company had settled down to a regular round of daily life.

Later in the year Scott wrote in his diary: 'The day's routine for
the officers gives four clear hours before tea and three after;
during these hours all without exception are busily employed except
for the hour or more devoted to exercise.... It would be difficult
to say who is the most diligent, but perhaps the palm would be
given to Wilson, who is always at work; every rough sketch made
since we started is reproduced in an enlarged and detailed form,
until we now possess a splendid pictorial representation of the
whole coastline of Victoria Land.... At home many no doubt will
remember the horrible depression of spirit that has sometimes been
pictured as a pendant to the long polar night. We cannot even claim
to be martyrs in this respect; with plenty of work the days pass
placidly and cheerfully.'

Nearly seven months before Scott wrote in this cheerful spirit of
the winter, he had expressed himself warmly about those who were
to spend it with him. 'I have,' he said in a letter dispatched
from Port Chalmers on the voyage out, 'the greatest admiration for
the officers and men, and feel that their allegiance to me is a
thing assured. Our little society in the
[Page 77]
wardroom is governed by a spirit of good fellowship and patience
which is all that the heart of man could desire; I am everlastingly
glad to be one of the company and not forced to mess apart.... The
absence of friction and the fine comradeship displayed throughout
is beyond even my best expectation.'

This spirit of good-fellowship and give-and-take was a remarkable