Scott had to choose between staking everything on the pole and persevering with his plan. He persevered. “The proper, as well as the wiser, course for us is to proceed exactly as though this had not happened,” Scott wrote in his diary about Amundsen’s challenge. He doubted that Amundsen’s sled dogs could manage a sprint of hundreds of miles over unknown terrain, but if they did, Scott could not hope to beat them anyway. From the standpoint of history, we can be grateful that he did not abandon research for the pole, because his trip yielded important contributions to science. But this faithfulness to science cost Scott and his team dearly.
Daily Archives: 12/06/2011
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