Tim story of arctic endurance that Mr. Scott gives here
is over twenty years old. Although life in the northern snow deserts may seem to be timeless and dateless, in point of fact such a degree of isolation need never occur again, now that communication and supply by aircraft are assured. In 1930 the first attempts to winter on the Greenland Ice Cap were made independently by a fifty-year-old German and a group of British averaging half his age. This expedi- tion, led by the undergraduate Gino Wat- kins, is now traced out by one of its mem- bers. The aim was to establish a weather station on the Ice Cap ; and the fiercest enemy was not cold but wind. Men and dogs were held up by. blizzards; snowdrifts blocked their camp ; gales of 100 m.p.h. threatened to dislodge it. A party struggling across the Ice Cap made fifteen miles in fifteen days of heroic progress. This is the classic polar story — frostbite and monotonous rations, sudden grandeurs of sky, sun and snow, the diversion of reading when weatherbound, and the anxiety over dogs that pupped at the most awkward moments. 'Then, almost abruptly, it be- comes a one-man saga when -Augustine Courtauld mans the Ice Cap weather station single-handed through the winter. The plan was for three months, which lengthened into. five when the relief party failed to find the station. Hut and observer had been buried under snowdrifts. On May 6th the searchers
saw remnants of a Union Jack and the brass ventilating pipe projecting just above the surface. Courtauld was rescued, weak but well. (The German expedition, less fortu- nate, lost its leader.) Such a tale of calm endurance carries its own dignity and wonder, and can never be out of date. S. N.
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