328 



SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION 



[November 



but in itself more even, and therefore less tiring for the animals. 

 Meares just come up and reporting very bad surface. We shall 

 start i hour later to-morrow, i.e. at 4 A.M., making 5 hours' 

 delay on the conditions of three days ago. Our forage supply 

 necessitates that we should plug on the 13 (geographical) miles 

 daily under all conditions, so that we can only hope for better 

 things. It is several days since we had a glimpse of land, which 

 makes conditions especially gloomy. A tired animal makes 

 a tired man, I find, and none of us are very bright now 

 after the day's march, though we have had ample sleep of late. 



Tuesday, November 28. Camp 24. The most dismal start 

 imaginable. Thick as a hedge, snow falling and drifting with 

 keen southerly wind. The men pulled out at 3.15 with Chinaman 

 and James Pigg. We followed at 4.20, just catching the party 

 at the lunch camp at 8.30. Things got better half way; the sky 

 showed signs of clearing and the steering improved. Now, at 

 lunch, it is getting thick again. When will the wretched blizzard 

 be over? The walking is better for ponies, worse for men; there 

 is nearly everywhere a hard crust some 3 to 6 inches down. 

 Towards the end of the march we crossed a succession of high 

 hard south-easterly sastrugi, widely dispersed. I don't know 

 what to make of these. 



Second march almost as horrid as the first. Wind blowing 

 strong from the south, shifting to S.E. as the snowstorms fell 

 on us, when we could see little or nothing, and the driving snow 

 hit us stingingly in the face. The general impression of all this 

 dirty weather is that it spreads in from the S.E. We started at 

 4 A.M., and I think I shall stick to that custom for the present. 

 These last four marches have been fought for, but completed 

 without hitch, and, though we camped in a snowstorm, there is 

 a more promising look in the sky, and if only for a time the wind 

 has dropped and the sun shines brightly, dispelling some of the 

 gloomy results of the distressing marching. 



Chinaman, ' The Thunderbolt,' has been shot to-night. 

 Plucky little chap, he has stuck it out well and leaves the stage 

 but a few days before his fellows. We have only four bags of 

 forage (each one 30 lbs.) left, but these should give seven 

 marches with all the remaining animals, and we are less than 

 90 miles from the Glacier. Bowers tells me that the barometer 

 was phenomenally low both during this blizzard and the last. 



