THE POLAR JOURNEY 371 



One gets pretty weary towards the end of the day ; all my 

 muscles have had their turn at being [stiffened] up. These 

 hills are giving my back ones a reminder, but they will 

 ache less to-morrow and finally cease to do so, as is the case 

 with legs, etc., which had their turn first. 



December 24. Christmas Eve. We started off heading 

 due south this morning, as we are many miles to the west- 

 ward of Shackleton's course and should if anywhere be 

 clear of the ice-falls and pressure. Of course no mortals 

 having been here, one can only conjecture ; as a matter of 

 fact, we found later in the day that we were not clear by 

 any means, and had to do a bit of dodging about to avoid 

 disturbances, as well as mount vast ridges with the tops of 

 them a chaos of crevasses. The tops are pretty hard ice- 

 snow, over which the sledges run easily ; it is quite a holi- 

 day after slogging up the slopes on the softer surface with 

 our heavy loads, which amount to over 190 lbs. per man. 



We mark our night camp by two cairns and our lunch 

 camp by single ones. It is doubtful, however, among these 

 ridges, if we will ever pick them up again, and it does not 

 really matter, as we have excellent land for the Upper 

 Glacier Depot. We completed fourteen miles and turned 

 in as usual pretty tired. 



December 25. Christmas Day. A strange and strenu- 

 ous Christmas for me, with plenty of snow to look at and 

 very little else. The breeze that had blown in our faces all 

 yesterday blew more freshly to-day, with surface drift. It 

 fairly nipped one's nose and face starting off — until one 

 got warmed up. We had to pull in wind blouses, as though 

 one's body kept warm enough on the march the arms got 

 numbed with the penetrating wind no matter how vigor- 

 ously they were swung. Another thing is that one cannot 

 stop the team on the march to get clothes on and off, so it 

 is better to go the whole hog and be too hot than cause 

 delays. We had the addition of a little pony meat for 

 breakfast to celebrate the day. I am the cook of our tent 

 this week. 



We steered south again and struck our friends the 

 crevasses and climbed ridges again. About the middle of 



