THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



out the sledges from the snow drift, we started in the 

 bhzzard, the snow still falling. After a little while we 

 made sail on both sledges. The hght was very bad on 

 account of the thick falling snow, and we were constantly 

 falling up to our knees in the cracks in the sea ice. It 

 seemed miraculous that in spite of these very numerous 

 accidents we never sprained an ankle. 



That day we saw a snow petrel, and three skua gulls 

 visited our camp. At last the snow stopped falling 

 and the wind fell light, and we were much cheered by 

 a fine, though distant view of the Nordenskjold Ice 

 Barrier to the north of us. We were all extremely 

 anxious to ascertain what sort of a surface for sledging 

 we should meet with on this great glacier. According 

 to the Admiralty chart, prepared from observations by 

 the Discovery expedition, this glacier was between 

 twenty -four and thirty miles wide, and projected over 

 twenty miles from the rocky shore into the sea. We 

 hoped that we might be able to cross it without following 

 a circuitous route along its seaward margins. 



We started off on November 10, amongst very 

 heavy sastrugi and ridges of broken pack-ice. Cracks 

 in the sea ice were extremely numerous. The morning 

 was somewhat cloudy, but as the midnight sun got higher 

 in the heavens, the clouds dispersed and the weather be- 

 come comparatively warm, the temperature being up to 

 plus 3° Fahr. at 8 a.m. That day when we pitched camp 

 we were within half a mile of the southern edge of the 

 Nordenskjold Ice Barrier. 



The following day, November 11, as Mawson wished 

 to get an accurate magnetic determination with the 

 Lloyd-Creak dip circle, we decided to camp, Mackay 

 and I exploring the glacier surface to select a suitable 

 track for our sledges while Mawson took his observa- 

 tions. After breakfast we removed everything con- 



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