Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/937

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Note 19, p. 311.—These hints on Polar Surveying fell on willing ears. Members of the afterguard who were not mathematically trained plunged into the very practical study of how to work out observations. Writing home on October 26, 1911, Scott remarks:

‘“Cherry” has just come to me with a very anxious face to say that I must not count on his navigating powers. For the moment I didn't know what he was driving at, but then I remembered that some months ago I said that it would be a good thing for all the officers going South to have some knowledge of navigation so that in emergency they would know how to steer a sledge home. It appears that “Cherry” thereupon commenced a serious and arduous course of study of abstruse navigational problems which he found exceedingly tough and now despaired mastering. 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. 436.—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. 491.—December 8. I have kept 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. 492.—December 9. The end of the Beardmore Glacier curved across the track of the Southern Party, thrusting itself into the