Wednesday, 22 March 1911

Scott

Gran had a long talk with Wilson, sitting on a boulder some distance from the hut. "I had the sort of feeling," Gran later said, "when I opened my mouth Scott would think of Amundsen. I had a sort of feeling that I was a kind of shadow in Scott's life.... [Wilson said] You mustn't think like that. Scott is in a terrible state. But it is natural, because I think he thinks that if Amundsen does not have bad luck, he will get to the Pole first and then you know that the expedition will be ruined, and nothing to what it could have been if Amundsen hadn't existed." [1]


Amundsen

The second depot-laying party arrived back at Framheim. Eight dogs had been lost; two more depots had been laid, one at 81° and another at 82° S., containing over a ton and a half of supplies, including three months' of pemmican for twenty-five dogs at the 82° depot, and 110 litres of paraffin, enough for four or five men travelling for two hundred days, twice Amundsen's estimation of the Polar journey.


Notes:

[1] Tryggve Gran, interview with Roland Huntford, quoted by Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.373.