354 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



moving for short spells of a few hundred yards, the whole 

 concern sinking so deeply into the soft snow as to form a 

 snow-plough. The starting was worse than pulling as it 

 required from ten to fifteen desperate jerks on the harness 

 to move the sledge at all." Many others were also snow- 

 blind, caused partly by the strain of the last march of the 

 ponies, partly by not having realized that now that we 

 were day-marching the sun was more powerful and more 

 precautions should be taken. The cocaine and zinc sul- 

 phate tablets which we had were excellent, but we also 

 found that our tea leaves, which had been boiled twice and 

 would otherwise, have been thrown away, relieved the pain 

 if tied into some cotton and kept pressed against the eyes. 

 The tannic acid in the tea acted as an astringent. A snow- 

 blind man can see practically nothing anyhow and so he is 

 not much worse off if a handkerchief is tied over his eyes. 



" Beardmore Glacier. Just a tiny note to be taken back 

 by the dogs. Things are not so rosy as they might be, but 

 we keep our spirits up and say the luck must turn. This is 

 only to tell you that I find I can keep up with the rest as 

 well as of old." 1 



Then for the first time we were left with our full loads 

 of 800 lbs. a sledge. Even Bowers asked Scott whether he 

 was going to try it without relaying. That night Scott's 

 diary runs: 



" It was a very anxious business when we started after 

 lunch, about 4.30. Could we pull our full loads or not? 

 My own party got away first, and, to my joy, I found we 

 could make fairly good headway. Every now and again 

 the sledge sank in a soft patch, which brought us up, but 

 we learned to treat such occasions with patience. We got 

 sideways to the sledge and hauled it out, Evans (P.O.) 

 getting out of his ski to get better purchase. The great 

 thing is to keep the sledge moving, and for an hour or 

 more there were dozens of critical moments when it all 

 but stopped, and not a few when it brought up altogether. 

 The latter were very trying and tiring." 2 Altogether it 

 was an encouraging day and we reckoned we had made 



1 Scott. 2 Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. p. 497. 



