Amid penguin excrement, moldy papers, and 118 years of dust, researchers from New Zealand preserving two explorer huts in Antarctica discovered a nearly perfectly preserved watercolor painting by a renowned explorer whose death caused a national mourning.
It was painted by Dr. Edward Wilson, an artist, physician, and celebrated explorer. The team he joined on a fatal journey to be the first to reach the South Pole died on its return, just 11 miles short of a food depot that would have saved their lives.
“Words must always fail me when I talk of Bill Wilson. I believe he really is the finest character I ever met,” wrote Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, the leader of their expedition in October 1911, six months before all five men on the journey would perish.
Scott and Wilson were likely the last to die, and passed away in their tent, their bodies discovered later, Scott with his arm across Wilson.
