SOUTH 
returned. The party agreed, after a brief consultation, to 
adopt this plan. Mackintosh felt that the depot must be laid, 
and that delay would be dangerous. Spencer-Smith was left 
with a tent, one sledge, and provisions, and told to expect the 
returning party in about a week. The tent was made as 
comfortable as possible inside, and food was placed within the 
sick man's reach. Spencer-Smith bade his companions a cheery 
good-bye after lunch, and the party was six or seven miles away 
before evening. Five men had to squeeze into one tent that 
night, but with a minus temperature they did not object to 
being crowded. 
On January 23 a thick fog obscured all landmarks, and as 
bearings of the mountains were now necessary the party had to 
camp at 11 a.m., after travelling only four miles. The thick 
weather continued over the 24th, and the men did not move 
again until the morning of the 25th. They did 17f miles 
that day, and camped at 6 p.m. on the edge of " the biggest 
ice-pressure " Joyce had ever seen. They were steering in 
towards the mountains and were encountering the tremendous 
congestion created by the flow of the Beardmore Glacier into 
the barrier ice. 
" We decided to keep the camp up," ran Joyce's account 
of the work done on January 26. "Skipper, Eichards, and 
myself roped ourselves together, I taking the lead, to try and 
find a course through this pressure. We came across very 
wide crevasses, went down several, came on top of a very high 
ridge, and such a scene ! Imagine thousands of tons of ice 
churned up to a depth of about 300 ft. We took a couple of 
photographs, then carried on to the east. At last we found 
a passage through, and carried on through smaller crevasses to 
Mount Hope, or we hoped it was the mountain by that name We 
can see a great glacier ahead which we take for the Beardmore, 
which this mountain is on, but the position on the chart seems 
wrong. [It was not.— ^. //. S.] We nearly arrived at the ice- 
foot when Richards saw something to the right, which turned out 
to be two of Captain Scott's sledges, upright, but three-quarters 
buried in snow. Then we knew for certain this was the place 
we had struggled to get to. So we climbed the glacier on the 
282 
