340 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [November 
bad surface, we completed another fifteen miles and 
reached Corner Camp. There we had a very reassuring 
note from Wright. He said that the mules were going 
well together and, instead of having to be split up into 
fast and slow mules, they broke camp and pitched camp, 
with one exception, all together, for Khan Sahib, Nelson's 
mule, was peculiarly slow, and in the temperature we 
were encountering on the march Nelson found it of the 
greatest difficulty to keep himself at all warm. This mule 
would usually lose three-fourths of a mile on the others 
while they were completing two miles. Nelson invented 
a method of walking two steps forward and jumping one 
back, in order to keep his circulation up to the mark. 
They proceeded, building cairns of snow at intervals 
of from two to four miles in order that we might follow 
their tracks. 
I saw from the way that the dogs were going that we 
should have great difficulty, with their present weights, in 
catching the mules before they reached One Ton Depot. 
On Wright's satisfactory report I decided to entrust every- 
thing to the mules and to use the dogs as a means of 
lightening their heavy loads. The mules' weights had 
increased from Corner Camp up to nearly 700 lbs. per mule. 
This was far in excess of any weights hauled by the ponies 
in the previous season, and here we saw the advantage of 
having tapered runners to our sledges. The beasts, with 
comparative ease, were able to move these heavy loads on 
the sledges, where they would have been unable to do so 
with the broad runners of the previous 12-foot sledge. 
Wright proceeded the next day to Demetri Depot, 
