working to the south of Cape Evans, did not notice how time was passing,
and we--Nelson, Forde, Hooper, and myself--fetched up at 2 a.m. to be met
by Captain Scott and comforted with cocoa.

Atkinson's hand was dreadful to behold; he had blisters like great
puffed-out slugs on the last three fingers of his right hand, while on
the forefinger were three more bulbous-looking blisters, one of them an
inch in diameter. For days and days the hand had constantly to be
bandaged, P. O. Evans doing nurse and doing it exceedingly well.
Considering all things, we were fairly free of frostbite in the Scott
expedition, and there is no doubt that Atkinson's accident served as an
example to all of us to "ca' canny."

Although we had our proportion of blizzard days I do not think our
meteorological record showed any undue frequency of high wind and
blizzards; but, as Simpson in his meteorological discussion points out,
we suffered far more in this respect than Amundsen, who camped on the Ice
Barrier far from the land. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but in the
light of after events one is compelled to state that had we stuck to our
original plan and made our landing four hundred miles or so to the
eastward of Ross Island, we should have escaped, in all probability, the
greater part of the bad weather experienced by us. Comparison with
Framheim, Amundsen's observation station, shows that we at Cape Evans had
ten times as much high wind as the Norwegians experienced. Our wind
velocities reached greater speeds than 60 miles an hour, whereas there
does not appear to be any record of wind higher than 45 miles an hour at
Amundsen's base at the Bay of Whales. Some of our anemometer records were
very interesting. In the month of July, when Wilson's party was absent,
we recorded 258 hours of blizzards, that is, of southerly winds of more
than 25 miles an hour speed. This was the record for the winter months,