Antarctica and Kurdistan

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 443, 19 December 1947, Page 33

Antarctica and Kurdistan

LOOKED round and found the second sledge halted some way in rearevidently someone had gone into a crevasse. ... It appears that Lashly went down very suddenly, nearly dragging the crew with him... We had four courses. The first, pemmican, fyll whack, with slices of horse-meat flavoured with onion and curry powder, and thickened with biscuit; then an arrowroot, cocoa and biscuit hoosh sweetened; then a plum-pudding; then cocoa with raisins; and finally a dessert of caramels and ginger. After the feast it was difficult to move. Wilson and I couldn't finish our share of plum pudding. We have all slept splendidly and feel thoroughly warm-such is the effect of

full feeding.

CAPTAIN

SCOTT

(Diary-Christmas Day, 1911, latitude 85 deg. 50 S.) ~~ o a

nm" nm PS HE day’s journey was accomplished, and my Christmas mail awaited me. I read on and on till I had’ opened every

letter and every parcel from my home at the ends of the earth. Cakes that were cakes, shortbread that was shortbread, even a plum pudding! All had made the 8000-mile journey from New

Zealand in grand style, | packed as they were in soldered tins..... The matter was settled for me by the appearance of Clarke himself on the well-lit verandah, in immaculate evening dress. What a strange setting! A wild winter’s night in Kurdistan, a solitary Englishman celebrating Christmas alone in a large typically Eastern house built out on the flat grainfields of Arbil, that oldest of all cities... . In a corner of the

oom a gramophone was playing soft air by Beethoven, and the mantelpiece above the blazing fire was bedecked with Christmas cards, many Arabic and Kurdish ones amongst them, for even the Mohammedans joined in the spirit, if not in the belief, of Christmas.

A. M.

HAMILTON

("Road Through Kurdistan’)