THE WINTER JOURNEY 247 
though the whole thing was as easy as possible. They are 
trusting, I suspect, in a public who will say, ‘‘ What a fine 
fellow this is! we know what horrors he has endured, yet 
see, how little he makes of all his difficulties and hard- 
ships.”’ Others have gone to the opposite extreme. I do 
not know that there is any use in trying to make a — 18° 
temperature appear formidable to an uninitiated reader by 
calling it fifty degrees of frost. I want to do neither of 
these things. I am not going to pretend that this was any- 
thing but a ghastly journey, made bearable and even 
pleasant to look back upon by the qualities of my two com- 
panions who have gone. At the same time I have no wish 
to make it appear more horrible than it actually was: the 
reader need not fear that I am trying to exaggerate. 
During the night of July 3 the temperature dropped to 
— 65°, but in the morning we wakened (we really did wake 
that morning) to great relief. The temperature was only 
— 27° with the wind blowing some 15 miles an hour with 
steadily falling snow. It only lasted a few hours, and we 
knew it must be blowing a howling blizzard outside the 
windless area in which we lay, but it gave us time to sleep 
and rest, and get thoroughly thawed, and wet, and warm, 
inside our sleeping-bags. To meat any rate this modified 
blizzard was a great relief, though we all knew that our 
gear would be worse than ever when the cold came back. 
It was quite impossible to march. During the course of 
the day the temperature dropped to —44°: during the 
following night to — 54°. 
The soft new snow which had fallen made the surface 
the next day (July ¢) almost impossible. We relayed as 
usual, and managed to do eight hours’ pulling, but we got 
forward only 14 miles. The temperature ranged between 
— 55° and — 61°, and there was at one time a considerable 
breeze, the effect of which was paralysing. There was the 
great circle of a halo round the moon with a vertical shaft, 
and mock moons. We hoped that we were rising on to the 
long snow cape which marks the beginning of Mount 
Terror. That night the temperature was — 75°; at break- 
fast —'70°; at noon nearly —77°. The day lives in my 
