The Worst Journey in the World | Page 8

they have acquired as having done
wonders, and accordingly, such of us as were new to the ice made up
our minds for frost-bites, 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