The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard (online e reader .txt) 📗

the best of tempers; but nothing can exceed the liberality with which he has thrown open his cabin to me and made it my workroom at no little inconvenience to himself.”

Another extract from Hooker’s letters after the first voyage runs as follows:

“The success of the Expedition in Geographical discovery is really wonderful, and only shows what a little perseverance will do, for we have been in no dangerous predicaments, and have suffered no hardships whatever: there has been a sort of freemasonry among Polar voyagers to keep up the credit they have acquired as having done wonders, and accordingly, such of us as were new to the ice made up our minds for frostbites, and attached a most undue importance to the simple operation of boring packs, etc., which have now vanished, though I am not going to tell everybody so; I do not here refer to travellers, who do indeed undergo unheard-of hardships, but to voyagers who have a snug ship, a little knowledge of the Ice, and due caution is all that is required.”

In the light of Scott’s leading of the expedition of which I am about to tell, and the extraordinary scientific activity of Pennell in command of the Terra Nova after Scott was landed, Hooker would have to qualify a later extract, “nor is it probable that any future collector will have a Captain so devoted to the cause of Marine Zoology, and so constantly on the alert to snatch the most trifling opportunities of adding to the collection.⁠ ⁠…”

Finally, we have a picture of the secrecy which was imposed upon all with regard to the news they should write home and the precautions against any leakage of scientific results. And we see Hooker jumping down the main hatch with a penguin skin in his hand which he was preparing for himself, when Ross came up the after hatch unexpectedly. That has happened on the Terra Nova!

Ross had a cold reception on his return, and Scott wrote to Hooker in 1905:

“At first it seems inexplicable when one considers how highly his work is now appreciated. From the point of view of the general public, however, I have always thought that Ross was neglected, and as you once said he is very far from doing himself justice in his book. I did not know that Barrow was the bête noire who did so much to discount Ross’s results. It is an interesting sidelight on such a venture.”11

In discussing and urging the importance of the Antarctic Expedition which was finally sent under Scott in the Discovery, Hooker urged the importance of work in the South Polar Ocean, which swarms with animal and vegetable life. Commenting upon the fact that the large collections made chiefly by himself had never been worked out, except the diatoms, he writes:

“A better fate, I trust, awaits the treasures that the hoped-for Expedition will bring back, for so prolific is the ocean that the naturalist need never be idle, no, not even for one of the twenty-four hours of daylight during a whole Antarctic summer, and I look to the results of a comparison of the oceanic life of the Arctic and Antarctic regions as the heralding of an epoch in the history of biology.”12

When Ross went to the Antarctic it was generally thought that there was neither food nor oxygen nor light in the depths of the ocean, and that therefore there was no life. Among other things the investigations of Ross gave ground for thinking this was not the case. Later still, in 1873, the possibility of laying submarine cables made it necessary to investigate the nature of the abyssal depths, and the Challenger proved that not only does life, and in quite high forms, exist there, but that there are fish which can see. It is now almost certain that there is a great oxidized northward-creeping current which flows out of the Antarctic Ocean and under the waters of the other great oceans of the world.

It was the good fortune of Ross, at a time when the fringes of the great Antarctic continent were being discovered in comparatively low latitudes of 66° and thereabouts, sometimes not even within the Antarctic Circle, to find to the south of New Zealand a deep inlet in which he could sail to the high latitude of 78°. This inlet, which is now known as the Ross Sea, has formed the starting-place of all sledging parties which have approached the South Pole. I have dwelt upon this description of the lands he discovered because they will come very intimately into this history. I have also emphasized his importance in the history of Antarctic exploration because Ross having done what it was possible to do by sea, penetrating so far south and making such memorable discoveries, the next necessary step in Antarctic exploration was that another traveller should follow up his work on land. It is an amazing thing that sixty years were allowed to elapse before that traveller appeared. When he appeared he was Scott. In the sixty years which elapsed between Ross and Scott the map of the Antarctic remained practically unaltered. Scott tackled the land, and Scott is the Father of Antarctic sledge travelling.

This period of time saw a great increase in the interest taken in science both pure and applied, and it had been pointed out in 1893 that “we knew more about the planet Mars than about a large area of our own globe.” The Challenger Expedition of 1874 had spent three weeks within the Antarctic Circle, and the specimens brought home by her from the depths of these cold seas had aroused curiosity. Meanwhile Borchgrevink (1897) landed at Cape Adare, and built a hut which still stands and which afforded our Cape Adare party valuable assistance. Here he lived during the first winter which men spent in the Antarctic.

Meanwhile, in the Arctic, brave work was being done. The names of