THE POLAR JOURNEY 343 



rock seemed to stand out, and the effect of the sun as he 

 came round (between us and the mountains) was to make 

 the scene still more beautiful." x 



Altogether we marched eleven miles this day, and 

 camped right in front of the Gateway, which we reckoned 

 to be some thirteen miles away. We saw no crevasses but 

 crossed ten or twelve very large undulations, and estimated 

 that the dips between them were twelve to fifteen feet. 

 Mount Hope was bigger than we expected, and beyond it, 

 stretching out into the Barrier as far as we could see, was 

 a great white line of jagged edges, the chaos of pressure 

 which this vast glacier makes as it flows into the compara- 

 tively stationary ice of the Barrier. 



My own pony Michael was shot after we came into 

 camp. He was as attractive a little beast as we had. His 

 light weight helped him on soft surfaces, but his small 

 hoofs let him in farther than most and I notice in Scott's 

 diary that on November 1 9 the ponies were sinking half- 

 way to the hock, and Michael once or twice almost to the 

 hock itself. A highly strung, spirited animal, his off days 

 took the form of fidgets, during which he would be con- 

 stantly trying to stop and eat snow, and then rush forward 

 to catch up the other ponies. Life was a constant source 

 of wonder to him, and no movement in the camp escaped 

 his notice. Before we had been long on the Barrier he 

 developed mischievous habits and became a rope eater and 

 gnawer of other ponies' fringes, as we called the coloured 

 tassels we hung over their eyes to ward off snow-blindness. 

 However, he was by no means the only culprit, and he lost 

 his own fringe to Nobby quite early in the proceedings. It 

 was not that he was hungry, for he never quite finished his 

 own feed. At any rate he enjoyed the few weeks before he 

 died, pricking up his ears and getting quite excited when 

 anything happened, and the arrival of the dog-teams each 

 morning after he had been tethered sent him to bed with 

 much to dream of. And I must say his master dreamed 

 pretty regularly too. Michael was killedrightin front of the 

 Gateway on December 4,just before the big blizzard, which, 



1 Bowers. 



