A few hundred more blizzards had swept over it since those days, but it was all just the same, even to Ferrar’s little stakes placed across the glacierets to mark their movement, more, even to the footsteps still plainly visible on the slopes.

The ponies were dragging up to 900 lbs. each these days, and though they did not seem to be unduly distressed, two of them soon showed signs of lameness.  This caused some anxiety, but the trouble was mended by rest.  On the whole, though the surface was hard, I think we were giving them too much weight.

The sea-ice off Hut Point and Observation Hill was already very dangerous, and had we then had the experience and knowledge of sea-ice with which we can now look back, it is probable that we should not have slept so easily upon its surface.  Parties travelling to Hut Point and beyond in summer must keep well out from the Point and Cape Armitage.  But all haste was being made to transport the necessary stores on to the Barrier surface, where a big home depot could be made, so far as we could judge, in safety.  The pressure ridges in the sea-ice between Cape Armitage and Pram Point, which are formed by the movement of the Barrier, were large, and in some of the hollows countless seals were playing in the water.  Judging by the size of these ridges and by the thickness of this ice when it broke up, the ice south of Hut Point was at least two years old.

I well remember the day we took the first of our loads on to the Barrier.  I expect we were all a little excited, for to walk upon the Barrier for the first time was indeed an adventure:  what kind of surface was it, and how about these beastly crevasses of which we had read so much?  Scott was ahead, and so far as we could see there was nothing but the same level of ice all round—­when suddenly he was above us, walking up the sloping and quite invisible drift.  A minute after and our ponies and sledges were up and over the tide crack, and beneath us soft and yielding snow, very different from the hard wind-swept surface of the frozen sea, which we had just left.  Really it was rather prosaic and a tame entrance.  But the Barrier is a tricky place, and it takes years to get to know her.

On our outward journey this day Oates did his best to kill a seal.  My own tent was promised some kidneys if we were good, and our mouths watered with the prospect of the hoosh before us.  The seal had been left for dead, and when on our homeward way we neared the place of his demise Titus went off to carve our dinner from him.  The next thing we saw was the seal lolloping straight for his hole, while Oates did his best to stab him.  The quarry made off safely not much hurt, for, as we discovered later, a clasp-knife is quite useless to kill a seal.  Oates returned with a bad cut, as his hand had slipped down the knife; and it was a long time before he was allowed to forget it.