water vapour above the open leads, condensed by the severe cold. Hoosh.  A thick camp soup with a basis of pemmican. Ice-foot.  Properly the low fringe of ice formed about Polar lands by the sea spray.  More widely, the banks of ice of varying height which skirt many parts of the Antarctic shores. Piedmont.  Coastwise stretches of the ancient ice sheet which once covered the Antarctic Continent, remaining either on the land, or wholly or partially afloat. Pram.  A Norwegian skiff, with a spoon bow. Primus.  A portable stove for cooking. Ramp.  A great embankment of morainic material with ice beneath, once part of the glacier, on the lowest slopes of Erebus at the landward end of C. Evans. Saennegras.  A kind of fine Norwegian hay, used as packing in the finnesko to keep the feet warm and to make the fur boot fit firmly. Sastrugus.  An irregularity formed by the wind on a snowplain.  ’Snow wave’ is not completely descriptive, as the sastrugus has often a fantastic shape unlike the ordinary conception of a wave. Skua.  A large gull. Working crack.  An open crack which leaves the ice free to move with the movement of the water beneath.

NOTE.

Passages enclosed in inverted commas are taken from home letters of Captain Scott.

A number following a word in the text refers to a corresponding note in the Appendix to this volume.

SCOTT’S LAST EXPEDITION

CHAPTER I

Through Stormy Seas

The Final Preparations in New Zealand

The first three weeks of November have gone with such a rush that I have neglected my diary and can only patch it up from memory.

The dates seem unimportant, but throughout the period the officers and men of the ship have been unremittingly busy.

On arrival the ship was cleared of all the shore party stores, including huts, sledges, &c.  Within five days she was in dock.  Bowers attacked the ship’s stores, surveyed, relisted, and restowed them, saving very much space by unstowing numerous cases and stowing the contents in the lazarette.  Meanwhile our good friend Miller attacked the leak and traced it to the stern.  We found the false stem split, and in one case a hole bored for a long-stem through-bolt which was much too large for the bolt.  Miller made the excellent job in overcoming this difficulty which I expected, and since the ship has been afloat and loaded the leak is found to be enormously reduced.  The ship still leaks, but the amount of water entering is little more than one would expect in an old wooden vessel.

The stream which was visible and audible inside the stern has been entirely stopped.  Without steam the leak can now be kept under with the hand pump by two daily efforts of a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes.  As the ship was, and in her present heavily laden condition, it would certainly have taken three to four hours each day.