Scott
The Northern Party upon their return, 1912. From left, Abbott, Campbell, Dickason, Priestley, Levick, and Browning.[1]
After a brief stop at the Discovery Hut -- where they found Atkinson's note for Pennell to the effect that "Wright and 8 men with the mules which the ship brought this year, and Atkinson with Dimitri and Cherry-Garrard, have gone off to search for the bodies" [2] -- Campbell and his Northern Party arrived back at Cape Evans. Debenham and Archer were the only ones there.
Despite often-horrible conditions on the journey, they had even -- heroically -- managed to collect geological specimens depoted by Edgworth David during the first half of his 1908-09 journey along the same route.
They had been gone 304 days.
"Campbell reached Hut Point only five days after we left it with the dog-teams," wrote Cherry later. "A characteristic note left to greet us on our return regretted they were too late to take part in the Search Journey. If I had lived through ten months such as those men had just endured, wild horses would not have dragged me out sledging again. But they were keen to get some useful work done in the time which remained until the ship arrived." [3]
Notes:
[1] Scott Polar Research Institute. The photograph is catalogued by SPRI in the Levick Collection; it may therefore have been taken by Levick himself, at Hut Point.
[2] Quoted by Katherine Lambert in The Longest Winter (Washington DC : Smithsonian Books, c2004), p.183.
[3] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, ch.19.
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