138 
SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION 
and try to get over the Southern Road * to-morrow morning. 
One breathes a prayer that the Road holds for the few 
remaining hours. It goes in one place between a berg in 
open water and a large pool of the glacier face — it may 
be weak in that part, and at any moment the narrow 
isthmus may break away. We are doing it on a very 
narrow margin. 
If all is well I go to the ship to-morrow morning after 
the ponies have started, and then to Glacier Tongue. 
* The Southern Road was the one feasible line of communication 
between the new station at C. Evans and the Discovery hut at Hut 
Point, for the rugged mountains and crevassed ice slopes of Ross 
Island forbade a passage by land. The Road afforded level going 
below the cliffs of the ice-foot, except where disturbed by the de- 
scending glacier, and there it was necessary to cross the body of 
the glacier itself. It consisted of the more enduring ice in the bays 
and the sea-ice along the coast, which only stayed fast for the season. 
Thus it was of the utmost importance to get safely over the 
precarious part of the Road before the seasonal going-out of the 
sea-ice. To wait until all the ice should go out and enable the 
ship to sail to Hut Point would have meant long uncertainty and 
delay. As it happened, the Road broke up the day after the party 
had gone by. 
