WITH FULL LOADS 
497 
starting, made it very conspicuous, and left a good deal 
of gear there. The old man-hauling party made heavy 
weather at first, but when relieved of a little weight and 
having cleaned their runners and re-adjusted their load 
they came on in fine style, and, passing us, took the lead. 
Starting about II, by 3 o'clock we were clear of the 
pressure, and I camped the dogs, discharged our loads, 
and we put them on our sledges. It was a very anxious 
business when we started after lunch, about 4.30. Could 
we pull our full loads or not ? My own party got away 
first, and, to my joy, I found we could make fairly good 
headway. Every now and again the sledge sank in a 
soft patch, which brought us up, but we learned to treat 
such occasions with patience. We got sideways to the 
sledge and hauled it out, Evans (P.O.) getting out of his 
ski to get better purchase. The great thing is to keep the 
sledge moving, and for an hour or more there were dozens 
of critical moments when it all but stopped, and not a 
few in it brought up altogether. The latter were very 
trying and tiring. But suddenly the surface grew more 
uniform and we more accustomed to the game, for after 
a long stop to let the other parties come up, I started at 
6 and ran on till 7, pulling easily without a halt at the 
rate of about 2 miles an hour. I was very jubilant ; all 
difficulties seemed to be vanishing ; but unfortunately 
our history was not repeated with the other parties. 
Bowers came up about half an hour after us. They also 
had done well at the last, and I'm pretty sure they will 
get on all right. Kcohane is the only weak spot, and he 
only, I think, because blind (temporarily). But Evans' 
VOL. I. 2 K 
