R. SCOTT.

We are in a desperate state, feet frozen, etc.  No fuel and a long way from food, but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our songs and the cheery conversation as to what we will do when we get to Hut Point.

Later. We are very near the end, but have not and will not lose our good cheer.  We have four days of storm in our tent and nowhere’s food or fuel.  We did intend to finish ourselves when things proved like this, but we have decided to die naturally in the track.[347]

The following extracts are from letters written to other friends: 

" ...  I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job.  It was the younger men that went under first....  After all we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there.  We could have come through had we neglected the sick.”

“Wilson, the best fellow that ever stepped, has sacrificed himself again and again to the sick men of the party....”

" ...  Our journey has been the biggest on record, and nothing but the most exceptional hard luck at the end would have caused us to fail to return.”

“What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey.  How much better has it been than lounging in too great comfort at home.”

* * * * *

MESSAGE TO THE PUBLIC

The causes of the disaster are not due to faulty organization, but to misfortune in all risks which had to be undertaken.

1.  The loss of pony transport in March 1911 obliged me to start later than I had intended, and obliged the limits of stuff transported to be narrowed.

2.  The weather throughout the outward journey, and especially the long gale in 83 deg.  S., stopped us.

3.  The soft snow in lower reaches of glacier again reduced pace.

We fought these untoward events with a will and conquered, but it cut into our provision reserve.

Every detail of our food supplies, clothing and depots made on the interior ice-sheet and over that long stretch of 700 miles to the Pole and back, worked out to perfection.  The advance party would have returned to the glacier in fine form and with surplus of food, but for the astonishing failure of the man whom we had least expected to fail.  Edgar Evans was thought the strongest man of the party.

The Beardmore Glacier is not difficult in fine weather, but on our return we did not get a single completely fine day; this with a sick companion enormously increased our anxieties.

As I have said elsewhere, we got into frightfully rough ice and Edgar Evans received a concussion of the brain—­he died a natural death, but left us a shaken party with the season unduly advanced.