THE DEPOT JOURNEY 109 
rather prosaic and a tame entrance. But the Barrier is a 
tricky place, and it takes years to get to know her. 
On our outward journey this day Oates did his best to 
kill a seal. My own tent was promised some kidneys if we 
were good, and our mouths watered with the prospect of 
the hoosh before us. The seal had been left for dead, and 
when on our homeward way we neared the place of his 
demise Titus went off to carve our dinner from him. The 
next thing we saw was the seal lolloping straight for his 
hole, while Oates did his best to stab him. The quarry 
made off safely not much hurt, for, as we discovered later, 
a clasp-knife is quite useless to kill a seal. Oates returned 
with a bad cut, as his hand had slipped down the knife; 
and it was a long time before he was allowed to forget it. 
This Barrier, which we were to know so well, was soft, 
too soft for the ponies, and apparently flat. Only to our 
left, some hundreds of yards distant, there were two little 
snowy mounds. We got out the telescope which we carried, 
but could make nothing of them. While we held our 
ponies Scott walked towards them, and soon we saw him 
brushing away snow and uncovering something dark be- 
neath. They were tents, obviously left by Shackleton or 
his men when the Nimrod was embarking his Southern 
party from the Barrier. They were snowed up outside, and 
iced up inside almost to the caps. Afterwards we dug them 
out, a good evening’s work. The fabric was absolutely 
rotten, we just tore it down with our hands, but the bam- 
boos and caps were as sound as ever. When we had dug 
down to the floor-cloth we found everything intact as when 
it was left. The cooker was there and a primus—Scott 
lighted it and cooked a meal; we often used it afterwards. 
And there were Rowntree’s cocoa, Bovril, Brand’s extract 
of beef, sheep’s tongues, cheese and biscuits—all open to 
the snow and all quite good. We ate them for several days. 
There is something impressive in these first meals off food 
which has been exposed for years. 
It was on a Saturday, January 28, that we took our first 
load a short half-mile on to the Barrier and left it at a place 
afterwards known as the Fodder Depét. Two days later 
