i9l OUR MENU 163 



for in our eagerness we had done a two-mile stage. The 

 weather looked thick to south'ard and there was a threatening 

 tablecloth on Erebus. We hauled the sledges over some wide 

 tide cracks and bumpy ice and put up the tent in a little alcove. 

 Here there was not room to spread the poles properly, so the 

 tent flapped under the blizzard. We were safe however on fixed 

 ice for the first time for days, even if it was only a yard or 

 so wide I 



On leaving View Point we proceeded due west up the south 

 side of Granite Harbour. We saw ahead of us an ice tongue 

 projecting into the bay ice. We had to cross a nasty tide crack 

 quite twenty feet wide, but luckily only a foot or two in the 

 middle was of pulpy ice. Very heavy clouds rolled up from 

 the south and it started to snow, so I decided to camp in the lee 

 of the tongue. We made a good pitch on the ice with splendid 

 snow blocks for the carving from a big drift alongside. 



Dates and meals were rather hard to adjust at this time. 

 Midnight would be in the middle of a march, and supper would 

 be celebrated at 8 A.M. However, as night marching was no 

 good for surveying, I decided to go back to day work now we 

 were inside the Harbour. An opportune blizzard kept us to the 

 tent long enough to enable us to straighten out the calendar ! 



It continued to snow. We cut out breakfast and kept com- 

 fortably to our bags all morning. We had lunch normally at 

 1.30. Our last meal had been a lunch (at midnight) and Gran 

 caused some amusement by demanding the chocolate for the 

 missed meal. During this blizzard I was cook, and trying to 

 increase my culinary skill I wrote down full notes of our menu. 



Breakfast. Pemmican (looking like lumps of block choco- 

 late) is put into the aluminium cup to full measure. Meanwhile 

 enough snow or ice has been melted in the cooker to cover the 

 bowl of a spoon. The pemmican is added to this. Some water 

 is taken out in another cup and the ' thickers ' stirred up in it. 

 The latter consists of three spoonsful of wheat meal or peaflour, 

 with salt and pepper to taste. Debenham had a happy knack 

 with the * thickers ' which made the hoosh slip down in a most 

 comforting and glutinous way. I tried boiling hard and mixing 

 soft and vice versa, but finally discovered that the art consisted 

 in dropping the ' thickers ' in just as the hoosh boiled and 

 pouring it out ' good and quick.' About twenty minutes over 



