cause 30 lbs. of geological specimens were deliberately added to the
weight of the sledge that was dragging the life out of the men who had to
haul it; but he does not realize that it is the friction surfaces of the
snow on the runners which mattered and not the dead weight, which in this
case was almost negligible. Nor does he know that these same specimens
dated a continent and may elucidate the whole history of plant life. He
will admit that we were all very wonderful, very heroic, very beautiful
and devoted: that our exploits gave a glamour to our expedition that
Amundsen's cannot claim; but he has no patience with us, and declares
that Amundsen was perfectly right in refusing to allow science to use up
the forces of his men, or to interfere for a moment with his single
business of getting to the Pole and back again. No doubt he was; but we
were not out for a single business: we were out for everything we could
add to the world's store of knowledge about the Antarctic.

Of course the whole business simply bristles with "ifs": If Scott had
taken dogs and succeeded in getting them up the Beardmore: if we had not
lost those ponies on the Depot Journey: if the dogs had not been taken so
far and the One Ton Depot had been laid: if a pony and some extra oil had
been depoted on the Barrier: if a four-man party had been taken to the
Pole: if I had disobeyed my instructions and gone on from One Ton,
killing dogs as necessary: or even if I had just gone on a few miles and
left some food and fuel under a flag upon a cairn: if they had been first
at the Pole: if it had been any other season but that.... But always the
bare fact remains that Scott could not have travelled from McMurdo Sound
to the Pole faster than he did except with dogs; all the king's horses
and all the king's men could not have done it. Why, then, says the
practical man, did we go to McMurdo Sound instead of to the Bay of
Whales? Because we gained that continuity of scientific observation which
is so important in this work: and because the Sound was the
starting-point for continuing the exploration of the only ascertained
route to the Pole, via the Beardmore Glacier.

I am afraid it was all inevitable: we were as wise as any one can be
before the event. I admit that we, scrupulously economical of our
pemmican, were terribly prodigal of our man-power. But we had to be: the
draft, whatever it may have been on the whole, was not excessive at any
given point; and