THE POLAR JOURNEY 359 



morrow among that pressure which must be enormous. 

 We can't go farther inshore here, being under the north 

 end of the Cloudmaker, and a fine mountain it is, rising 

 precipitously above us. 1 



"Sunday, December 17. Nearly 11 miles. Temp. 

 1 2. 5 . 3500 feet. We have had an exciting day — this 

 morning was just like the scenic railway at Earl's Court. 

 We got straight on to the big pressure waves, and headed 

 for the humpy rock at the base of the Cloudmaker. It was 

 a hard plug up the waves, very often standing pulls, and 

 all that we could do for a course was a very varied direction. 

 Going down the other side was the exciting part: all we 

 could do was to set the sledge straight, hang on to the 

 straps, give her a little push and rush down the slope, 

 which was sometimes so sheer that the sledge was in the 

 air. Sometimes there was no chance to brake the sledge, 

 and we all had to get on to the top, and we rushed down 

 with the wind whistling in our ears. After three hours of 

 this it levelled out again a bit, and we took the top of a 

 wave, and ran south along it on blue ice : enormous 

 pressure to our right, largely I think caused by the Keltie 

 Glacier. Then we ascended a rise, snowy and crevassed, 

 and camped after doing just under five miles, with big 

 pressure ahead." 2 



" In the afternoon we had a hard surface. Scott started 

 off at a great speed, Teddy [Evans] and I following. 

 There was something wrong with my team or my sledge, 

 as we had a desperate job to keep up at first. We did keep 

 up all right, but were heartily glad when after about 2^ 

 hours Scott stopped for a spell. I rearranged our harness, 

 putting Cherry and myself on the long span again, which 

 we had temporarily discarded in the morning. We were 

 both winded and felt wronged. The rearrangement was 

 a success however, and the remainder of the march was a 

 pleasure instead of a desperate struggle. It finished up on 

 fields of blue rippled ice with sharp knife edges, and snow 

 patches few and far between. We are all camped on a small 

 snow patch in the middle of a pale blue rippled sea, about 



1 My own diary. 2 Ibid. 



