The first two decades of the twentieth century have been called the 'heroic age' of Antarctic exploration--the time when men first ventured to sledge inland across the sea ice, the ice shelves, the glaciers and the ice sheets of the unknown seventh continent.

Introduction: On 17 January 1912 Captain Scott and his four companions, Wilson, bowers, Oates, and Evans, reached the Southh Pole to find that they had been forestalled by the Norwegian explorer Amundsen, who had been there one month earlier.