all is unknown and every one is sledged to a standstill, and blizzards blow all day and all night, is a ghastly experience.  This year there was not one of our company who did not welcome the return of the sun with thankfulness:  all the more so since he came back to a land of blizzards and made many of our difficulties more easy to tackle.  Those who got little outside exercise were more affected by the darkness than others.  This last year, of course, the difficulties of getting sufficient outdoor exercise were much increased.  Variety is important to the man who travels in polar regions:  at all events those who went away on sledging expeditions stood the life more successfully than those whose duties tied them to the neighbourhood of the hut.

Other things being equal, the men with the greatest store of nervous energy came best through this expedition.  Having more imagination, they have a worse time than their more phlegmatic companions; but they get things done.  And when the worst came to the worst, their strength of mind triumphed over their weakness of body.  If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires—­of steel.  And if you can’t get both, sacrifice physique and bank on will.

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NOTE

A lecture given at this time by Wright on Barrier Surfaces is especially interesting with relation to the Winter Journey and the tragedy of the Polar Party.  The general tend of friction set up by a sledge-runner upon snow of ordinary temperature may be called true sliding friction:  it is probable that the runners melt to an infinitesimal degree the millions of crystal points over which they glide:  the sledge is running upon water.  Crystals in such temperatures are larger and softer than those encountered in low temperatures.  It is now that halos may be seen in the snow, almost reaching to your feet as you pull, and moving forward with you:  we steered sometimes by keeping these halos at a certain angle to us.  My experience is that the best pulling surface is at an air temperature of about +17 deg.  Fahr.:  Wright’s experience is that below +5 deg. during summer temperatures on the Barrier the surface is fairly good, that between +5 deg. and +15 deg. less good, and between +15 deg. and +25 deg. best.  The worst is from +25 deg. upwards, the worst of all being round about freezing point.

As the temperature became high the amount of ice melted by this sliding friction was excessive.  It was then that we found ice forming upon the runners, often in almost microscopic amounts, but nevertheless causing the sledges to drag seriously.  Thus on the Beardmore we took enormous care to keep our runners free from ice, by scraping them at every halt with the back of our knives.  This ice is perhaps formed when the runners sink into the snow to an unusual depth, at which the temperature of the snow is sufficiently low to freeze the water previously formed by friction or radiation from the sun on to a dark runner.