_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._

Mount Erebus and detail of Ice-pressure. 280
_From photographs by C. S. Wright._

Down a Crevasse. 290
_From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson._


MAPS

From New Zealand to the South Pole. lxiv
Hut Point. From a sketch by Dr. Edward A. Wilson. 128
Cape Evans and McMurdo Sound. 194
The Winter Journey. 294




INTRODUCTION


Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having
a bad time which has been devised. It is the only form of adventure in
which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until
Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, find
them as clean as though they were new. It is more lonely than London,
more secluded than any monastery, and the post comes but once a year. As
men will compare the hardships of France, Palestine, or Mesopotamia, so
it would be interesting to contrast the rival claims of the Antarctic as