Antarctic

THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD-- Apsley Cherry-Garrard--Dial ($5).

Nowadays polar explorers have airplanes, radio; reach their goal more quickly, safely, let the world know where they are, what they are doing. But the Poles were not "discovered" from the air, and the news came back no faster than the dogs and men who pulled the sledges. In 1909 Commander Robert Edwin Peary reached the North Pole by dogsled, though Frederick Albert Cook (TIME, March 31) claimed he had anticipated him; in 1912 Captain Robert Falcon Scott got to the South Pole only to find that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it by a few weeks. Scott's party all died of cold and exhaustion on their way back to their base. Author Cherry-Garrard, member of Scott's main expedition,* gives a complete account of the three-year expedition (1910-1913). Says he: "There is already considerable literature about the expedition, but no connected account of it as a whole."

"The worst journey" Author Cherry-Garrard tells about was not Scott's fatal march, but a trip taken by himself and two others in search of eggs of the Emperor Penguin. It required five weeks of fearful hardship; when their tent blew away in a gale they thought they would die, almost gave up hope. But they got three eggs, brought them back safe and sound. Blurbs Playwright George Bernard Shaw: ". . . a very horrible experience. Compared with it Amundsen's victorious rush to the South Pole seems as cheerful as a trip to Margate."

In the Antarctic Spring of 1911 (November) Scott set out for the Pole, with 12 men, motors, ponies. The motor failed first, then the ponies; Scott went on with four men, on foot; he reached the Pole on Jan. 18. It was a long trip back (1,766 miles), weather conditions were much worse than anticipated, rations insufficient. First Seaman Evans, strongest man of the party, dropped in his tracks, died. Then Lieutenant Oates began to weaken. One night, after they had made camp, Oates went out of the tent, declared he might be gone some time, never came back. But his sacrifice was vain; 177 miles from safety, Scott and two last survivors pitched their last camp, wrote farewell letters, climbed into their frozen sleeping bags, lay down to die. There the search party found them.

The Author. Apsley George Benet Cherry-Garrard was 24 when he went with Scott, did not write this book till 1922 because the War interfered. (This is the first U. S. edition.) During the War he was "in Flanders looking after a fleet of armored cars. A war is like the Antarctic in one respect. There is no getting out of it with honor as long as you can put one foot before the other." A believer in scientific exploration, Author Cherry-Garrard deprecates purely spectacular expeditions, thinks Amundsen's discovery of the South Pole was mostly that. Says he: "Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion . . . you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg." Explorer Cherry-Garrard, educated at Winchester, Christ Church, Oxford, is a noted sportsman, won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley (1908).

* Modest, he says: "Generally as a mere follower, and often scared out of my wits, I was in the thick of it all, and I know."

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