'stranger In A Strange Land'
I had an intresting revelation. I was listening to Bruce's audio interview from the "On Their Own Words" japanese vinyl. During his commentary on the sources of inspiration for "Stranger In A Strange Land", he says that H drew his inspiration from a newspaper article about a mummified body that had recently been found in a protection hut in the antartica. Well, those weren't his exact words, but anyway...
After some research, I found out about the Scottish National Antartic Expedition, which took place from 1902 to 1904. According to [a href=\'http://www.anta.canterbury.ac.nz/resources/handbook/vol2/2-6-3-3.html\' target=\'_blank\']this[/a] site, which lists monuments of the Antartica and "the MUSEOANTAR Program, the objective of which was to restore, preserve and maintain historical Antarctic monuments and to recover, restore and preserve utensils and other items abandoned by Antarctic expeditions" during 1985-1986, the Scottish expedition left behind a
"...stone hut built in 1903 by the Scottish Expedition led by W. S. Bruce...". The first facts I found about the expedition were these:
The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition had landed on Saddle Island in the South Orkneys on February 3, 1903. After a brief foray into the Weddell Sea, the Scotia, under William Bruce, returned to the South Orkneys to set up a winter camp at Scotia Bay on Laurie Island. The Scotia became frozen into the bay and wasn't freed until November. During the winter, crew members built the first station for scientific research, a stone hut meteorological laboratory called Omond House. The following season, Bruce and the crew of the Scotia made another foray into the Weddell where they discovered Coats Land. The Scottish Expedition conducted more science and collected more unknown specimens than any previous expedition.
(taken from [a href=\'http://www.antarcticaonline.com/antarctica/history/history.htm\' target=\'_blank\']here[/a])
After some more googling, I found a [a href=\'http://www.70south.com/resources/history/chapters/chapter11\' target=\'_blank\']chronicle[/a] on the Scottish Expedition, which, intrestingly enough, mentions:
Six men stayed behind on Laurie Island to keep things going in the meteorological station and to study the penguins which came to breed in large numbers in the spring time.
A paragraph later, and without having reffered to any deaths, the article continues:
The five men on Laurie Island were only picked up by a ship, the Uruguay, on 31 December 1904.
I think I found our Stranger [!--emo&
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