Page:South - the story of Shackleton's last expedition, 1914-1917.djvu/387

 CHAPTER XV

LAYING THE DEPOTS

account of the depot-laying journeys undertaken by his parties in the summer of 1915-16 unfortunately is not available. The leader of the parties kept a diary, but he had the book with him when he was lost on the sea-ice in the following winter. The narrative of the journeys has been compiled from the notes kept by Joyce, Richards, and other members of the parties, and I may say here that it is a record of dogged endeavour in the face of great difficulties and serious dangers. It is always easy to be wise after the event, and one may realize now that the use of the dogs, untrained and soft from shipboard inactivity, on the comparatively short journey undertaken immediately after the landing in 1915 was a mistake. The result was the loss of nearly all the dogs before the longer and more important journeys of 1915-16 were undertaken. The men were sledging almost continuously during a period of six months; they suffered from frostbite, scurvy, snow-blindness, and the utter weariness of overtaxed bodies. But the they placed the depots in the required positions, and if the Weddell Sea party had been able to make the crossing of the Antarctic continent, the stores and fuel would have been waiting for us where we expected to find them.

The position on October 9 was that the nine men at Hut Point had with them the stores required for the depots and for their own maintenance throughout the summer. The remaining dogs were at Cape Evans with Gaze, who had a sore heel and had been replaced temporarily by Stevens in the sledging party. A small quantity of stores had been conveyed already to Safety Camp on the edge of the Barrier beyond Hut Point. Mackintosh intended 279