1 7 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 -j- 23. We had a 

 meal about 1 1 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 I 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*/2 pots of Forde's concentrated seal-hoosh mixed with water 

 and meal made a top-hole hoosh very tasty and all indigenous ! 



1 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. It is now noon and we are still snowed up off the 

 end of the Mackay Tongue. Forty-three hours now and we 



