psometer with all the thermoms broken, etc. I took away the spirit-lamp
of it, which I have wanted for sterilizing and making disinfectant
lotions of snow. There were also letters there: one from Amundsen to King
Haakon, with a request that Scott should send it to him. There was also a
list of the five men who made up their party, but no news as to what they
had done. I made some sketches here, but it was blowing very cold, -22 deg..
Birdie took some photos. We found no sledge there though they said there
was one: it may have been buried in drift. The tent was a funny little
thing for 2 men, pegged out with white line and tent-pegs of yellow wood.
I took some strips of blue-grey silk off the tent seams: it was perished.
The Norskies had got to the Pole on December 16, and were here from 15th
to 17th. At our lunch South Pole Camp we saw a sledge-runner with a black
flag about 1/2 mile away blowing from it. Scott sent me on ski to fetch it,
and I found a note tied to it showing that this was the Norskies' actual
final Pole position. I was given the flag and the note with Amundsen's
signature, and I got a piece of the sledge-runner as well. The small
chart of our wanderings shows best how all these things lie. After lunch
we made 6.2 miles from the Pole Camp to the north again, and here we are
camped for the night."[306]

The following remarks on the South Pole area were written by Bowers in
the Meteorological Log, apparently on January 17 and 18: "Within 120
miles of the South Pole the sastrugi crossed seem to indicate belts of
certain prevalent winds. These were definitely S.E.ly. up to about Lat.
78 deg. 30' S., where the summit was passed and we started to go definitely
downhill toward the Pole. An indefinite area was then crossed S.E.ly,
S.ly and S.W.ly sastrugi. Later, in about 79 deg. 30' S., those from the
S.S.W. predominated. At this point also the surface of the ice-cap became
affected by undulations running more or less at right angles to our
course. These resolved themselves into immense waves some miles in
extent,[307] with a uniform surface both in hollow and crust. The whole
surface was carpeted with a deposit of ice-crystals which, while we were
there, fell sometimes in the form of minute spicules and sometimes in
plates. These caused an almost continuous display of parhelia.

"The flags left a month previously by the Norwegian expedition were
practically undamaged and so could not have been exposed to very