224 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
unfortunately attached to this mass was a strip of the lining 
of the intestine.” 1 
The recovery of Bones was uninterrupted. ‘Two days 
later another pony went off his feed and lay down, but was 
soon well again. 
Considerable speculation as to the original cause of this 
illness never found a satisfactory answer. Some traced it to 
a want of ventilation, and it is necessary to say that both 
the ponies who were ill stood next to the blubber stove; 
at any rate a big ventilator was fitted and more fresh air 
letin. Others traced it to the want of water, supposing that 
the animals would not eat as much snowas they would have 
drunk water; the easy remedy for this was to give them 
water instead of snow. We also gave them more salt than 
they had had before. Whatever the cause may have been 
we had no more of this colic, and the improvement in their | 
condition until we started sledging was uninterrupted. 
All the ponies were treated for worms ; it was also found 
that they had lice, which were eradicated after some time 
and difficulty by a wash of tobacco and water. I know that 
Oates wished that he had clipped the ponies at the begin- 
ning of the winter, believing that they would have grown 
far better coats if this had been done. He also would have 
wished for a loose box for each pony. 
No account of the ponies would be complete without 
mention of our Russian pony boy, Anton. He was small 
in height, but he was exceedingly strong and had a chest 
measurement of 40 inches. 
I believe both Anton and Dimitri, the Russian dog 
driver, were brought originally to look after the ponies and 
dogs on their way from Siberia to New Zealand. But they 
proved such good fellows and so useful that we were very 
glad to take them on the strength of the landing party. 
I fear that Anton, at any rate, did not realize what he was 
in for. When we arrived at Cape Crozier in the ship on 
our voyage south, and he saw the two great peaks of Ross 
Island in front and the Barrier Cliff disappearing in an 
unbroken wall below the eastern horizon, he imagined that 
1 Scott’s Last Expedition, vol. i. p. 353. 
