Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/670

434 night and day and bringing woeful accounts of their small ailments into the hut.

‘X has a positive passion for helping others—it is extraordinary what pains he will take to do a kind thing unobtrusively.

‘One sees the need of having one's heart in one's work. Results can only be got down here by a man desperately eager to get them.

‘Y works hard at his own work, taking extraordinary pains with it, but with an astonishing lack of initiative he makes not the smallest effort to grasp the work of others; it is a sort of character which plants itself in a corner and will stop there.

‘The men are equally fine. Edgar Evans has proved a useful member of our party; he looks after our sledges and sledge equipment with a care of management and a fertility of resource which is truly astonishing—on ‘trek’ he is just as sound and hard as ever and has an inexhaustible store of anecdote.

‘Crean is perfectly happy, ready to do anything and go anywhere, the harder the work, the better. Evans and Crean are great friends. Lashly is his old self in every respect, hard working to the limit, quiet, abstemious, and determined. You see altogether I have a good set of people with me, and it will go hard if we don't achieve something.

‘The study of individual character is a pleasant pastime