Of course there is not one chance in a hundred
that he will ever have to consider navigation on our journey and in
that one chance the problem must be of the simplest nature, but it
makes matters much easier for me to have men who take the details of
one's work so seriously and who strive so simply and honestly to make
it successful.'

And in Wilson's diary for October 23 comes the entry: 'Working at
latitude sights--mathematics which I hate--till bedtime. It will be
wiser to know a little navigation on the Southern sledge journey.'

_Note_ 20, _p_. 300.--Happily I had a biscuit with me and I held it
out to him a long way off. Luckily he spotted it and allowed me to
come up, and I got hold of his head again. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

_Note_ 21, _p_. 338.--December 8. I have left Nobby all my biscuits
to-night as he is to try and do a march to-morrow, and then happily
he will be shot and all of them, as their food is quite done.

_December 9_. Nobby had all my biscuits last night and this morning,
and by the time we camped I was just ravenously hungry. It was a close
cloudy day with no air and we were ploughing along knee deep.... Thank
God the horses are now all done with and we begin the heavy work
ourselves. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

_Note_ 22, _p_. 339.--_December_ 9. The end of the Beardmore Glacier
curved across the track of the Southern Party, thrusting itself into
the mass of the Barrier with vast pressure and disturbance. So far
did this ice disturbance extend, that if the travellers had taken a
bee-line to the foot of the glacier itself, they must have begun to
steer outwards 200 miles sooner.

The Gateway was a neck or saddle of drifted snow lying in a gap of the
mountain rampart which flanked the last curve of the glacier. Under
the cliffs on either hand, like a moat beneath the ramparts, lay
a yawning ice-cleft or bergschrund, formed by the drawing away of
the steadily moving Barrier ice from the rocks. Across this moat and
leading up to the gap in the ramparts, the Gateway provided a solid
causeway. To climb this and descend its reverse face gave the easiest
access to the surface of the glacier.

_Note_ 23, _p_. 359.--Return of first Southern Party from Lat. 85 deg.
72 S. top of the Beardmore Glacier.

Party: E. L. Atkinson, A. Cherry-Garrard, C. S. Wright, Petty Officer
Keohane.

On the morning of December 22, 1911, we made a late start after saying
good-bye to the eight going on, and wishing them