’I don’t think I will give such long descriptions of the others, though most of them deserve equally high praise.  Taken all round they are a perfectly excellent lot.’

The Soldier is very popular with all—­a delightfully humorous cheery old pessimist—­striving with the ponies night and day and bringing woeful accounts of their small ailments into the hut.

X.... has a positive passion for helping others—­it is extraordinary what pains he will take to do a kind thing unobtrusively.

’One sees the need of having one’s heart in one’s work.  Results can only be got down here by a man desperately eager to get them.

’Y.... works hard at his own work, taking extraordinary pains with it, but with an astonishing lack of initiative he makes not the smallest effort to grasp the work of others; it is a sort of character which plants itself in a corner and will stop there.

’The men are equally fine.  Edgar Evans has proved a useful member of our party; he looks after our sledges and sledge equipment with a care of management and a fertility of resource which is truly astonishing—­on ‘trek’ he is just as sound and hard as ever and has an inexhaustible store of anecdote.

’Crean is perfectly happy, ready to do anything and go anywhere, the harder the work, the better.  Evans and Crean are great friends.  Lashly is his old self in every respect, hard working to the limit, quiet, abstemious, and determined.  You see altogether I have a good set of people with me, and it will go hard if we don’t achieve something.

’The study of individual character is a pleasant pastime in such a mixed community of thoroughly nice people, and the study of relationships and interactions is fascinating—­men of the most diverse upbringings and experience are really pals with one another, and the subjects which would be delicate ground of discussion between acquaintances are just those which are most freely used for jests.  For instance the Soldier is never tired of girding at Australia, its people and institutions, and the Australians retaliate by attacking the hide-bound prejudices of the British army.  I have never seen a temper lost in these discussions.  So as I sit here I am very satisfied with these things.  I think that it would have been difficult to better the organisation of the party—­every man has his work and is especially adapted for it; there is no gap and no overlap—­it is all that I desired, and the same might be said of the men selected to do the work.’

It promised to be very fine to-day, but the wind has already sprung up and clouds are gathering again.  There was a very beautiful curved ‘banner’ cloud south of Erebus this morning, perhaps a warning of what is to come.