256 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
whatever could be seen. From under the tent came noises 
as though some giant was banging a big empty tank. All 
the signs were for a blizzard, and indeed we had not long 
finished our supper and were thawing our way little by 
little into our bags when the wind came away from the 
south. Before it started we got a glimpse of black rock, 
and knew we must be in the pressure ridges where they 
nearly join Mount Terror. 
It is with great surprise that in looking up the records 
I find that blizzard lasted three days, the temperature and 
wind both rising till it was + 9° and blowing force 9 on 
the morning of the second day (July 11). On the morning 
of the third day (July 12) it was blowing storm force (10). 
The temperature had thus risen over eighty degrees. 
It was not an uncomfortable time. Wet and warm, the 
risen temperature allowed all our ice to turn to water, and 
we lay steaming and beautifully liquid, and wondered 
sometimes what we should be like when our gear froze up 
once more. But we did not do much wondering, I suspect : 
we slept. From that point of view these blizzards were a 
perfect Godsend. 
We also revised our food rations. From the moment 
we started to prepare for this journey we were asked by 
Scott to try certain experiments in view of the Plateau 
stage of the Polar Journey the following summer. It was 
supposed that the Plateau stage would be the really tough 
part of the Polar Journey, and no one then dreamed that 
harder conditions could be found in the middle of the 
Barrier in March than on the Plateau, ten thousand feet 
higher, in February. In view of the extreme conditions we 
knew we must meet on this winter journey, far harder of 
course in point of weather than anything experienced on 
the Polar Journey, we had determined to simplify our food 
to the last degree. We only brought pemmican, biscuit, 
butter and tea: and tea is not a food, only a pleasant 
stimulant, and hot: the pemmican was excellent and came 
from Beauvais, Copenhagen. 
The immediate advantage of this was that we had few 
food bags to handle for each meal. If the air temperature 
