Part 22 (2/2)
Campbell was by no means satisfied with his landing place, but coal was short in the ”Terra Nova” and the season drawing in. He had vainly searched for a more profitable wintering place, and it was not until February 17 that he got his chance of landing here even.
The party and their stores were put ash.o.r.e on the beach which the ”Southern Cross” Expedition had chosen, for want of a better spot where their stuff could be set safely on land. Loose ice and surf hampered operations, for owing to shallow water, boats had to convey hut, gear, and equipment from the s.h.i.+p instead of sledges taking it over fast ice, as was the case at Cape Evans. It was truly a case of bundling Campbell and Co. out of the s.h.i.+p, and only their great optimism and _bonhomie_ kept this party from despair. As it turned out they had some of the best of the Expedition game, since neither disaster nor terrific disappointment dogged their steps as in Scott's case, for up till the very last they were in blissful ignorance of our dreadful plight in the main party.
The old huts left by Borchgrevink in 1900 were much dilapidated: one snowed up inside, and the other roofless and full of penguin guano. The snow was all removed from the snow-choked hut, and this shack used as a temporary shelter during the building of the Chateau Campbell. The work of landing stores from the ”Terra Nova” was accomplished in two days, and the s.h.i.+p, after tooting a farewell to the little party on her siren, steamed away and left them to their own devices.
The Cape Adare locality is a famous penguin rookery, and Campbell's men might for all the world have been erecting their hut on Hampstead Heath during a Bank Holiday, for the penguins gathered in their thousands around them in a cawing, squawking crowd.
Penguins are the true inhabitants of Antarctica, and have flourished for countless ages in these parts. Surgeon Levick, Campbell's doctor, has written a splendid little book ent.i.tled ”Antarctic Penguins” (Heinemann), which tells all about the little beggars in popular language. The members landed with Lieutenant Victor Campbell were:
Levick . . . Surgeon and Zoologist.
Priestley . . Geologist.
Abbott . . . Seaman.
Browning . . Seaman.
d.i.c.kason . . Seaman.
The three seamen were chosen by Campbell after careful observation on the outward voyage.
The Northern Party Hut was completed and first inhabited by March 5. An ice house for the storage of fresh meat was constructed, or rather hollowed out of an iceberg grounded close to. Unfortunately, this had to be evacuated owing to a surf causing the berg to disintegrate, and V Campbell puts it, ”we had only just time to rescue the forty penguins with which we had stocked it, and carry the little corpses to a near ice-house built of empty cases filled with ice.”
To appreciate best the surrounding hereabouts one may as well give a brief description of the Cape Adare and Robertson Bay environment. The place on which the hut was built is a small triangular beach cut off from the mainland by inaccessible cliffs. A fine bay, containing an area of perhaps nine hundred square miles, lies to the westward, and south and behind this the Admiralty Range of Mountains rises in snowy splendour to heights of 10,000 feet or more; other ranges are visible far to the westward, whilst black basalt rocks overhang the station.
Several wall-faced glaciers are visible, but according to Campbell none are possible to climb on to, nor do they lead up to the inland plateau.
On this account the party were unable to accomplish any serious sledging whilst landed here. Other things were undertaken, and the members did excellent meteorological, geological, and magnetic work, while Campbell himself made some good surveys. Priestley has added, greatly to our geological knowledge, and he, with his previous Antarctic experience, made himself invaluable to his chief. The Aurora observations show much more variegated results than we got at Cape Evans, where, as pointed out, there was a great absence of colour beyond pale yellow in the displays.
The princ.i.p.al drawback of the beach here was its covering of guano and manure dust from the myriads of penguins and their predecessors. I had gone ash.o.r.e at Cape Adare as a sub-lieutenant on January 8, 1903, to leave a record, and I remember that we had literally to trample on the penguins to get across the beach to Borchgrevink's hut--how interesting it all was, my first landing on this inhospitable continent: my impressions left a wonderful memory of mouse-coloured, woolly little young of the Adelie penguin--I even remember taking one away and trying unsuccessfully to bring it up. It must have taken Campbell's crew a long time to get accustomed to the pungent odour thereabouts. Levick dressed the ground with bleaching powder to help dispel that dreadful odour of guano before Campbell's men put down their hut floor.
There is little to be set down concerning the Cape Adare winter--the routine much resembled our own winter routine at Cape Evans; it was much warmer, however, and being six degrees farther north the sun left the party nearly a month later and returned the same amount earlier; they had little more than two months with the sun below the horizon in fact.
There is a certain amount of quiet humour about Campbell's record; for instance, he states that they used their ”pram” or Norwegian skiff and tried trawling for biological specimens on March 27--”our total catch was one sea-louse, one sea-slug, and one spider.”
It is very interesting to note that in March they had Aurora in which ”an arc of yellow stretched from N.W. to N.E., while a green and red curtain extended from the N.W. horizon to the zenith.”
The ”pram” was Campbell's gift to the Expedition. He was always alive in the matter of small boats and their uses, and he was the first to use ”kayaks” by making canvas boats to fit round the sledges; these were light enough and might have well been used by us in the Main Party. Had poor Mackintosh possessed one in Shackleton's last expedition he and his companions would probably have saved themselves--if they had carried a canvas cover on a sledge with them however it is always easy to be wise after the event.
Levick's medical duties were very light indeed: they included the stopping of one of Campbell's teeth, and the latter says, ”As he had been flensing a seal a few days before, his fingers tasted strongly of blubber.”
Priestly took charge of the meteorology for this station in addition to his own special subjects. Abbott was the carpenter, Browning the acetylene gas-man, and d.i.c.kason the cook and baker. With these ends in view Mr. Archer had had d.i.c.kason in the galley on board during the outward voyage.
This hut of theirs was stayed down with wire hawser on account of the gales recorded by the ”Southern Cross” Expedition.
The company's alarm clock, an invention of Browning's, deserves the description taken from Campbell's diary: ”We have felt the want of an alarm clock, as in such a small party it seems undesirable that any one should have to remain awake the whole night to take the 2-4 a.m.
observations, but Browning has come to the rescue with a wonderful contrivance. It consists of a bamboo spring held back by a piece of cotton rove through a candle which is marked off in hours. The other end of the cotton is attached to the trigger of the gramophone, and whoever takes the midnight observations winds the gramophone, 'sets' the cotton, lights the candle, and turns the trumpet towards Priestley, who has to turn out for the 2 a.m. At ten minutes to two the candle burns the thread and releases the bamboo spring, which being attached to the trigger, starts the gramophone in the sleeper's ear, and he turns out and stops the tune; this arrangement works beautifully and can be timed to five minutes.”
Curiously enough Campbell's men sustained far more frostbites than we at Cape Evans did: in all my four Antarctic voyages I have never been frost-bitten beyond a touch here and there on the finger-tips working instruments, yet I occasionally now get chilblains in an ordinary English winter.
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