WALT WHITMAN.

Let us come back to Cape Evans after the return of the First Supporting Party.

Hitherto our ways had always been happy:  for the most part they had been pleasant.  Scott was going to reach the Pole, probably without great difficulty, for when we left him on the edge of the plateau he had only to average seven miles a day to go there on full rations.  We ourselves had averaged 14.2 geographical miles a day on our way home to One Ton Depot, and there seemed no reason to suppose that the other two parties would not do likewise, and the food was not only sufficient but abundant if such marches were made.  Thus we were content as we wandered over the cape, or sat upon some rock warmed by the sun and watched the penguins bathing in the lake which had formed in the sea-ice between us and Inaccessible Island.  All round us were the cries of the skua gulls as they squabbled among themselves, and we heard the swish of their wings as they swooped down upon a man who wandered too near their nests.  Out upon the sea-ice, which was soggy and dangerous, lay several seal, and the bubblings and whistlings and gurglings which came from their throats chimed musically in contrast to the hoarse aak, aak, of the Adelie penguins:  the tide crack was sighing and groaning all the time:  it was very restful after the Barrier silence.

Meanwhile the Terra Nova had been seen in the distance, but the state of the sea-ice prevented her approach.  It was not until February 4 that communication was opened with her and we got our welcome mails and news of the world during the last year.  We heard that Campbell’s party had been picked up at Cape Adare and landed at Evans Coves.  We started unloading on February 9, and this work was continued until February 14:  there was about three miles of ice between the ship and the shore and we were doing more than twenty miles a day.  In the case of men who had been sledging much, and who might be wanted to sledge again, this was a mistake.  Latterly the ice began to break up, and the ship left on the 15th, to pick up the Geological Party on the western side of McMurdo Sound.  But she met great obstacles, and her record near the coasts this year is one of continual fights against pack-ice, while the winds experienced as the season advanced were very strong.  On January 13 the fast ice at the mouth of McMurdo Sound extended as far as the southern end of the Bird Peninsula:  ten days later they found fast ice extending for thirty miles from the head of Granite Harbour.  Later in the season the most determined efforts were made again and again to penetrate into Evans Coves in order to pick up Campbell and his men, until the ice was freezing all round them, and many times the propeller was brought up dead against blocks of ice.[259]