hut gave us all the news and the names of the lost party.  Very soon Debenham and Archer returned, giving us a most hearty, welcome, and no one can realise what it meant to us to see new faces and to be home after our long winter.

“Our clothes, letters, etc., had been landed from the ship, and we were able to read our home letters, which we had only time to glance at in the ship in February.  Archer provided a sumptuous dinner that night, and we sailed into it in a way that made Debenham hold his breath.  A bath and change of clothes completed the transformation.”

CHAPTER XIX

NARRATIVE OF THE “TERRA NOVA”

The second ascent of Mount Erebus was carried out in December, 1912, by a party under Raymond Priestley, and although it cannot be described in a little volume like this a really fine scientific journey was made by Griffith-Taylor, Debenham, Gran, and Petty Officer Forde.  They had the best time of the lot, for they carried out their explorations in blissful ignorance of the tribulations of Scott, Campbell, Atkinson and myself, whose stories I have tried to summarise.

For breezy reading and real bright narrative commend me to Griffith-Taylor.  Volume II. of “Scott’s Last Expedition” contains the story of the “Western journeys” as written by him, and they give quite truly the Silver Lining to the Cloud which formed about the rest of our Expedition.

For lightheartedness and good fellowship our Australian geologists should be given first prize.  It is of little use writing about distances covered and dangers overcome in this connection, but if one considers that the Western Geological Party surveyed, examined, charted, photographed, and to some extent plodded over a mountainous, heavily glaciated land lying in an area of the entire acreage of Kent, Sussex, Hants, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall, one gets a fair idea of what “Griff” and Co. were playing at.

Taylor was the first professional physiographer to visit the Antarctic Continent, and besides being an all round man of science he was an admirable fellow, with the widest outlook on life of any man amongst us.

I cannot pretend to write on geology; Taylor, Debenham, and Priestley are still drawing up reports on Antarctic physiography and glacial geology on our fossils collected, on the Barrier Movement, and the retreating ice of that Frozen Wonderland.  Some day another expedition, more up to date than ours, will force its way into the Heart of that Frigid Zone.  If this expedition sets out soon, I hope I may command it when I am still fresh and fit—­if that great good fortune comes my way I shall telegraph to Griff and ask him to be my “Uncle Bill,” and to help me as Wilson helped Scott.

As this is only a popular version of the last Scott Antarctic Expedition I have not collected any scientific appendices, and I have tried not to throw any bouquets at one member more than another—­if I have failed I have done it accidentally, for one has no favourites after nearly ten years.  My especial friends in the Expedition were the lieutenants, Campbell, Pennell, Rennick, Bowers, and Bruce, and of the scientists I was most fond of Nelson.