NEW MOUNTAINS APPEARING 



to the eastward, for that means an alteration of our 

 course from nearly due south. Still they are a long way 

 off, and when we get up to them we may find some strait 

 that will enable us to go right through them and on 

 south. One speculates greatly as we march along, 

 but patience is what is needed. I think that the ponies 

 are feeling the day-in, day-out drudgery of pulling on 

 this plain. Poor beasts, they cannot understand, of 

 course, what it is all for, and the wonder of the great 

 mountains is nought to them, though one notices them 

 at times looking at the distant land. At lunch-time 

 I took a photograph of our camp, with Mount Longstaff 

 in the background. We had our sledge flags up to 

 celebrate the breaking of the southern record. The 

 long snow cape marked on the chart as being attached 

 to Mount Longstaff is not really so. It is attached to 

 a lower bluff mountain to the north of Mount Longstaff. 

 The most northerly peak of Mount Longstaff goes 

 sheer down into the Barrier, and all along this range 

 of mountains are very steep glaciers, greatly crevassed. 

 As we pass along the mountains the capes disappear, 

 but there are several well-marked ones of which we have 

 taken angles. Still more mountains appeared above 

 the horizon during the afternoon, and when we camped 

 to-night some were quite clearly defined, many, many 

 miles away. The temperature has been up to plus 22° 

 Fahr. to-day, and we took the opportunity of drying 

 our sleeping-bags, which we turned inside out and laid 

 on the sledges. To-night the temperature is plus 13° 

 Fahr. We find that raw frozen pony meat cools one 

 on the march, and during the ten minutes' spell after 

 an hour's march we all cut up meat for lunch or dinner; 

 in the hot sun it thaws well. This fresh meat ought 

 to keep away scurvy from us. Quan seems much better 

 to-day, but Grisi does not appear fit at all. He seems 



293 



