170 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [DEcEMBER 
first furious blizzard we had experienced now commenced, for 
the wind force was about 7, while the drift was thick and wet- 
ting. I will copy my diary here. 
10 a.m.—We have a pretty snug camp on snow one foot 
thick which you can accommodate to your hip bone, but which 
it is difficult to stand the primus upon (especially as the cooker 
base is full of fat, and is now our frying pan at the hut!). It 
started snowing about midnight and clothed the tent by 3 A.M. 
I woke to hear the tent flapping and shaking down young ava- 
lanches, and it’s been going strong ever since. 
‘2 p.m.—Still blizzing strongly; there have been one or two 
lulls of a few minutes, but they don’t seem to mean much. It is 
snowing like fury too, pattering on the tent like rain on wooden 
shingles. If you budge from the tent (Debenham did so to 
get a note-book) you get very cold because the drift melts 
and wets you at this high temperature of + 23°. We had a 
meal about 11 A.M., Gran cooking a good pemmican with a large 
supply of broken biscuit therein. This strong S.E. wind blows 
practically direct from Cape Roberts on to the tongue on our 
lee, so I don’t much fear it will shift out this ice. Anyhow we 
can’t move and I’m learning to take these blizzes philosophically. 
Besides the bags are dry and warm, and when [ tire of writing 
this diary I snooze a bit, and then read Harker’s “ Petrology ” 
-(Debenham’s), and then snooze more. Or Poe’s “‘ Tales” (too 
fantastic and Oriental to please me, most of them), or ‘‘ Martin 
Chuzzlewit,’ or German Grammar. Forde is reading the 
“Mysterious Island’ which Gran has nearly finished at last. 
Debenham started to work out a latitude but is now ‘‘ wropped 
in Morfus.”’ Last night’s ‘‘ hoosh’’ was an enormous success, 
2% pots of Forde’s concentrated seal-hoosh mixed with water 
and meal made a top-hole hoosh—very tasty and all indigenous! 
‘6 p.m.—The tent is beastly sloppy. We have just finished 
our lunch and if we can’t get away, that is our last meal to-day. 
To-day is a queer camp—the first down here where we have 
actually been dripped on when no primus is going. We have 
put the cooker under the tied-up door and it is filling I see. Forde 
is dressing his hand and Debenham keeping warm very sensibly 
in his bag. 
‘Noon.—lIt is now noon and we are still snowed up off the 
end of the Mackay Tongue. Forty-three hours now and we 
