xliv WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
alone the points of particular interest can be worked out. 
To have done this in a proper manner from the spot at 
which the Discovery wintered in McMurdo Sound would 
have involved us in endless difficulties, for it would have 
entailed the risks of sledge travelling in mid-winter with 
an almost total absence of light. It would at any time 
require that a party of three at least, with full camp equip- 
ment, should traverse about a hundred miles of the Barrier 
surface in the dark and should, by moonlight, cross over 
with rope and axe the immense pressure ridges which form 
a chaos of crevasses at Cape Crozier. These ridges, more- 
over, which have taken a party as much as two hours of 
careful work to cross by daylight, must be crossed and 
re-crossed at every visit to the breeding site in the bay. 
There is no possibility even by daylight of conveying over 
them the sledge or camping kit, and in the darkness of 
mid-winter the impracticability is still more obvious. Cape 
Crozier is a focus for wind and storm, where every breath 
is converted, by the configuration of Mounts Erebus and 
Terror, into a regular drifting blizzard full of snow. It 
is here, as I have already stated, that on one journey or 
another we have had to lie patiently in sodden sleeping- 
bags for as many as five and seven days on end, waiting for 
the weather to change and make it possible for us to leave 
our tents at all. If, however, these dangers were overcome 
there would still be the difficulty of making the needful 
preparations from the eggs. The party would have to be 
on the scene at any rate early in July. Supposing that no 
eges were found upon arrival, it would be well to spend 
the time in labelling the most likely birds, those for example 
that have taken up their stations close underneath the ice- 
cliffs. And if this were done it would be easier then to 
examine them daily by moonlight, if it and the weather 
generally were suitable: conditions, I must confess, not 
always easily obtained at Cape Crozier. But if by good 
luck things happened to go well, it would by this time be 
useful to have a shelter built of snow blocks on the sea-ice 
in which to work with the cooking lamp to prevent the 
freezing of the egg before the embryo was cut out, and in 
