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Updated: May 13, 2025
After this date gale succeeded gale and the winter set in with a long run of bad weather. Campbell and his companions led a very primitive existence here for six and a half months. They only had their light summer sledging clothes to wear, and these soon became saturated with blubber: their hair and beards grew, and they were soon recognisable only by their voices.
"Two sledging parties will operate from the base on the Weddell Sea. One will travel westwards towards Graham Land, making observations, collecting geological specimens, and proving whether there are mountains in that region linked up with those found on the other side of the Pole.
Worsley and Crean were coming with me, and after consultation we decided to leave the sleeping-bags behind us and make the journey in very light marching order. We would take three days' provisions for each man in the form of sledging ration and biscuit. The food was to be packed in three sacks, so that each member of the party could carry his own supply.
We all arrived bathed in sweat our garments were soaked through, and as we took off our wind clothes showers of ice fell on the floor. The accumulation was almost incredible and shows the whole trouble of sledging in cold weather.
Petersburg, while Schwartz and Malchanski, who were Russians, decided to go with us as far as Irkutsk, the east-Siberian capital. Snow fell in sufficient quantities to make good sledging about the 8th of October; but the rivers did not freeze over so that they could be crossed until two weeks later.
It was possible, by keeping the cairns in line behind the sledges and building new ones as old ones disappeared, to march on an approximately straight line. On the evening of the 12th they reached lat. 81° S., and built a large cairn for the depot. The stores left here were three weeks' rations for the ordinary sledging unit of three men.
By 9.20 breakfast is finished, and before the half-hour has struck the table has been cleared. From 9.30 to 1.30 the men are steadily employed on a programme of preparation for sledging, which seems likely to occupy the greater part of the winter.
Bright sun again all day, but in the afternoon a chill wind from the S.S.W. Again we are reminded of the shelter afforded by our position; to-night the anemometers on Observatory Hill show a 20-mile wind down in our valley we only have mild puffs. Sledging began as usual this morning; seven ponies and the dog teams were hard at it all the forenoon.
In the Summer there were gay boats on the Alster, and nautical holiday-makers were busy with oar and sail; while, in the Winter months, if the ice held well, there was no end of skating and sledging; and then we had a pleasant winter-garden near the Tivoli, with orange-trees in tubs, the mould so covered over as to form extemporary tables, and the green leaves and pale fruit shining above our heads.
After that our sledging rations would last us less than three months. Our meals had to consist mainly of seal and penguin; and though this was valuable as an anti-scorbutic, so much so that not a single case of scurvy occurred amongst the party, yet it was a badly adjusted diet, and we felt rather weak and enervated in consequence.
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