Midnight, November 12–13. I cannot think that anything which could be done to give these three great men—for great they were—a fitting grave has been left undone.
A great cairn has been built over them, a mark which must last for many years. That we can make anything that will be permanent on this Barrier is impossible, but as far as a lasting mark can be made it has been done. On this a cross has been fixed, made out of ski. On either side are the two sledges, fixed upright and dug in.
The whole is very simple and most impressive.
On a bamboo standing by itself is left the record which I have copied into this book, and which has been signed by us all.
We shall leave some provisions here, and go on lightly laden to see if we can find Titus Oates’ body: and so give it what burial we can.
We start in about an hour, and I for one shall be glad to leave this place.
I am very very sorry that this question of the shortage of oil has arisen. We in the First Return Party were most careful with our measurement—having a ruler of Wright’s and a piece of bamboo with which we did it: measuring the total height of oil in each case, and then dividing up the stick accordingly with the ruler: and we were always careful to take a little less than we were entitled to, which was stated to me, and stated by Birdie in his depot notes, to be one-third of everything in the depot.
How the shortage arose is a mystery. And they eleven miles from One Ton and plenty!
Titus did not show his foot till about three days before he died. The foot was then a great size, and almost every night it would be frostbitten again. Then the last day at lunch he said he could go on no more—but they said he must: he wanted them to leave him behind in his bag. That night he turned in, hoping never to wake: but he woke, and then he asked their advice: they said they must all go on together. A thick blizzard was blowing, and he said, after a bit, “Well, I am just going outside, and I may be some time.” They searched for him but could not find him.
They had a terrible time from 80° 0′ on to their last camp. There Bill was very bad, and Birdie and the Owner had to do the camping.
And then, eleven miles from plenty, they had nine days of blizzard, and that was the end.
They had a good spread on their tent, and their ski-sticks were standing, but their ski were drifted up on the ground.
The tent was in excellent condition—only down some of the poles there were some chafes.
They had been trying a spirit lamp when all the oil was gone.
At 88° or so they were getting temperatures from −20° to −30°. At 82°, 10,000 feet lower, it was regularly down to −47° in the nighttime, and −30° during the day: for no explainable reason.
Bill’s and Birdie’s feet got bad—the Owner’s feet got bad last.
It is all too horrible—I am almost afraid to go to sleep now.
November 13. Early morning. We came on just under seven miles with a very cold moist wind hurting our faces all the way. We have left most of the provisions to pick up again. We purpose going on thirteen miles tomorrow and search for Oates’ body, and then turn back and get the provisions back to Hut Point and see what can be done over in the west to get up that coast.
We hope to get two mules back to Hut Point. If possible, we want to communicate with Cape Evans.
Atkinson has been quite splendid in this very trying time.
November 14. Early morning. It has been a miserable march. We had to wait some time after hoosh to let the mules get ahead. Then we went on in a cold raw fog and some head wind, with constant frostbites. The surface has been very bad all day for the thirteen miles: if we had been walking in arrowroot it would have been much like this was. At lunch the temperature was −14.7°.
Then on when it was drifting with the wind in our faces and in a bad light. What we took to be the mule party ahead proved to be the old pony walls 26 miles from One Ton. There was here a bit of sacking on the cairn, and Oates’ bag. Inside the bag was the theodolite, and his finnesko and socks. One of the finnesko was slit down the front as far as the leather beckets, evidently to get his bad foot into it. This was fifteen miles from the last camp, and I suppose they had brought on his bag for three or four miles in case they might find him still alive. Half-a-mile from our last camp there was a very large and quite unmistakable undulation, one-quarter to one-third of a mile from crest to crest: the pony walls behind us disappeared almost as soon as we started to go down, and reappeared again on the other side. There were, I feel sure, other rolls, but this was the largest. We have seen no sign of Oates’ body.
About half an hour ago it started to blow a blizzard, and it is now thick, but the wind is not strong. The mules, which came along well considering the surface, are off their feed, and this may be the reason.
Dimitri saw the Cairn with the Cross more than eight miles away this morning, and in a good light it would be seen from much farther off.
November 15. Early morning. We built a cairn to mark the spot near which Oates walked out to his death, and we placed a cross on it. Lashed to the cross is a record, as follows:
Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L. E. G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard to try and save his comrades, beset by hardship. This note is left by the Relief Expedition. 1912.
This was signed by Atkinson and myself.
We saw the cairn for a long way in a bad light as we came back today.
The original plan with which we started from Cape Evans was, if the Party was found where we could still bear out sufficiently to the eastward to have a good chance of missing the pressure caused by the Beardmore, to go on and do what we could to survey the land south of the Beardmore: for this was the original plan of Captain Scott for this year’s sledging. But as things are I do not think there can be much doubt that we are doing right in losing no time in going over to the west of McMurdo Sound to see whether we can go up to Evans Coves, and help Campbell and his party.
We brought on Oates’ bag. The theodolite was inside.
A thickish blizzard blew all day yesterday, but it was clear and there was only surface drift when we turned out for the night march. Then again as we came along, the sky became overcast—all except over the land, which remains clear these nights when everything else is obscured. We noticed the same thing last year. Now the wind, which had largely dropped, has started again and it is drifting. We have had wind and drift on four out of the last five days.
November 16. Early morning. When we were ready to start with the dogs it was blowing a thick blizzard, but the mules had already started some time, when it was not thick. We had to wait until nearly 4 a.m. before we could start, and came along following tracks. It is very warm and the surface is covered with loose snow, but the slide in it seems good. We found the mules here at the Cairn and Cross, having been able to find their way partly by the old tracks.
I have been trying to draw the grave. Of all the fine monuments in the world none seems to me more fitting; and it is also most impressive.
November 17. Early morning. I think we are all going crazy together—at any rate things are pretty difficult. The latest scheme is to try and find a way over the plateau to Evans Coves, trying to strike the top of a glacier and go down it. There can be no good in it: if ever men did it, they would arrive about the time the ship arrived there too, and their labour would be in vain. If they got there and the ship did not arrive, there is another party stranded. They would have to wait till February 15 or 20 to see if the ship was coming, and then there would be no travelling back over the plateau: even if we could do it those men there could not.
It was almost oppressively hot yesterday—but I’ll never grumble about heat again. It has now cleared a lot and we came along on the cairns easily—but on a very soft downy surface, and the travelling has not been fast. We bring with us the Southern Party’s gear. The sledge, which was the 10-foot which they brought on from the bottom of the glacier, has been left.
November 18. Early morning. I am thankful to say that the plateau journey idea has been given up.
Once more we have come along in thick, snowy weather. If we had not men on ski to steer we could never keep much of a course, but Wright is steering us very straight, keeping a check on the course by watching the man behind, and so far we have been picking up all the cairns. This morning we passed the pony walls made on November 10. And yet they were nearly level with the ground; so they are not much of a mark. Yank has just had a disagreement with Kusoi—for Kusoi objected to his trying to get at the meat on the sledge. The mules have been sinking in a long way, and are marching very slowly. Pyaree eats the tea leaves after meals: Rani and Abdullah divide a rope between them at the halts; and they have eaten the best part of a trace since our last camp. These animals eat anything but their proper food, and this some of them will hardly touch.
It cleared a bit for our second march, and we have done our 13 miles, but it was very slow travelling. Now it is drifting as much as ever. Yank, that redoubtable puller, has just eaten himself loose for the third time since hoosh. This time I had to go down to the pony walls to get him.
We have had onions for the first time tonight in our hoosh—they are most excellent. Also we have been having some Nestlé’s condensed milk from One Ton Depot—which I do not want to see again, the depot I mean. Peary must know what he is about, taking milk as a ration: the sweetness is a great thing, but it would be heavy: we have been having it with temperature down to −14°, when it was quite manageable, but I don’t know what it would be like in colder temperatures.
November 19. Early morning. We have done our 13 miles today and have got on to a much better surface. By what we and others have seen before, it seems that last winter must have generally been an exceptional one. There have been many parties out here: we have never before seen this windswept surface, on which it is often too slippery to walk comfortably. I do not know what temperatures the Discovery had in April, but it was much colder last April than it was the year before. And then nothing had been experienced down here to compare with the winds last winter.
There was a high wind and a lot of drift yesterday during the day, and now it is blowing and drifting as usual. During the last nine days there has only been one, the day we found the tent, when it has not been drifting during all or part of the day. It is all right for travelling north, but we should be having very uncomfortable marches if we were marching the other way.
November 20. Early morning. Today we have seemed to be walking in circles through space. Wright, by dint of having a man behind to give him a fixed point to steer upon, has steered us quite straight, and we have picked up every cairn. The pony party camped for lunch by two cairns, but they never knew the two cairns were there until a piece of paper blew away and had to be fetched: and it was caught against one of the cairns. They left a flag there to guide us, and though we saw and brought along the flag, we never saw the cairns. The temperature is −22.5°, and it is now blowing a full blizzard. All this snow has hitherto been lying on the ground and making a very soft surface, for though the wind has always been blowing it has never been very strong. This snow and wind, which have now persisted for nine out of the last ten days, make most dispiriting marches; for there is nothing to see, and finding tracks or steering is a constant strain. We are certainly lucky to have been able to march as we have.
Note on Mules.—The most ardent admirer of mules could not say that they were a success. The question is whether they might be made so. There was really only one thing against them but that is a very important one—they would not eat on the Barrier. From the time they went away to the day they returned (those that did return, poor things) they starved themselves, and yet they pulled biggish loads for 30 days.
If they would have eaten they would have been a huge success. They travelled faster than the ponies and, with one exception, kept together better than the ponies. If both were eating their ration it is questionable whether a good mule or a good pony is to be preferred. Our mules were of the best, and they were beautifully trained and equipped by the Indian Government: yet on November 13, a fortnight from the start, Wright records, “mules are a poor substitute for ponies. Not many will see Hut Point again, I think. Doubt if any would have got much farther than this if surfaces had been as bad this year as last.”
Though they would not eat oats, compressed fodder and oil-cake, they were quite willing to eat all kinds of other things. If we could have arrived at the mule equivalent to a vegetarian diet they might have pulled to the Beardmore without stopping. The nearest to this diet at which we could arrive was saennegrass, tea leaves, tobacco ash and rope—all of which were eaten with gusto. But supplies were very limited. They ate dog-biscuit as long as they thought we were not looking—but as soon as they realized they were meant to eat it they went on hunger-strike again. But during halts at cairns Rani and Pyaree would stand solemnly chewing the same piece of rope from different ends. Abdullah always led the line, and followed Wright’s ski tracks faithfully, so that if another man was ahead and Wright turned aside Abdullah always turned too. It was quite a manoeuvre for Wright to read the sledge-meter at the back of the sledge. As for Begum: “Got Begum out of a soft patch by rolling her over.”
On the whole the mules failed to adapt themselves to this life, and as such must at present be considered to be a failure for Antarctic work. Certainly those of our ponies which had the best chance to adapt themselves went farthest, such as Nobby and Jimmy Pigg, both of whom had experience of Barrier sledging before they started on the Polar Journey.
November 21. Early morning. It has cleared at last, the disturbance rolling away to the east during our first march. The surface was very bad and the mules were not going well. At this time last year many of the ponies were still quite difficult to make stand just before starting. But these mules start off now most dolefully. I am afraid they will not all get back to Hut Point.
Two and a half miles after lunch, i.e. just over forty miles from the depot, we turned out to the eastward and found the gear left by the Second Return Party, when Evans was so ill. The theodolite, which belonged to Evans, is I believe there, but though we dug all round we were unable to find it. The ski were all upright, drifted to within six inches of the shoes. Most of the gear was clothing, which we have left, with the skis, in the tank. We brought on a roll of Birdie’s photographs, taken on the plateau, and three geological specimens: deep-seated rocks I think. This was all of importance that there was there.
The N Ration, which we have now come to, consists of about 40 oz. of food. At present, doing the work we are doing, and with these high temperatures, −23° when we started, for instance, and −17° now, the men do not want it. For what it was intended for, hard man-hauling, it would probably be an excellent ration, and very satisfying.
November 22. Early morning. We could not have had a more perfect night to march. Yesterday at 4 p.m., holding the thermometer in the sun, the spirit rose to 30°: it was almost too warm in the tent. The cairns show very plainly—in such weather navigation of this kind would be dead easy. But they are already being eaten away and toppling. The pony walls are drifted level—huge drifts, quite hard, running up to windward and down to lee.
The dogs are getting more hungry, and want to get at the mules, which makes them go better. They went very well today, but too fast once, for we had a general mixup: Bieliglass under the sledge and the rest all tangled up and ready for a fight at the first chance. How one of the front pair of dogs got under the sledge is a mystery.
Among the Polar Party’s gear is a letter to the King of Norway. It was left by the Norwegians for Scott to take back. It is wrapped in a piece of thin windcloth with one dark check line in it. Coarser and rougher and, I should say, heavier than our Mandelbergs.
November 23. Early morning. We were to make Dimitri Depot this morning, but we came on in a fog, and the mule party camped after running down the distance. Wright came back and said, “If we have passed it, it’s over there”—and as he pointed the depot showed—not more than 200 yards away. So that is all right. We, the dog party, go on in advance tomorrow, so that no time may be lost, and if the ice is still good, Atkinson will get over to Cape Evans.
“Atch”
Titus Oates
November 24. Early morning. A glut of foot-walloping in soft snow and breaking crusts. We have done between 17 and 18 miles today. We saw no crevasses, and have marked the course well, building up the cairns and leaving two flags—so the mule party should be all right. The dogs were going well behind the ponies, but directly we went ahead they seemed to lose heart. I think they are tired of the Barrier: a cairn now awakens little interest: they know it is only a mark and it does not mean a camp: they are all well fed, and fairly fat and in good condition. With a large number of dogs I suppose one team can go ahead when it is going well—changing places with another—each keeping the others going. But I do not think that these dogs now will do much more; but they have already done as much as any dogs of which we have any record.
The land is clearing gradually. I have never seen such contrasts of black rock and white snow, and White Island was capped with great ranges of black cumulus, over which rose the pure white peaks of the Royal Society Range in a blue sky. The Barrier itself was quite a deep grey, making a beautiful picture. And now Observation Hill and Castle Rock are in front. I don’t suppose I shall ever see this view again: but it is associated with many memories of returning to home and plenty after some long and hard journeys: in some ways I feel sorry—but I have seen it often enough.
November 25. Early morning. We came in 24 miles with our loads, to find the best possible news—Campbell’s Party, all well, are at Cape Evans. They arrived here on November 6, starting from Evans Coves on September 30. What a relief it is, and how different things seem now! It is the first real bit of good news since February last—it seems an age. We mean to get over the sea-ice, if possible, as soon as we can, and then we shall hear their story.
November 26. Early morning. Starting from Hut Point about 6:45 p.m. last evening, we came through by about 9 p.m., and sat up talking and hearing all the splendid news till past 2 a.m. this morning.
All the Northern Party look very fat and fit, and they are most cheerful about the time they have had, and make light of all the anxious days they must have spent and their hard times.
I cannot write all their story. When the ship was battling with the pack to try and get in to them they had open water in Terra Nova Bay to the horizon, as seen from 200 feet high. They prepared for the winter, digging their hut into a big snowdrift a mile from where they were landed. They thought that the ship had been wrecked—or that everyone had been taken off from here, and that then the ship had been blown north by a succession of furious gales which they had and could not get back. They never considered seriously the possibility of sledging down the coast before the winter. They got settled in and were very warm—so warm that in August they did away with one door, of which they had three, of biscuit boxes and sacking.
Their stove was the bottom of an oil tin, and they cooked by dripping blubber on to seal bones, which became soaked with the blubber, and Campbell tells me they cooked almost as quickly as a primus. Of course they were filthy. Their main difficulty was dysentery and ptomaine poisoning.
Their stories of the winter are most amusing—of “Placing the Plug, or Sports in the Antarctic”; of lectures; of how dirty they were; of their books, of which they had four, including David Copperfield. They had a spare tent, which was lucky, for the bamboos of one of theirs were blown in during a big wind, and the men inside it crept along the piedmont on hands and knees to the igloo and slept two in a bag. How the seal seemed as if they would give out, and they were on half rations and very hungry: and they were thinking they would have to come down in the winter, when they got two seals: of the fish they got from the stomach of a seal—“the best feed they had”—the blubber they have eaten.
But they were buried deep in the snow and quite warm. Big winds all the time from the W. S. W., cold winds off the plateau—in the igloo they could hear almost nothing outside—how they just had a biscuit a day at times, sugar on Sundays, etc.
And so all is well in this direction, and we have done right in going south, and we have at least succeeded in getting all records. I suppose any news is better than no news.
Evening. The Pole Party photos of themselves at the Pole and at the Norwegian cairn (a Norwegian tent, post and two flags) are very good indeed—one film is unused, one used on these two subjects: taken with Birdie’s camera. All the party look fit and well, and their clothes are not iced up. It was calm at the time: the surface looks rather soft.
Atkinson and Campbell have gone to Hut Point with one dog-team, and we are all to forgather here. The ice still seems good from here to Hut Point: all else open water as far as can be seen.
A steady southerly wind has been blowing here for three days now. The mules should get into Hut Point today.
It is the happiest day for nearly a year—almost the only happy one.