262 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
chip out big blocks gradually with the small shovel. The 
gravel was scanty, but good when there was any. Alto- 
gether things looked very hopeful when we turned in to 
the tent some 1 50 yards down the slope, having done about 
half one of the long walls.” 4 
The view from eight hundred feet up the mountain 
was magnificent and I got my spectacles out and cleared 
the ice away time after time to look. To the east a great 
field of pressure ridges below, looking in the moonlight 
as if giants had been ploughing with ploughs which made 
furrows fifty or sixty feet deep: these ran right up to the 
Barrier edge, and beyond was the frozen Ross Sea, lying 
flat, white and peaceful as though such things as blizzards 
were unknown. To the north and north-east the Knoll. 
Behind us Mount Terror on which we stood, and over all 
the grey limitless Barrier seemed to cast a spell of cold im- 
mensity, vague, ponderous, a breeding-place of wind and 
drift and darkness. God! What a place! 
“There was now little moonlight or daylight, but for 
the next forty-eight hours we used both to their utmost, 
being up at all times by day and night, and often working 
on when there was great difficulty in seeing anything ; 
digging by the light of the hurricane lamp. By the end of 
two days we had the walls built, and banked up to one or 
two feet from the top; we were to fit the roof cloth close 
before banking up the rest. The great difficulty in bank- 
ing was the hardness of the snow, it being impossible 
to fill in the cracks between the blocks which were more 
like paving-stones than anything else. The door was in, 
being a triangular tent doorway, with flaps which we built 
close in to the walls, cementing it with snow and rocks. 
The top folded over a plank and the bottom was dug into 
the ground.”’? 
Birdie was very disappointed that we could not finish 
the whole thing that day: he was nearly angry about it, 
but there was a lot to do yet and we were tired out. We 
turned out early the next morning (Tuesday 18th) to try 
and finish the igloo, but it was blowing too hard. When 
1 My own diary. 2 Ibid. 
