I hope that by the time Scott
comes home--for he is coming home: the Barrier is moving, and not a trace
of our funeral cairn was found by Shackleton's men in 1916--the
hardships that wasted his life will be only a horror of the past, and his
_via dolorosa_ a highway as practicable as Piccadilly.
And now let me come down to tin tacks. No matter how well the thing is
done in future, its organizers will want to know at first all we can tell
them about oil, about cold, and about food. First, as to oil.
Scott complains of a shortage of oil at several of his last depots. There
is no doubt that this shortage was due to the perishing of the leather
washers of the tins which contained the paraffin oil. All these tins had
been subjected to the warmth of the sun in summer and the autumn
temperatures, which were unexpectedly cold. In his Voyage of the
Discovery Scott wrote as follows of the tins in which they drew their oil
when sledging: "Each tin had a small cork bung, which was a decided
weakness; paraffin _creeps_ in the most annoying manner, and a good deal
of oil was wasted in this way, especially when the sledges were
travelling over rough ground and were shaken or, as frequently happened,
capsized. It was impossible to make these bungs quite tight, however
closely they were jammed down, so that in spite of a trifling extra
weight a much better fitting would have been a metallic screwed bung.
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