" But he had already proved
himself a first-rate sailor. Among the junior scientific staff too,
several were showing qualities as seamen which were a good sign for the
future. Altogether I think it must have been with a cheerful mind that
Scott landed in Australia.
When we left Melbourne for New Zealand we were all a bit stale, which was
not altogether surprising, and a run ashore was to do us a world of good
after five months of solid grind, crowded up in a ship which thought
nothing of rolling 50 deg. each way. Also, though everything had been done
that could be done to provide them, the want of fresh meat and
vegetables was being felt, and it was an excellent thing that a body of
men, for whom every precaution against scurvy that modern science could
suggest was being taken, should have a good course of antiscorbutic food
and an equally beneficial change of life before leaving civilization.
And so it was with some anticipation that on Monday morning, October 24,
we could smell the land--New Zealand, that home of so many Antarctic
expeditions, where we knew that we should be welcomed. Scott's Discovery,
Shackleton's Nimrod, and now again Scott's Terra Nova have all in turn
been berthed at the same quay in Lyttelton, for aught I know at the same
No. 5 Shed, into which they have spilled out their holds, and from which
they have been restowed with the addition of all that New Zealand,
scorning payment, could give.
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