ff transported to be
narrowed.

2. The weather throughout the outward journey, and especially the long
gale in 83 degrees S., stopped us.

3. The soft snow in lower reaches of glacier again reduced pace.

We fought these untoward events with a will and conquered, but it cut
into our provision reserve.

Every detail of our food supplies, clothing, and depots made on the
interior ice sheet and over that long stretch of 700 miles to the Pole
and back worked out to perfection. The advance party would have returned
to the glacier in fine form and with surplus of food, but for the
astonishing failure of the man whom we had least expected to fail. Edgar
Evans was thought the strongest man of the party.

The Beardmore Glacier is not difficult in fine weather, but on our return
we did not get a single completely fine day; this with a sick companion
enormously increased our anxieties.

As I have said elsewhere we got into frightfully rough ice, and Edgar
Evans received a concussion of the brain--he died a natural death, but
left us a shaken party, with the season unduly advanced.

But all the facts above enumerated were as nothing to the surprise which
awaited us on the Barrier. I maintain that our arrangements for returning
were quite adequate, and that no one in the world would have expected the
temperatures and surfaces which we encountered at this time of the year.
On the summit in Latitude 85 degrees 86 degrees we had -20 degrees -30
degrees. On the Barrier in Latitude 82 degrees, 10,000 feet lower, we had
-30 degrees in the day, -47 degrees at night pretty regularly, with
continuous head wind during our day marches. It is clear that these
circumstances come on very suddenly, and our wreck is certainly due to
this sudden advent of severe weather, which does not seem to have any
satisfactory cause. I do not think human beings ever came through such a
month as we have come through, and we should have got through in spite of
the weather but for the sickening of a second companion, Captain Oates,
and a shortage of fuel in our depots, for which I cannot account, and
finally, but for the storm which has fallen on us within 11 miles of the
depot at which we hoped to secure our final supplies. Surely misfortune
could scarcely have exceeded this last blow. We arrived within 11 miles
of our old One Ton Camp with fuel for one last meal and food for two
days. For four days we have been unable to leave the tent--the gale
howling