348 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Sept. 



quantities of moisture, and consequently there is in it little or 

 no drying effect, while the human body is always giving off 

 moisture, much passing away in the breath, but much issuing 

 through the pores of the skin. It is not difficult to see what 

 will happen under such conditions, and how much the traveller 

 will be inconvenienced. Though the greater proportion of the 

 moisture will pass away with air artificially heated by the body 

 a small quantity will remain as ice on one's garments, and this 

 ice will gradually and surely increase until one is completely 

 enclosed in it. There is ice everywhere : one's garments are 

 covered with it ; one's helmet is encrusted with it ; one's boots 

 are full of it ; and all these things which on board the ship 

 were so caressingly soft to the touch will have become as hard 

 as boards. Worse still, this ice will be found plastered as 

 thickly on everything that makes for comfort at night : sleeping- 

 bag, night-jacket, and night foot-gear will have grown equally 

 hard and chill ; one's life seems to be spent in thawing things 

 out. 



Some idea of these discomforts may be gathered from the 

 description of a day's sledging under severe conditions of 

 temperature. We will imagine ourselves of a party who have 

 been a week or more out, and first observe ourselves as we are 

 plodding along through the snow towards our evening camping 

 place. The exertion of the march has sent the blood coursing 

 freely through our veins, and each man inside his heavy clothing 

 has a grateful sense of warmth ; but the day has been a long 

 one, in the last half-hour the sledges have grown decidedly 

 heavier, and legs and back are already giving warning that the 

 camping hour ought to be at hand. Breath is now coming 

 gustily ; it has frozen thick under the wind-guards and hangs 

 in long icicles from the unshaven chins ; eyelashes are thickly 

 encrusted with it, and now and again a bared hand has to thaw 

 out a sealed eyelid and restore the sense of vision to its owner. 

 Half an hour ago the leader looked at his watch and 

 announced, ' Thirty-five minutes to camp ' ; by this time we 

 can gauge shrewdly the passage of time and the watch has not 

 been seen again until now, when it is followed by the caution, 



