"I think the best chance has gone. We have decided not to kill ourselves but to fight it to the last for that depot but in the fighting there is a painless end so don't worry."

The last letter of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, written to his wife as he faced death at the end of his expedition to the Antarctic in 1912:

To my widow,

Dearest Darling – we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through – In our short lunch hours I take advantage of a very small measure of warmth to write letters preparatory to a possible end – the first is naturally to you on whom my thought mostly dwell waking or sleeping – if anything happens to me I shall like you to know how much you have meant to me and that pleasant recollections are with me as I depart.

I should like you to take what comfort you can from these facts also – I shall not have suffered any pain but leave the world fresh from harness and full of good health and vigour – this is dictated already, when provisions come to an end we simply stop where we are within easy distance of another depot.

Read the rest, in which Scott writes of his wife's eventual remarriage and the raising of their infant son, among other things.

'Strordinary people, the Victorians. I've never had much of a taste for their art, music, and so forth, but the more I read of their character, the more deeply I am impressed.

UPDATE: Ya know, here I am trying to be all sober and respectful n' stuff and all you people want is teh funny. Very well, then:

By the way, such lines as, "Grrreat! Rewrite!" and "I gotta fight da lion!" have made their way into the Llama Family lexicon. We're not completely well, you know.