138 SCOTI’S LAST EXPEDITION [FEBRUARY 
crossing cracks where the oozy snow and creaking showed how 
insecure was our passage. Soon after we reached the Butter 
Point piedmont the whole bay ice moved off in great floes to the 
northward, so that seven miles of it had broken away since the 
ship landed us. It is quite impossible to tell whether sea ice is 
solid or not, for the first cracks are so small and the elevation 
of the eye so little that the only safe way to traverse sea ice 
in late summer is to keep off it! 
We expected to find the Butter Point piedmont an easy level 
surface, but of its kind it was the worst I met with down South. 
All the afternoon we were plugging up an interminable snow 
slope. Just as one got one’s foot braced to draw the sledges 
through the clinging snow, it would break through a crust and 
sink nearly to the knee. Then we would meet a few yards of 
firmer surface and bet whether we could make a dozen steps 
before the soft ‘ mullock’ started again. Even worse was the 
jar when you expected deep snow and found a firm crust one 
inch below the surface. I carried a pedometer, and when we 
had done 27,500 of these paces I felt we had earned our supper. 
Blue Glacier now confronted us. P.O. Evans and I pros- 
pected across the snout and were glad to find that though it 
showed crevasses in places, yet it was so free from snow that we 
should have no great difficulty in crossing them. ‘They curved 
round parellel to the coast, and of course lay along the line 
of our march, so that we came on to them end-on and fell in 
several times. But by the evening of the 15th we were safely 
camped in the rugged ice south of the crevassed portion. Evans 
as usual enlivened us with navy yarns. He illustrated the kind- 
ness of the sailorman by a story of a mate of his who started 
a poultry-farm. To Jack’s disgust the ducks in his yard had no 
belief in altruism and with their broad bills gave the hens no 
chance. ‘So,’ said Taff Evans, ‘ evenchooly he gets a file and 
trims their bills like the hens, and then everything went all 
sprowsy!’ 
If any one had asked us what we should like sent post 
haste from civilisation there would have been a unanimous yell 
of ‘Boots!’ The rough scrambling over the rocks and jagged 
ice of the past fortnight and the alternate soaking and freezing 
they had experienced had ruined mine completely. Deep con- 
strictions formed in the leather across the toe and behind the 
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