THE POLAR JOURNEY 351 



clothing and pony gear. We started with three four-man 

 teams, each pulling for these first few miles about 500 lbs., 

 as follows: (I) Scott, Wilson, Oates, Seaman Evans: (II) 

 Lieut. Evans, Atkinson, Wright, Lashly: (III) Bowers, 

 Cherry-Garrard, Crean, Keohane. The team numbered 

 (II) had been man-hauling together some days, and two 

 members of it, Lieut. Evans and Lashly, had already been 

 man-hauling since the breakdown of the second motor at 

 Corner Camp ; it was certainly not so fit as the other two. 

 In addition to these three sledges the two dog-teams, which 

 had been doing splendid work, were carrying 600 lbs. of 

 our weight as well as the provisions for the Lower Glacier 

 Depot, weighing 200 lbs. It began to look as if Amundsen 

 had chosen the right form of transport. 



The Gateway is a gap in the mountains, a side door, as it 

 were, to the great tumbled glacier. By lunch we were on 

 the top of the divide, but it took six hours of the hardest 

 hauling to cover the mile which formed the rise. As long 

 as possible we stuck to ski, but we reached a point at which 

 we could not move the sledges on ski : once we had taken 

 them off we were up to our knees, and the sledges were 

 ploughing the snow which would not support them. But 

 our gear was drying in the bright sunshine, our bags were 

 spread out at every opportunity, and the great jagged cliffs 

 of red granite were welcome to the eyes after 425 statute 

 miles of snow. The Gateway is filled by a giant snow- 

 drift which has been formed between Mount Hope on our 

 left and the mainland on our right. From Shackleton's 

 book we gathered that the Beardmore was a very bad 

 glacier indeed. Once on the top of the divide we lunched, 

 and we descended in the evening, camping at midnight on 

 the edge of the glacier, which we found, as we had feared, 

 covered with soft snow which was so deep as to give no 

 indication whatever of the hard ice which Shackleton found 

 here. "We camped in considerable drift and a blizzard 

 wind, which is still blowing, and I hope will go on, for 

 every hour it is sweeping away inches of this soft powdery 

 snow into which we have been sinking all day." 1 



1 My own diary. 



