THE POLAR JOURNEY 361 



exertion of man-hauling a heavy sledge for hours. At 

 lunch camp one's feet often get pretty cold, but this goes 

 off as soon as some hot tea is got into the system. As a rule, 

 even when snowing, one's socks, etc., will dry if there is a 

 bit of a breeze. They are always frozen stiff in the morning 

 and can best be thawed out by bundling the lot [under 

 one's] jersey during breakfast. They can then be put on 

 tolerably warm even if wet. 



" We started off on a hard rippled blue surface like a 

 sea frozen intact while the wind was playing on it. It soon 

 got worse and we had to have one and sometimes two 

 hands back to keep the sledge from skidding. Of course 

 it was easy enough stuff to pull on, but the ground was 

 very uneven, and sledges constantly capsized. It did not 

 improve the runners either. There were few crevasses. 



"All day we went on in dull cloudy weather with 

 hardly any land visible, and the glacier to be seen only 

 for a short distance. In the afternoon the clouds lifted 

 somewhat and showed us the Adam Mountains. The 

 surface was better for the sledges but worse for us, as 

 there were countless cracks and small crevasses, into which 

 we constantly trod, barking our shins. As the afternoon 

 sun came round the perspiration fairly streamed down, and 

 it was impossible to keep goggles clear. The surface was 

 so slippery and uneven that it was difficult to keep one's 

 foothold. However we did 12^ miles, and felt that we had 

 really done a good day's work when we camped. It was 

 not clear enough to survey in the evening, so I took the 

 sledge-meter in hand and worked at it half the night to 

 repair Christopher's damage. 1 I ended up by making a 

 fixing of which I was very proud, but did not dare to look 

 at the time, so I don't know how much sleep I missed. 



" There is no doubt that Scott knows where to aim for 

 in a glacier, as it was just here that Shackleton had two or 

 three of his worst days' work, in such a maze of crevasses 

 that he said that often a slip meant death for the whole 

 party. He avoids the sides of the glacier and goes nowhere 

 near the snow : he often heads straight for apparent chaos 



1 See p. 332. 



