Page 209

[header] 207
[margin] Sunday Dec. 10.

This journal is written in badly managed
intervals - taken between duty and
exercise sleep and wake - It draws so
poor a picture of my life that in
looking it over I am tempted in dis=
gust to let the days go without a
record - one thing only it conveys
with pointed truth - no one can read
it without seeing the preoccupied
mind - and hardly worked ailing
body of the journalist. For the
past week I have not had my clothes
off - and the work thus falling on
me is caused by the hard hands of
scurvy among my people.

Brooks has his legs drawn up
and wastes rapidly with night sweats
McGeary - once my iron man has
caught a [Croup?] Cold - by exposure
to -53^o . Riley has oedematous ankles
and bleeding gums. So then it is
my sturdy routine labourers are down
and I have to take the oar into
my own hands.

From the Esquimaux who
accompanied Petersen I obtained some
Walrus beef - and poor little Myosu
who is unabated in his troublesome af=
fection gave me a half a liver - These
I treasure for the sick. Perhaps the
fact - which I find does not appear in this
journal - of my having now for some
time lived on rats may show that we
are getting into the narrow end of the
horn.

On the other hand my ability
to eat those rats - which my comrades
have not yet acquired - has exempted me
from Scurvy - My spirits are good and