THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



more cracks and a mass of pressure ice ahead, and land 

 appeared as the clouds ahead lifted. I cannot tell 

 what it means, but the position makes us anxious. 

 The sledges will not stand much more of this ice work, 

 and we are still 340 geographical miles away from the 

 Pole. Thank God the weather is fine still. We camped 

 at 6 p.m. on hard ice between two crevasses. There 

 was no snow to pack round the tents, so we had to put 

 the sledges and the provision bags on the snow cloths. 

 We made the floor level inside by chipping away the 

 points of ice with our ice-axes. We were very hungry 

 after hoosh to-night. An awkward feature about the 

 glacier are the little pits filled with mud, of which I 

 collected a small sample.* It seems to be ground- 

 down rock material, but what the action has been I 

 cannot tell. The hot sun, beating down on this mud, 

 makes it gradually sink into the body of the glacier, 

 leaving a rotten ice covering through which we often 

 break. It is like walking over a cucumber frame, and 

 sometimes the boulders that have sunk down through 

 the ice can be seen 3 or 4 ft. below the surface. The 

 ice that has formed above the sunken rocks is more 

 clear than the ordinary glacier ice. We are 3700 ft. 

 up, and made 8 miles 900 yards to the good to-day. We 

 have the satisfaction of feeling that we are getting south, 

 and perhaps to-morrow may see the end of all our diffi- 

 culties. Difficulties are just things to overcome after all. 

 Every one is very fit. 



December 12. — Our distance — 3 miles for the day — 

 expresses more readily than I can write it the nature of 

 the day's work. We started at 7.40 a.m. on the worst 

 surface possible, sharp-edged blue ice full of chasms and 

 crevasses, rising to hills and descending into gullies; in 

 fact, a surface that could not be equalled in any polar 



* These pits are known as " cryoconite holes." 



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