4 SCOTI'S 'LAST (EXPEDITION June 
tied up the ventilator permanently and kept in all the steam and 
heat we could, to thaw out our finnesko, which we hung in the 
roof at night. We were so iced up as to our clothes and sleeping- 
bags that nothing outside made any difference, and the omission 
of brushing down saved time in getting off. 
After lunch we got away at 4 P.M. and made for what we 
believed to be Hut Point, but in the dark we got a good deal too 
close in towards Castle Rock, much more than was necessary. 
Our pace was slow owing to the weights, but the surface was not 
bad. It was chiefly crusty rough sea ice, salt to the taste still; 
or it had an inch or two of white crusty snow on the rough, darker 
sea ice, alternating with broader drifts of hard wind-swept snow, 
making long, low mounds over which the sledges ran easily. 
These seemed here to result from an E.N.E. wind coming from 
the neck on the promontory, the wind which we caught just after 
passing the Glacier Tongue, and again off the ridge along Castle 
Rock, where it blew to force 5, up to 8 P.M., when we camped for 
the night, having made 934 miles from Cape Evans. [Setting 
this tent in dark is difficult, but not too bad even in that wind. 
Bill warns me seriously against running risk of frostbite. I find 
no specs. very hard in setting tent—must be sure not to let any 
inability arising from this get on my nerves—41 more days we 
hope.] Castle Rock was here nearly abeam. ‘The wind dropped 
soon after and we had a clear starlit night. 
The temperature for the day ranged from —14:5° to —15°, 
and the minimum temperature for the night was — 26°. 
W ednesday, June 28, 1911.—Turned out at 7.30 A.M. The 
going became very heavy with the two sledges, and we made very 
little more than a mile an hour over a surface which was all rough, 
rubbly salt sea ice with no snow on it. Bowers thinks that we 
were on definitely younger ice than that which we were on farther 
out yesterday and on our return. He thinks there was a large 
open lead along the shore which was the last to freeze up, and 
that this resulted from off-shore winds. 
We reached Hut Point at 1.30 P.Msshaving crossed three or 
four cracks and lines of pressure chiefly radiating from Hut Point 
itself. The sledgemeter showed 13 m. 1500 yds., but we had not 
come in a direct line from Cape Evans. We lunched in the hut 
and had no difficulty with the door, as there was hardly any snow- 
drift against it. 
