CAPT. SCOTT’S EPIC ADVENTURE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18467, 8 January 1930, Page 7

CAPT. SCOTT’S EPIC ADVENTURE.

STEPHEN GWYNN’S NOBLE STORY. UNPUBLISHED LETTERS TO WIFE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON. November 26. The story of Captain Scott and his conquest of the South Pole is one hat will never grow old. It is admuabiy told, with many new details, in a volume “Captain Scott” (Bodley Head), which is perhaps the best in a fine series, and it has the advantage of being written by Mr Stephen Gyvnn, who was an intimate friend of Captain Scott and himself is a man of action as well as of letters. Mr Gwynn has been able to publish many of Captain Scott’s letters to his wife which have not before seen the light, and which, like almost everything that great explorer wrote, deserve to be treasured. His final expedition, which was to see his triumph and death, was undertaken on his own initiative and responsibility. For it he had to pledge all that he possessed and to beg for funds—and funds enme in but slowly.

Nevertheless he was able “to avoid all parsimony in the equipment, of his expedition,” and late in 1910 he sailed for his last adventure.

Make Him Strenuous. From the start, as he wrote afterwards in his last hours, “things came out against him.” The voyage was unusually stormy; the pack was exceptionally difficult. But he kept his serenity. Aoout to land on the Antarctic continent, he wrote to his wife about their boy: The one thing that comes in on me more and more is the necessity to make him strenuous. Sometimes it seems to me that hard work is the panacea for all ills, moral and physical. The run of misfortunes continued, i The best of his motor sledges was lost; j three of his ponies perished; and he 1 learnt that a competitor, the Nor- j wegian Amundsen, was in the field, i also making an attempt on the South ( Pole and was almost certain to be first j there. There is no doubt that Amundsen’s j plan is a very serious menace to curs, . he wrote. He has a shorter distance j to the Pole by 60 miles—l never | thought he could have got so many dogs safely to the ice. His plan for ] running them seems excellent. But j | above and beyond all he can start [ his journey early in the season—an 1 almost impossible condition with ponies (which Scott used). “ Y our Courage Thrills Me.” Before Scott started for the Pole he wrote a letter to his wife in which he said: Of course, most of this is the willmaking of a particularly healthy man. I don’t feel at all like re- - maining here; in fact I never felt better or fitter for hard work in all my life. I’m not going to desert you if I can help it. I can see you setting off to your various missions in a wholly practical manner. The antithesis of the pathetic grass ; widow. Bless you .... At such a l time as this it thrills me most to : think of your courage. In a touching passage he referred to 1 his mother;

In these last strenuous years I seem to have had so little tim<- to spare to her. She is getting old I think the point is to persuade ber that she is useful. It must be very bad when one realises that one has come to be unnecessary—the fortunate part is that it is rarely realised, but mother might be the sort of person to think about herself. The catastrophe on the long, bitter, homeward march was due to disappointment at the Norwegians having been the first at the Pole, to the breakdown of two of Scott’s companions, to abnormally bad weather and exceptional cold, and to a leakage of the oil on which they depended for heat. But Scott, Wilson and Bowers reached a point only 11 miles from a l.uge depot known as One Ton Camp, where they would have been safe. Again fortune had struck at them. Owing to bad weather in the previous year the depot had been laid out 32 miles north of the intended position; had it been where it was meant to be they would have survived. “The little more and how much it is.” There, almost within sight of security, they perished of hunger, unable to move owing to a blizzard which raged for ten days The Last Letter. Scott’s closing entry in his journal was the pathetic cry: “For God’s sake look after our people.” From his last letter to his wife we give extracts as yet unpublished: Wo are in a very tight corner and have doubts of pulling through.—ln our short lunch hours I take advantage of a very small measure of warmth to write letters preparatory to a possible end. The. first is, naturally, to you, on whom my thoughts mostly dwell waking or sleeping. If anything happens to me I should like you to know how much you have meant to me, what pleasant recollections are with me as I depart. You must not imagine a great tragedy .... The cold is trying and sometimes angering, but here again the hot food which drives it forth is so wonderfully enjoyable that one would scarcely be without it. . . . I must write a little letter for the boy if time can be found, to be read when he grows up. The inherited vice from my side of the family is indolence .... My father was idle and it brought much trouble .... Try and make him believe in a God, it is comforting—. Dear, you will be good to the old mother. I write her a little line . . . Don’t be too proud to accept help for the boy’s sake. He ought to have a fine career and do something in the world. Two farewells to his mother, “his dear, dear Mother,” followed. I die at peace with the world . . . believing that there is a God—a merciful God. I wish you could have been spared this blow .... Still I hope that I leave a memory to be proud of—we have done a very big journey and failed only by a very narrow margin. God bless you, dear— ... I wish I had been a greater comfort to you.