The arrival of the Morning with letters and fresh supplies of stores and provisions was a very welcome incident for the explorers, though the precaution had been taken to collect the largest possible supply of seal and other fresh meat. The need for constant exercise had been kept in view; there was a good deal of hockey on the ice, dancing, and other amusements. The second winter thus passed without sickness and in the pleasantest fashion.

When the travelling season approached Captain Scott decided that there should be a journey over the mountains to the west, led by himself, one to the south under Barne and Mulock, and one to the south-east over the barrier ice under Royds and Bernacchi, besides several shorter journeys for specific purposes.

Captain Scott started on September 9th, 1903, with Mr Skelton, Evans, Lashly, Mr Dailey, and Handsley. The first object was to find a new road to the Ferrar Glacier, and to lay out a depôt. The discovery of a route by New Harbour was made, and the glacier was entered. It lay between massive cliffs like a ribbon of blue, down the middle of which ran a dark streak caused by a double line of boulders—a median moraine. The depôt was placed on this moraine, 2000 ft. above the sea. Scott observed that where Antarctic glaciers run east and west the south side is much broken up and decayed, while the north side is comparatively smooth and even. The reason is that the most direct and warmest rays of the sun fall on the south side of a valley, and here the greatest amount of summer melting takes place.

Scott’s party returned, and found that Barne had laid out a depôt S.E. of White Island, the temperature being as low as -70°. Royds had reached Cape Crozier and found that the Emperor penguins had hatched out their young.

Barne and Mulock began their extended journey on October 6th to Barne Inlet. Scott’s party started on their very difficult enterprise of discovering the ice cap on the 12th. His party was a combination of three separate parties. The first consisted of Captain Scott, Mr Skelton, Mr Feather the boatswain, Evans, Lashly, and Handsley. Secondly there was the geological party, consisting of Mr Ferrar with Kennar and Weller. The third, the auxiliary supporting party, consisted of Dailey the carpenter, and two other men, Williamson and Plumley. An absence of nine weeks was calculated for the extended party, and six weeks were allowed to Mr Ferrar for his geological studies. They started with four 11-ft. sledges, and no animal traction, dragging 200 lb. each at starting.

One of the noblest passages in Scott’s great work compares the use of dogs with that of men for traction. Admitting that dogs, ruthlessly used, increase the distances that may be reached he adds:—

On October 18th the condition of the sledges obliged them to return. Only one remained sound. On the others the German silver on the runners was split to ribbons and the wood deeply scored. Leaving the sound sledge and a large depôt they hurried back to the ship, the last march covering 36 miles. The sledges were repaired, and Ferrar now took a smaller 7 ft. sledge. The final start was made on October 26th; and they crossed the sea ice at a rate of 25 miles a day. There was continual trouble with the runners, and Mr Skelton with the stokers of the party were kept at work with pliers, files, and hammers, stripping off the torn metal and lapping fresh pieces over the weak places.

On November 3rd they had reached a height of 7000 ft. The majestic cliffs were below them and they gazed over the summits of mountains to the eastward. Next day it was blowing a full gale, and there was only just time to get the tents up when it burst upon them. It was a week before they were able to move again, and throughout the whole time the gale raged incessantly.

The delight of being able to start again may be imagined, and on the 13th they had reached the summit at a height of 8900 ft. with five weeks’ provisions in hand. They found themselves on a great snow plain with a level horizon all round, but above it to the east rose the tops of mountains. Captain Scott had discovered the great Antarctic ice-cap.

The gale had blown away the nautical tables so that the observations could not be worked out until their return. Scott’s inventive talent came into play. He could calculate the declination for certain fixed days, and having ruled a sheet of his note-paper in squares, he plotted these points on the squares, and joined them with a curve. It was afterwards found that the curve was nowhere more than 4′ in error. It gave him the latitude with as much accuracy as was needed at the time.

The cold on the ice-cap was intense, -44° Fahr. But they had reached the lofty plateau, leaving the mountain peaks behind, and before them lay the unknown. Scott resolved to press onwards. On November 22nd he went on with Evans and Lashly, the rest returning.

From a magnetic point of view this was a very interesting region. The travellers were directly south of the magnetic pole, and the north end of the compass pointed south, or a variation of 180°!

Of Scott’s two companions, Evans, who had been a gymnastic instructor in the navy, was a man of herculean strength. Lashly had been a non-smoker and a teetotaller all his life, and had the largest chest measurement in the ship. The progress made was rapid, though they had to struggle over a sea of broken and distorted snow-waves, causing frequent capsizes of the far-too-narrow sledge. The night temperature continued as low as -40°, and, judging from the sastrugi, the wind blows from west to east across the ice-cap, often with great violence, and as the summer temperature is -40° the cold of the winter may be imagined. The little party of three resolutely pushed on to the westward until November 30th. They had gone for 200 miles over the ice-cap, and could see nothing beyond but a further expanse of the terrible plateau. Yet, “After all,” writes Scott,

On December 1st the little party turned their steps homewards. Day by day they struggled on over rough snow ridges in thick weather. On the 15th all were precipitated down a steep slope for 200 ft., finding themselves sore and bruised at the bottom, and near the upper entrance of the glacier. It was a month since Scott had seen any known landmark. They started again, Scott in the middle and a little in front, Lashly on his right, and Evans on his left. They had been going for a quarter of an hour when Scott and Evans suddenly disappeared down a crevasse. Almost by a miracle Lashly saved himself from following, and sprang back with his whole weight on the trace. The sledge rushed past him and jumped the crevasse down which Scott and Evans had gone. The two who had fallen were dangling at the ends of their traces with blue walls of ice on each side and a fathomless abyss below. Scott struggled on to a thin shaft of ice wedged between the walls of the chasm, guiding Evans’s feet to the same support. The great danger was that the intense cold would soon render them powerless. There was no time to lose, and Scott by a desperate effort managed to swarm up the trace and flung himself on the snow. With the united efforts of Scott and Lashly Evans was also landed on the surface. Both were terribly frost-bitten. On the same evening they reached their nunatak depôt and next day, by a long march, arrived at the main depôt. There were no further troubles, and the three reached the ship on the 23rd December.

In his absence of fifty-nine days Scott and his companions had travelled over 725 miles, but for nine days they had been confined to the tent by gales of wind. The distance, therefore, was accomplished in fifty marching days, a daily average of 14½ miles. Taking the whole eighty-one days of absence they had covered 1098 miles at a little under 15½ miles a day. They had reached the limit of possible performance, under the hardest conditions.

This is, in some respects, the greatest polar journey on record without dogs. The only comparison can be with the journeys of M’Clintock and Mecham. But they had not the intense cold, the danger from crevasses, and the great height to climb. Nor can any one journey be compared with it as regards the value and importance of its results. Scott discovered the vast Antarctic ice-cap and explored it for 200 miles, and his observations enabled Captain Chetwynd to fix the position of the south magnetic pole.

Barne and Mulock marched to the south, but, after leaving Minna Bluff, they were much hampered by southerly gales which confined them to the tent for ten days. They had barely reached the mouth of the inlet which they were to explore when they were obliged to return. The ground was scarcely passable, and they had to cross wide crevasses, and clamber over steep ridges. Mulock was indefatigable in the use of the theodolite, so that this stretch of coast-line has been very accurately plotted. But the most important result of Barne’s journey was the discovery that the ice on the barrier moved. Depôt A lay on an alignment with a small peak on Minna Bluff and Mount Discovery in 1902. Barne found the depôt was no longer on with this small peak and Mount Discovery and, therefore, that it must have moved. Thirteen and a half months after the establishment of Depôt A Barne measured the displacement, and found that it had moved 608 yards. Barne and his party were absent 68 days.

The journey of Royds and Bernacchi over the ice of the barrier to the S.E. occupied thirty days. Scott wrote, “It deserves to rank very high in our sledging efforts, for every detail was carried out in the most thoroughly efficient manner.” A very interesting series of magnetic observations were taken by Bernacchi, who carried with him the Barrow dip circle, a specially delicate instrument. The party returned on the 10th December, having accomplished an exceedingly fine journey. There were several shorter journeys. Dr Wilson was at Cape Crozier again to study the habits of the Emperor penguins during twelve days, and Armitage explored the Koettlitz glacier, previously only seen from Brown Island, and obtained some excellent photographs.

Captain Scott ordered all the parties, when they returned from sledging and had rested, to join the sawing camp about ten miles to the north, where work was being proceeded with for cutting the ship out of the ice. But it was soon found that the task was an impossible one, and it was accordingly relinquished.

The Morning was got ready for her second voyage, with arrangements complete for taking all the Discovery’s officers and men on board if necessary, which was very unlikely. But the Government began to interfere. The Terra Nova, Captain MacKay, was bought and sent out as well as the Morning, which was quite unnecessary and a great waste of public money, for all that was required could have been perfectly done by the Morning. The two ships arrived at the edge of the ice on the 5th January, 1904. The Discovery was freed from the ice on the 16th February. A large wooden cross, with an inscription, had been made in memory of Vince, and this was erected on the summit of Hut Point before their departure.

On the 17th a furious gale of wind sprang up. A heavy anchor was down. Steam was got up, but the wind was more powerful and the ship was driven upon a shoal near Hut Point at 11 a.m. The gale kept increasing in force, the seas broke over the Discovery’s starboard quarter and she listed heavily to port, the keel constantly pounding and grinding on the stones. Late in the afternoon the wind abated and the ship began working astern. The engines were put full speed astern, and she slid gently into deep water. There was no leakage, an eloquent testimony to the solid structure of the ship, and what showed every sign of becoming a great disaster was happily averted.

The Discovery then received her coal from the relief ships, Colbeck reducing himself to the very narrowest limits, keeping just enough to take him back to New Zealand. Scott intended to explore westward from Cape North. In the voyage northward the rudder was damaged, and the Discovery, after rounding Cape Adare, anchored in Robertson Bay, where the rudder was shifted. As soon as the spare rudder was in place the vessel put to sea again, February 25th, and was soon in the thick of the icebergs. There was a great mass of closely-packed ice towards Cape North. Captain Scott, therefore, altered course and sighted the Balleny Islands on the 2nd March, afterwards proceeding west to beyond 159°E., where the ship was actually behind Wilkes’s alleged land. On March 4th she was in 67° 23′ S. and 155° 30′ E., and it was quite clear that Eld’s Peak and Ringgold’s Knoll did not exist. Cape Hudson is also imaginary, and there is no case for any land near that latitude eastward of Adélie Land. The coast turns S.E. to Cape North. On April 1st the Discovery arrived at Lyttelton, where a most cordial reception awaited her.

The Discovery sailed again June 8th, completing her magnetic survey across the South Pacific. Passing through Magellan Strait, Port Stanley was visited for coal, and on the 10th September the good ship was anchored at Spithead. Never has any polar expedition returned with so great a harvest of results. The discoveries alone were remarkable—the entirely new land of King Edward VII, the nature of the ice on the barrier, the great Victorian range of mountains, the volcanic region of Ross and the smaller islands, the glaciers and the remarkable phenomenon of their recession, the great Antarctic ice-cap over which Captain Scott and two companions travelled for 200 miles, the discovery of the position of the south magnetic pole, and the lines of deep sea soundings with serial temperatures and dredgings. Yet these are only the skeleton which is provided with flesh and blood by the scientific results and observations which are contained in the twelve large volumes published on the voyage.

Captain Scott’s own narrative, in two volumes, beautifully illustrated by Dr Wilson, was worthy of the expedition. It was his first literary effort, but the great explorer had a natural gift, and there are few polar stories to be compared with the Voyage of the Discovery either in literary merit or in scientific interest.