We spent a couple of days at Safety Camp before Captain Scott returned with the dog teams.  In order to cut off corners he shaved things rather fine, and getting rather too close to White Island, the dog teams ran along the snow-bridge of a crevasse, the bridge subsided, and all the dogs of Scott’s and Meares’s sledge, with the exception of Osman, the leader, and the two rear animals, disappeared into a yawning chasm.  Scott and Meares secured their sledge clear of the snow bridge and with the assistance of their companions, Wilson and Cherry-Garrard, who had the other team, they were lowered by means of an Alpine rope into the crevasse until they could get at the dogs.  They, found the poor animals swinging round, snapping at one another and howling dismally, but in an awful tangle.  The dogs were rescued a pair at a time and, fortunately for all concerned, they lay down and rested when hauled up to the surface by Uncle Bill and “Cherry.”  When all the animals were up and Scott and Meares themselves had regained safety, a dog fight took place between the two teams.  Apart from this excitement things had gone very well.  Scott was most enthusiastic about the capabilities of Meares’s dogs, and he then expressed an opinion that he would probably run the dogs light on the Polar journey and do the final plateau march to the Pole itself with them.  What a pity he didn’t!  Had he done so he might have been alive to-day.

We learnt from the dog-drivers that the depot had been established in 79 degrees 30 minutes S. 169 degrees E., practically one hundred and fifty miles distant from the base, and here a ton or so of sledging stores awaited us preparatory for the great sledge journey to the Pole.

Bowers, Oates, and Gran had been left to build up the depot and lead back the other five ponies with their empty sledges.  We waited for them at Safety Camp before transporting some of the stuff we had left here out to Corner Camp, the position thirty-five miles E.S.E. of Safety Camp, where the crevasses ended.  Some of us went into Hut Point to see if the ship had been there with any message.  Little did we dream whilst we sauntered in over the ice of the news that awaited us.  We found that the “Terra Nova” had been there the day before Atkinson and Crean had got there; she had also made a second visit on the 9th or 10th February, bringing the unwelcome news that Amundsen’s expedition had been met with in the Bay of Whales.  The “Terra Nova” had entered the bay and found the “Fram” there with the Norwegians working like ants unloading their stores and hut-building in rather a dangerous position quite close to the Barrier edge.  Amundsen’s people had about 120 dogs and a hard lot of men, mostly expert ski-runners.  They were contemplating an early summer journey to the Pole and not proposing to attempt serious scientific work of any sort.  Further, to our chagrin, the eastern party had not effected a landing, for Campbell realised that it would be profitless to set up his base alongside that of the Norwegians.