187G NORTHERN SLEDGE JOURNEY. 361 



hard were our sleeping-bags frozen last night, that the 

 operation of getting into them was positively painful ;. 

 the night, however, was comparatively warm, and we 

 slept pretty comfortably. Our travelling during the 

 early part of the day was across floes of an uneven 

 surface, and between hummocks, through which, how- 

 ever, there was no necessity of cutting a road ; but the 

 deep snow rendered the dragging exceedingly heavy. 

 These floes, or the majority of them, are all massed 

 together, squeezed one against the other, but with few 

 or no hummocks between ; vastly different from the 

 huge piled-up masses we had to contend with nearer 

 the shore. After lunch, the description of ice over 

 which we were travelling underwent great change, and 

 it appeared to us that we had at length arrived on the 

 veritable " palasocrystic " floes. We seem to have 

 quite got away from the smooth level floes surrounded 

 by dense hummocks, and have reached those of gigantic 

 thickness with a most uneven surface, and covered with 

 deep snow. The travelling has been rough and heavy. 

 The " Victoria " capsized, but was quickly righted 

 without damage to either sledge or boat, and without 

 even giving the invalid, who was securely wrapped 

 up inside the boat, a shaking. The foremost batten of 

 the " Marco Polo " was also carried away. A south- 

 easterly breeze sprang up at 5 p.m., sending the tem- 

 perature down sharply to minus 33°, and we had to 

 be cautious about frost-bites. Distance marched ten 

 miles ; made good one mile. 



< l§th. — A fine clear day. Our sleeping-bags last 

 night were rendered a little more habitable from 

 having been exposed during the day to the heat of the 



