s diary. Lashly, it will be remembered, was a chief stoker of the Royal Navy, and it was to him and to Petty Officer Crean that Lieutenant E. R. G. R. Evans owed his life. Lashly’s diary, covering their trek back from the top of the Beardmore Glacier with their ailing chief, i 3 a most extraordinary document of courage, eommonsense, and determinaiion. But for the first time a master literary portrait is provided of Scott himself. Hitherto we have seen Scott in the Antarctic sketched on more or less broad lines. Mr Cherry-Garrard has had the courage to paint his picture in vivid detail, a method he has also employed with Lieutenant Bowers, Dt Wilson, and others. For these and many other reasons, therefore, this new work may be read with quite as much pleasure as that by Lieutenant (now Captain) Evans, Mr H. G. Ponting, and by Captain Scott himself. Moreover, there is a literary style which makes these two large volumes something more than an absorbing record of British exploration. The author approaches his subject in easy stages, for some 64 pages are devoted to a comparative treatise on Polar exploration generally. Preparations, and the first winter in camp, form the subject of the greater part of the first volume, but some 70 pages at the end dealing with the winter journey are excuse enough for the publication of the whole work. THE WINTER JOURNEY. Soott, in his diary, wrote of this " most gallant story of Polar history ” : “ That men should wander forth in the depth of a Polar ni°iit to face the most dismal cold and the fiercest gales in darkness is something new; that they should have persisted in this effort in spite of every adversity for five full weeks is heroic. It makes a tale for our generation which I hope, may not be lost in the telling.” Mr Cherry-Garrard, the only one of this expedition who survives, has, therefore, had a duty to his day and generation to tell the tale. Though he has done it with humility, it may be said quite truthfully he has lost nothing in the telling.

“ The horror of the 19 days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crosier/' he says, in the course of his narrative, ” would have to be experienced to be appreciated: a.nd anyone would be a fool who went again: it is not possible to describe it. The weeks which followed them were comparative bliss, not because later our conditions were better—they were far worse, —but because we were oallous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They tali of the heroism of the dying—they little know—-it would be so easy io die. « clone of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on

FIVE HOURS TO START. ” It was the darkness that did it. I don’t believe minus 70 temperatures would be bad in daylight, not comparatively bad, when you could see where you were going, where you were stepping, w-here the sledge straps were, the cooker, the primus, the food; could see your footsteps lately trodden deep in to the soft snow that you might find your way back to the rest of your load; oould see the lashings of the food bags; could read a compass without striking three or four different xes to find one dry match; could read your watch to see if the blissful moment of getting out of your bag was come without groping in the snow all about; when it would not take five minutes to lash up the door of the tent, and five hours to get started in the morning . .. . “ But in these days we were never less than four hours from the moment when Bill cried ‘ Time to get up ’ to the time when we got into our harness. It took two men to get one man into his harness, and was all they could do, for the canvas was frozen and our clothes were frozen until sometimes not even two men could bend them into the required shape.” GOLD, PURE GOLD. This is a tribute to his companions, tile two who slept their last sleep with Scott, at a later date: “In civilisation men are taken at their own valuation because there are so many ways of concealment, and there is so little time, perhaps even so little understanding. Not so down South. These two' men went through the winter journey and lived; later they went through the Tolar journey and died. They were gold, pure, shining, unalloyed. Words cannot express how good their companionship was. . . . Endurance was tested on this journeyunder "unique circumstances, and alwaye these two men with all the burden of responsibility which did not fall upon myself, displayed that quality- which is perhaps the only one which may be said with certainty to make for success, self-control.” That they were successful in obtaining their Emperor penguins’ eggs is a matter of history—surely the greatest sacrifice ever made in the causa of science. “Such extremity of suffering cannot be measured; madness or death may give relief. But this I know: We on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend. As we groped our way back that night, sleepless, icy, and dog-tired in the dark and the wind and the drift, a crevasse seemed almost a friend gift.” SPECTRE OF BLANK DISASTER, But real disaster descended upon them when their tent was blown away by the blizzard, and they foresaw nothing but death before them. “I can well believe that neither of my companions gave up hope for an instaut They must have been frightened, but they were never disturbed. As for me, I never had any hope at all; and when the root went I f elt (hat this was the end. What else could 1 think? We had spent days in reaching this place through the darkness in cold such as had never been experienced by human beings. We had 1 been out for four weeks under conditions in which no man had existed previously for more than a few days, if that. During this time we had seldom slept excepWrom Bheer physical exhaustion, as men sleep on the rack; and every minute of it we had been fighting for the bed-rock necessaries of bare existence, and always in the dark. We had kept ourselves going by enormous care of our feet and hands and bodies, by burning oil, and by having plenty of hot fal ty food. Now we had no tent, one ton of oil left out of six, and only part of our cooker. When we were lucky and not too cold we could almost wring water from our clothes, and directly we got out of our ■sleeping bags we were frozen into solid sheets of armoured ice. In cold temperatures with all the avantages of a tent over our heads we were already taking more than an hour of fierce struggling and clamp to get into our sleeping-bags—so frozen were they, and so long did it take us to thaw our way in. No! Without the tent we were dead men.” Providence restored their tent intact, and how they returned to their companions the reader may learn for himself. A COMPARISON. A few excerpts from the author’s summing up will be of interest. I now see very plainly,” he says, ’’ that though we achieved a first-rate tragedy, which will never be forgotten just because it was a tragedy, tragedy was -not our business. In the broad perspecive opened up by 10 years’ distance, I see not one journey to (lie Pole, but two, in_. startling- contrast one to another. On the one hand. Amundsen going straight there, getting there first, and returning withoui the loss of a single man, and without having put any greater strain on himself and his men than was all in the day’s work of polar exploration. Nothing more business-like could be imagined. On the other hand, our expedition, running appalling risks, performing prodigies of superhuman endurance, achieving immortal renown, commemorated in august cathedral sermons and by public statues, yet reaching the Pole only to find our terrible journey superfluous, and. leaving our best men dead on the ice. WASTE OF MAN-POWER. “ But we wasted our man-power in one way which could have been avoided. I have described how every emergency was met by calling for volunteers, and how the volunteers were always forthcoming. Unfortunately, volunteering was relied on not only for emergencies, but for a good deal of everydaywork that should have been Organised as routine : and the inevitable result was. that the willing horses were overworked. It was a point of honour not to ca’ canny. Men were allowed to do too much, and were told afterwards that they had done too much; and that is not discipline. They should not have been allowed to do too much. Until our last year, we never insisted on a regular routine.” Of the ship the author has something veryscathing to say. “ One of the first and most important items—the shin—would have sent Columbus on strike, and nearly sent us to the bottom of the sea. When one thinks of these Nimrods and Terra Novas, picked up secondhand in the wooden-ship market, and faked up for the transport of ponies, dogs, motors, and all the impedimenta of a polar expedition, to say nothing of the men who have to try and do scientific work inside them, one feels disposed to clamour for a polar factoryact making it a crime to ship men for the ice in vessels more fit to ply between London Bridge and Ramsgate. And then the begging that is necessary to obtain even this equipment,. Shackleton. hanging round the doors of rich men 1 Scott writing begging letters for months together! Is the country not ashamed?” CAUSES OF SCOTT’S TRAGEDY. Mr Cherry-Garrard discusses the cause of the tragedy. " It is a fact,” ke writes, “that the polar party failed to make their distance because they became weak, and that they became weak although, they were eating their full ration or more than their full of food,

save for a few days when they went short on the way down the Beardmore Glacier. The first man to weaken was the biggest and heaviest man in the expedition: ‘ the man whom we had least expected to fail.' ” “■ . . Undoubtedly the low temperatures caused their death, inasmuch as they would have lived had the temperatures remained high. But Evans would not have lived; he died before the low temperatures occurred. What killed Evans? And why did the other men weaken as they did, though they were eating full rations and more? Weaken so much that in the end they starved to death? I have always had a doubt whether the weather conditions were sufficient to cause the tragedy-. These men, on full rations, were supposed to be eating food of sufficient value to enable them to do the work they were doing, under the conditions which they actually met until the end of February, without loss of strength. They had more than their full rations, but the conditions in March were much worse than they imagined to be possible. AYhen three survivors out of the five pitched their last camp they were in a terrible state.” SCOTT’S TEMPERAMENT. What will probably surprise many people is that the leader, Captain Scott, was not physically very strong, while temperamentally he was a weak man,” “femininely sensitive,” and “cried more easily than any man I have ever known.” “What pulled Scott through,” says the writer, “was character, sheer good grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together. . . Notwithstanding the immense fits of depression which attacked him, Scott was the strongest combination of e strong man in a strong body that I have ever known. And this because he was so weak! Naturally so peevish, highly strung, irritable, depressed, and moody-. Practically such a conquest of himself, such vitality, such push and determination, and withal in himself such personal and magnetic, charm.”