If it were not for the surface and bad light, things would not be so bad.  There are few sastrugi and little deep snow.  For the most part men and ponies sink to a hard crust some 3 or 4 inches beneath the soft upper snow.  Tiring for the men, but in itself more even, and therefore less tiring for the animals.  Meares just come up and reporting very bad surface.  We shall start 1 hour later to-morrow, i.e. at 4 A.M., making 5 hours’ delay on the conditions of three days ago.  Our forage supply necessitates that we should plug on the 13 (geographical) miles daily under all conditions, so that we can only hope for better things.  It is several days since we had a glimpse of land, which makes conditions especially gloomy.  A tired animal makes a tired man, I find, and none of us are very bright now after the day’s march, though we have had ample sleep of late.

Tuesday, November 28.—­Camp 24.  The most dismal start imaginable.  Thick as a hedge, snow falling and drifting with keen southerly wind.  The men pulled out at 3.15 with Chinaman and James Pigg.  We followed at 4.20, just catching the party at the lunch camp at 8.30.  Things got better half way; the sky showed signs of clearing and the steering improved.  Now, at lunch, it is getting thick again.  When will the wretched blizzard be over?  The walking is better for ponies, worse for men; there is nearly everywhere a hard crust some 3 to 6 inches down.  Towards the end of the march we crossed a succession of high hard south-easterly sastrugi, widely dispersed.  I don’t know what to make of these.

Second march almost as horrid as the first.  Wind blowing strong from the south, shifting to S.E. as the snowstorms fell on us, when we could see little or nothing, and the driving snow hit us stingingly in the face.  The general impression of all this dirty weather is that it spreads in from the S.E.  We started at 4 A.M., and I think I shall stick to that custom for the present.  These last four marches have been fought for, but completed without hitch, and, though we camped in a snowstorm, there is a more promising look in the sky, and if only for a time the wind has dropped and the sun shines brightly, dispelling some of the gloomy results of the distressing marching.

Chinaman, ‘The Thunderbolt,’ has been shot to-night.  Plucky little chap, he has stuck it out well and leaves the stage but a few days before his fellows.  We have only four bags of forage (each one 30 lbs.) left, but these should give seven marches with all the remaining animals, and we are less than 90 miles from the Glacier.  Bowers tells me that the barometer was phenomenally low both during this blizzard and the last.  This has certainly been the most unexpected and trying summer blizzard yet experienced in this region.  I only trust it is over.  There is not much to choose between the remaining ponies.  Nobby and Bones are the strongest, Victor and Christopher the weakest, but all should get through.  The land doesn’t show up yet.