THE DEPOT JOURNEY 121 
danger layin the fact that though it is easy enough for you to 
march with the wind behind, you can’t march for ever and 
you will probably get tired before the wind does. Camping 
in a stiff breeze is always difficult, to say nothing of a gale; 
and for three men with five ponies to manage would be 
wellnigh impossible. Fortunately for us this was not really 
a blizzard, though it was quite near enough to one. The 
sky broke later and showed the Bluff and White Island, 
and then the scurrying clouds of drift would encircle us to 
break again and come on again. 
After having done seventeen miles we got a lull and 
stopped to camp right away. We were pretty quick about 
it,and fortunately got the ponies picketed, and tent pitched, 
before the wind came down on us again. We were pretty 
hungry by the time the walls were erected. Still we were 
quite happy, ate everything we could get, except the three 
lumps of sugar I always kept for old Uncle Bill out of my 
whack. The little blow blew itself out towards evening and 
in perfect calm and sunshine I got a splendid set of obser- 
vations. Erebus and Terror were showing up as clear as a 
bell and I got a large number of angles for Evans’ survey. 
We started out as usual, and had the most pleasant, as well 
as the longest, of our return marches on the last day of 
summer, February 22. We did eighteen miles right off 
the reel, the sun was brilliant from midnight onwards. He 
now half immersed himself below the horizon for a short 
interval once in 24 hours. All old cairns were visible a 
tremendous distance, six or seven miles at least for big 
ones. Mount Terror lay straight ahead and looked so clear 
that it seemed impossible to imagine it 70 miles away. At 
the end of our march we saw a small cairn beyond our 8th 
outward camp mound. Nobody would have rigged up 
another cairn so close without an object, so the thought of 
a dead horse flashed through my mind at once. Titus was 
so sure that Bliicher would never get back, that he had bet 
Gran a biscuit on it. I saw the cairn had a fodder bale on 
the top, and later saw a note made fast to the wire. It was 
in Teddy Evans’ handwriting and to our surprise recorded 
Blossom’s death. Titus was so sure that Blossom would 
