19"] PRESSURES AND CREVASSES 39 



were all very uncomfortable and our whole journey home was 

 done on a very limited allowance of conscious sleep, while one or 

 other of the party almost invariably dozed off and had a sleep 

 over the cooker in the comparative comfort of sitting on a bag 

 instead of lying inside it. 



Wednesday, July 26, 1911. We got in only half a day's 

 march, as the wind continued until nearly all the daylight had 

 gone. Leaving at about 2 P.M., we made 4^4 miles in 3^/2 hours, 

 and once more found ourselves on a very suspicious surface in 

 the darkness, where we several times stepped into rotten lidded 

 crevasses in smooth, windswept ice. We continued, however, 

 feeling our way along by keeping always off hard ice-slopes and 

 on the crustier deeper snow which characterises the hollows of 

 the pressure ridges, which I believed we had once more fouled in 

 the dark. We had no light, and no landmarks to guide us, ex- 

 cept vague and indistinct silhouetted slopes ahead, which were 

 always altering and whose distance and character it was impos- 

 sible to judge. We never knew whether we were approaching a 

 steep slope at close quarters or a long slope of Terror, miles 

 away, and eventually we travelled on by the ear, and by the 

 feel of the snow under our feet, for both the sound and the touch 

 told one much of the chances of crevasses or of safe going. We 

 continued thus in the dark in the hope that we were at any rate 

 in the right direction. 



The sky cleared when the wind fell, and the temperature 

 dropped from -21-5 at n A.M. to -45 at 9 P.M. We then 

 made our night camp amongst the pressure ridges off the Terror 

 moraine, on snow that felt soft and deep enough to be safe in 

 what we believed to be one of the hollows [and when we camped 

 after getting into a bunch of crevasses and being completely lost, 

 1 At any rate,' Bill said, as we camped that night, ' I think we are 

 well clear of the pressure.' There were pressure pops all night, 

 just as though someone was whacking an empty tank.] 



Thursday, July 27, 1911. We got away with the coming of 

 daylight and found that our suspicions overnight had been true. 

 We were right in amongst the larger pressure ridges and had 

 come for a considerable distance between two of them without 

 actually crossing any but very insignificant ones. Ahead of us 

 was a safe and clear road to the open Barrier to the south, but 

 we wanted to go to the S.W. And as the pressure ridges were 



