Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 1.djvu/16

Rh diary of the Last Return Party on the Polar Journey. Mrs. Wilson has given her husband's diary of the Polar Journey: this is especially valuable because it is the only detailed account in existence from 87° 32′ to the Pole and after, with the exception of Scott's Diary already published. Lady Scott has given with both hands any records I wanted and could find. No one of my companions in the South has failed to help. They include Atkinson, Wright, Priestley, Simpson, Lillie and Debenham.

To all these good friends I can do no more than express my very sincere thanks.

I determined that the first object of the illustrations should be descriptive of the text: Wright and Debenham have photographs, sledging and otherwise, which do this admirably. Mrs. Wilson has allowed me to have any of her husband's sketches and drawings reproduced that I wished, and there are many hundreds from which to make a selection. In addition to the six water-colours, which I have chosen for their beauty, I have taken a number of sketches because they illustrate typical incidents in our lives. They are just unfinished sketches, no more: and had Bill been alive he would have finished them before he allowed them to be published. Then I have had reproduced nearly all the sketches and panoramas drawn by him on the Polar Journey and found with him where he died. The half-tone process does not do them justice: I wish I could have had them reproduced in photogravure, but the cost is prohibitive.

As to production, after a good deal of experience, I was convinced that I could trust a commercial firm to do its worst save when it gave them less trouble to do better. I acknowledge my mistake. In a wilderness of firms in whom nothing was first class except their names and their prices, I have dealt with R. & R. Clark, who have printed this book,