THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



November 29-30, the plateau wind returned, blowing 

 stronger than ever. As the sun during the afternoon 

 had now considerable heating power we tried the ex- 

 periment of putting snow into our aluminium cooking- 

 pot, the exterior of which by this time was permanently 

 coated with greasy lamp-black from the blubber lamp, 

 and leaving the pot exposed in the evening to the direct 

 rays of the sun. The lamp-black, of course, formed 

 an excellent absorbent of the sun's heat-rays. On 

 getting out of the sleeping-bag at 9 p.m. on November 29 

 I found that about half the snow I had put into the 

 cooldng-pot had been thawed down by the sun's heat. 

 This, of course, saved both paraffin and blubber. It 

 takes, of course, as much energy to thaw ice or snow at a 

 temperature of 32° Fahr. to form a given volume of water 

 as it does to raise that water from 32° Fahr. up to boiling- 

 point. As our snow and ice used for domestic purposes 

 frequently had a temperature of many degrees below 

 zero, the heat energy necessary to thaw it was greater 

 than that required to raise the water from freezing-point 

 to boiling-point. 



As we advanced with our sledge on the early morning 

 of November 30, the ice ridges fronting us became 

 higher and steeper, and we had much ado straining 

 with all our might on the steep ice slopes to get the 

 sledges to move, and they skidded a good deal as we 

 dragged them obliquely up the slopes. The plateau 

 wind, too, had freshened, and was now blowing on our 

 port bow at from fifteen to twenty miles an hour, bringing 

 with it a good deal of low drift. At last, about 10 a.m., 

 the plateau wind dropped and with it the drift, and the 

 weather became warm and sunny. 



The glacier now spread before us as a great billowy 

 sea of pale green ice, with here and there high embank- 

 ments of marble-like neve resembhng railway em- 



134 



