Note 1, p. 4.—Dogs. These included thirty-three sledging dogs and a collie bitch, 'Lassie.' The thirty-three, all Siberian dogs excepting the Esquimaux 'Peary' and 'Borup,' were collected by Mr. Meares, who drove them across Siberia to Vladivostok with the help of the dog-driver Demetri Gerof, whom he had engaged for the expedition. From Vladivostok, where he was joined by Lieutenant Wilfred Bruce, he brought them by steamer to Sydney, and thence to Lyttelton. The dogs were the gift of various schools, as shown by the following list:

Note 2, p. 6.—Those who are named in these opening pages were all keen supporters of the Expedition. Sir George Clifford, Bart., and Messrs. Arthur and George Rhodes were friends from Christchurch. Mr. M.J. Miller, Mayor of Lyttelton, was a master shipwright and contractor, who took great interest in both the Discovery and the Terra Nova, and stopped the leak in the latter vessel which had been so troublesome on the voyage out. Mr. Anderson belonged to the firm of John Anderson & Sons, engineers, who own Lyttelton Foundry. Mr. Kinsey was the trusted friend and representative who acted as the representative of Captain Scott in New Zealand during his absence in the South. Mr. Wyatt was business manager to the Expedition.

Note 3, p. 16.—Dr. Wilson writes: I must say I enjoyed it all from beginning to end, and as one bunk became unbearable after another, owing to the wet, and the comments became more and more to the point as people searched out dry spots here and there to finish the night in oilskins and greatcoats on the cabin or ward-room seats, I thought things were becoming interesting.

Some of the staff were like dead men with sea-sickness. Even so Cherry-Garrard and Wright and Day turned out with the rest of us and alternately worked and were sick.

I have no sea-sickness on these ships myself under any conditions, so I enjoyed it all, and as I have the run of the bridge and can ask as many questions as I choose, I knew all that was going on.

All Friday and Friday night we worked in two parties, two hours on and two hours off; it was heavy work filling and handing up huge ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/922 ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/923 ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/924 ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/925 ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/926 ​Then Meares' dogs, which were all wandering about loose, started fighting our team, and we all had to leave Scott and go and separate them, which took some time. They fixed on Noogis (I.) badly. We then hauled Scott up: it was all three of us could do—fingers a good deal frost-bitten at the end. That was all the dogs. Scott has just said that at one time he never hoped to get back the thirteen or even half of them. When he was down in the crevasse he wanted to go off exploring, but we dissuaded him. Of course it was a great opportunity. He kept on saying, 'I wonder why this is running the way it is—you expect to find them at right angles.'

Scott found inside crevasse warmer than above, but had no thermometer. It is a great wonder the whole sledge did not drop through: the inside was like the cliff of Dover.

Note 14, p. 197.—February 28. Meares and I led off with a dog team each, and leaving the Barrier we managed to negotiate the first long pressure ridge of the sea ice where the seals all lie, without much trouble—the dogs were running well and fast and we kept on the old tracks, still visible, by which we had come out in January, heading a long way out to make a wide détour round the open water off Cape Armitage, from which a very wide extent of thick black fog, 'frost smoke' as we call it, was rising on our right. This completely obscured our view of the open water, and the only suggestion it gave me was that the thaw pool off the Cape was much bigger than when we passed it in January and that we should probably have to make a détour of three or four miles round it to reach Hut Point instead of one or two. I still thought it was not impossible to reach Hut Point this way, so we went on, but before we had run two miles on the sea ice we noticed that we were coming on to an area broken up by fine thread-like cracks evidently quite fresh, and as I ran along by the sledge I paced them and found they curved regularly at every 30 paces, which could only mean that they were caused by a swell. This suggested to me that the thaw pool off Cape Armitage was even bigger than I thought and that we were getting on to ice which was breaking up, to flow north into it. We stopped to consider, and found that the cracks in the ice we were on were the rise and fall of a swell. Knowing that the ice might remain like this with each piece tight against the next only until the tide turned, I knew that we must get off it at once in case the tide did turn in the next half-hour, when each crack would open up into a wide lead of open water and we should find ourselves on an isolated floe. So we at once turned and went back as fast as possible to the unbroken sea ice. Obviously it was now unsafe to go round to Hut Point by Cape Armitage and we therefore made for the Gap. It was between eight and nine in the evening when we turned, and we soon came in sight of the pony party, led as we thought by Captain Scott. We were within ½ a mile of them when we hurried right across their bows and headed straight for the Gap, making a course more than a right angle off the course we had been on. There was ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/928 ​smoke rising everywhere from it, and full of pieces of floating ice, all going up N. to Ross Sea.

March 1. Ash Wednesday. The question for us was whether we could do anything to help them. There was no boat anywhere and there was no one to consult with, for everyone was on the floating floe as we believed, except Teddie Evans, Forde, and Keohane, who with one pony were on their way back from Corner Camp. So we searched the Barrier for signs of their tent and then saw that there was a tent at Safety Camp, which meant evidently to us that they had returned. The obvious thing was to join up with them and go round to where the pony party was adrift, and see if we could help them to reach the safe ice. So without waiting for breakfast we went off six miles to this tent. We couldn't go now by the Gap, for the ice by which we had reached land yesterday was now broken up in every direction and all on the move up the Strait. We had no choice now but to cross up by Crater Hill and down by Pram Point and over the pressure ridges and so on to the Barrier and off to Safety Camp. We couldn't possibly take a dog sledge this way, so we walked, taking the Alpine rope to cross the pressure ridges, which are full of crevasses.

We got to this tent soon after noon and were astonished to find that not Teddie Evans and his two seamen were here, but that Scott and Oates and Gran were in it and no pony with them. Teddie Evans was still on his way back from Comer Camp and had not arrived. It was now for the first time that we understood how the accident had happened. When we had left Safety Camp yesterday with the dogs, the ponies began their march to follow us. but one of the ponies was so weak after the last blizzard and so obviously about to die that Bowers, Cherry-Garrard, and Crean were sent on with the four capable ponies, while Scott, Oates, and Gran remained at Safety Camp till the sick pony died, which happened apparently that night. He was dead and buried when we got there. We found that Scott had that morning seen the open water up to the Barrier edge and had been in a dreadful state of mind, thinking that Meares and I, as well as the whole pony party, had gone out into the Strait on floating ice. He was therefore much relieved when we arrived and he learned for the first time where the pony party was trying to get to fast ice again. We were now given some food, which we badly wanted, and while we were eating we saw in the far distance a single man coming hurriedly along the edge of the Barrier ice from the direction of the catastrophe party and towards our camp. Gran went off on ski to meet him, and when he arrived we found it was Crean, who had been sent off by Bowers with a note, unencumbered otherwise, to jump from one piece of floating ice to another until he reached the fast edge of the Barrier in order to let Capt. Scott know what had happened. This he did, of course not knowing that we or anyone else had seen him go adrift, and being unable to leave the ponies and all his loaded sledges himself. Crean ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/930 ​We fed them and I walked half-way back to Castle Rock with them.

March 4. Meares, Gran, and I walked up Ski Slope towards Castle Rock to meet Evans's party and pilot them and the dogs safely to Hut Point, but half-way we met Atkinson, who told us that they had now been joined by Scott and all the catastrophe party, who were safe, but who had lost all the ponies except one—a great blow. However, no lives were lost and the sledge loads and stores were saved, so Meares and I returned to Hut Point to make stables for the only two ponies that now remained, both in wretched condition, of the eight with which we started. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

Note 15, p. 202.—March 12. Thawed out some old magazines and picture papers which were left here by the Discovery, and gave us very good reading. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

Note 16, p. 218.—April 4. Fun over a fry I made in my new penguin lard. It was quite a success and tasted like very bad sardine oil. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

Note 17, p. 244.—'Voyage of the Discovery,' chap. ix. 'The question of the moment is, what has become of our boats? Early in the winter they were hoisted out to give more room for the awning, and were placed in a line about one hundred yards from the ice foot on the sea ice. The earliest gale drifted them up nearly gunwale high, and thus for two months they remained in sight whilst we congratulated ourselves on their security. The last gale brought more snow, and piling it in drifts at various places in the bay, chose to be specially generous with it in the neighbourhood of our boats, so that afterwards they were found to be buried three or four feet beneath the new surface. Although we had noted with interest the manner in which the extra weight of snow in other places was pressing down the surface of the original ice, and were even taking measurements of the effects thus produced, we remained fatuously blind to the risks our boats ran under such conditions. It was from no feeling of anxiety, but rather to provide occupation, that I directed that the snow on top of them should be removed, and it was not until we had dug down to the first boat that the true state of affairs dawned on us. She was found lying in a mass of slushy ice, with which also she was nearly filled. For the moment we had a wild hope that she could be pulled up, but by the time we could rig shears the air temperature had converted the slush into hardened ice, and she was found to be stuck fast. At present there is no hope of recovering any of the boats: as fast as one could dig out the sodden ice, more sea-water would flow in and freeze. . . . The danger is that fresh gales bringing more snow will sink them so far beneath the surface that we shall be unable to recover them at all. Stuck solid in the floe they must go down with ​it, and every effort must be devoted to preventing the floe from sinking.' As regards the rope, it is a familiar experience that dark objects which absorb heat will melt their way through the snow or ice on which they lie.