4 86 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



We hope to get two mules back to Hut Point. If pos- 

 sible, we want to communicate with Cape Evans. 



Atkinson has been quite splendid in this very trying 

 time. 



November 14. Early morning. It has been a miserable 

 march. We had to wait some time after hoosh to let the 

 mules get ahead. Then we went on in a cold raw fog and 

 some head wind, with constant frost-bites. The surface has 

 been very bad all day for the thirteen miles : if we had been 

 walking in arrowroot it would have been much like this 

 was. At lunch the temperature was - 14. 7 . 



Then on when it was drifting with the wind in our faces 

 and in a bad light. What we took to be the mule party 

 ahead proved to be the old pony walls 26 miles from One 

 Ton. There was here a bit of sacking on the cairn, and 

 Oates' bag. Inside the bag was the theodolite, and his 

 finnesko and socks. One of the finnesko was slit down the 

 front as far as the leather beckets, evidently to get his bad 

 foot into it. This was fifteen miles from the last camp, and 

 I suppose they had brought on his bag for three or four 

 miles in case they might find him still alive. Half-a-mile 

 from our last camp there was a very large and quite unmis- 

 takable undulation, one- quarter to one-third of a mile 

 from crest to crest : the pony walls behind us disappeared 

 almost as soon as we started to go down, and reappeared 

 again on the other side. There were, I feel sure, other rolls, 

 but this was the largest. We have seen no sign of Oates' 

 body. 



About half an hour ago it started to blow a blizzard, 

 and it is now thick, but the wind is not strong. The mules, 

 which came along well considering the surface, are off their 

 feed, and this may be the reason. 



Dimitri saw the Cairn with the Cross more than eight 

 miles away this morning, and in a good light it would be 

 seen from much farther off. 



November 1 5. Early morning. We built a cairn to mark 

 the spot near which Oates walked out to his death, and we 

 placed a cross on it. Lashed to the cross is a record, as 

 follows : 



