I9II] CLEARER SURFACE AND WARMER MARCHING 67 
Eventually, however, the northerly wind came over, 
rising, and forming a complete overcast beneath which 
one could sec the Western and Southern Mountains 
and horizon all perfectly clear. 
We saw to-day and yesterday, hanging round the 
summits of Erebus and Terror, some very unusually 
delicate spider-web-like cirrus cloudlets, coloured dark 
reddish, and looking like tangled thread or like unravelled 
silk — they were slight and thin, but very well defined, 
and they changed very slowly. 
Monday^ July 3I5 191 1. — We turned out soon after 
5 A.M. and liad calm clear weather again ahead of us, 
though Terror was apparently again in trouble, for it 
v/as covered in a cap cloud. 
We had good going and liad covered miles in 5^ 
hours by tlie time we reached the edge of tlie Barrier 
about l i miles off the Pram Point ridges. 
The surface of the Barrier during this march had 
to-day become very much harder and more windswept. 
It was not cut into sastrugi, but polished into low, (latly 
rounded areas, with only occasional drifts of sandy snow, 
which dragged heavily and allowed the feet to sink in 
through a tliin crust. The difference this walking on a 
Iiard surface made to the warmth of our feet was very 
noticeable, notwithstanding that the temperature was 
still -57^ 
At the Barrier edge we simply ran down a drift slope 
on to the sea ice, whicli had only a few inches of snow 
covering, six inches at the most as noted by Bowers, 
and hard and wind-swept. Here again we felt the flow 
