250 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [December 
Dcbcnham's big camera tripod shows above the snow and 
a bamboo pole — also the top of the shovel — but the rest 
is clean buried. . . . Then I came in and had breakfast.' 
We had lunch about 2 and now saw blue sky 
occasionally to the east. Gradually the whole snow cloud 
blew over en masse to the west, leaving blue sky and a 
bright sun. We dug out the sledge, nothing of which 
showed, and tried to start off. We harnessed up alter- 
nately so as to beat out a track in the soft snow. The 
going was awful and the sledge pulled us flat on our faces 
in the snow — of course wetting us through. However, we 
managed to do about a mile in 3 hours and pitched camp 
in the middle of North Bay. 
This blizzard is evidently the same which delayed 
Captain Scott at the foot of the Beardmore, more than 
800 miles south of where it trapped us. 
On the 8th we had an eventful day. We were about 
two miles from the coast, the nearest land being the flat 
glacier-cut shelf which we named the Kar Plateau. ' We 
loaded up the sledge and found we couldn't move it. 
It just stuck with the prow covered with soft snow. So 
we stuck up the flag-pole and " packed " all we could 
carry on our backs. Gran went first with his very heavy 
bag (half water) and the tent-poles. He plugged away 
in great style, but made rather a devious track as different 
parts of the coast appealed to him. By the time we 
arrived near the land Gran was manoeuvring with the 
tent-poles to try and cross the tide-crack. This was a 
rotten affair. An ice foot 2 feet or more high, separated 
from us by a couple of feet of open water, was bad enough 
