dinner settled, by what rule the working parties for fetching ice for water and other kindred jobs about the camp were ordered.  They just happened, and I don’t know how.  I only know that Bowers had the bunk above mine in the hut, and that when I was going to sleep he was generally standing on a chair and using his own bunk as a desk, and I conclude from the numerous lists of stores and weights which are now in my hands that these were being produced.  Anyway the job was done, and the fact that we knew nothing about it goes far to prove how efficiently it was carried through.

For him difficulties simply did not exist.  I have never known a more buoyant, virile nature.  Scott’s writings abound in references to the extraordinary value he placed upon his help, and after the share which he took in the Depot and Winter Journeys it was clear that he would probably be taken in the Polar Party, as indeed proved to be the case.  No man of that party better deserved his place.  “I believe he is the hardest traveller that ever undertook a Polar Journey, as well as one of the most undaunted."[140]

The standard is high.

[Illustration:  FROZEN SEA AND CLIFFS OF ICE]

Bowers gave us two of our best lectures, the first on the Evolution of Sledge Foods, at the end of which he discussed our own rations on the Depot Journey, and made suggestions which he had worked out scientifically for those of the Polar Journey.  His arguments were sound enough to disarm the hostility if not to convert to his opinions at least one scientist who had come to hear him strongly of opinion that an untrained man should not discuss so complex a subject.  The second lecture, on the Evolution of Polar Clothing, was also the fruit of much work.  The general conclusion come to (and this was after the Winter Journey) was that our own clothing and equipment could not be bettered in any important respect, though it must be always understood that the expedition wore wind-proof clothing and not furs, except for hands and feet.  When man-hauling, wind-proof, I am convinced, cannot be improved upon, but for dog-driving in cold weather I suspect that furs may be better.

The table was cleared after supper and we sat round it for these lectures three times a week.  There was no compulsion about them, and the seamen only turned up for those which especially interested them, such as Meares’ vivid account of his journeyings on the Eastern or Chinese borderland of Thibet.  This land is inhabited by the ‘Eighteen Tribes,’ the original inhabitants of Thibet who were driven out by the present inhabitants, and Meares told us chiefly of the Lolos who killed his companion Brook after having persuaded him that they were friendly and anxious to help him.  “He had no pictures and very makeshift maps, yet he held us really entranced for nearly two hours by the sheer interest of his adventures.  The spirit of the wanderer is in Meares’ blood:  he has no happiness but in the wild places of the earth.  I have never met so extreme a type.  Even now he is looking forward to getting away by himself to Hut Point, tired already of our scant measure of civilization."[141]