Scott immediately sent Wilson and Meares with a dog-team to see whether the sea-ice would allow them to reach Cape Evans and bring back shoes for the other ponies.  Meanwhile the next morning saw us trying to accustom the animals to wearing snow-shoes by exercising them in the one pair we possessed.  But it seemed no use continuing to do this after the dog party came in.  They had found the sea-ice gone between Glacier Tongue and Winter Quarters and so were empty-handed.  They reported that a crevasse at the edge of the Tongue had opened under the sledge, which had tilted back into the crevasse but had run over it.  These Glacier Tongue crevasses are shallow things; Gran fell into one later and walked out of the side of the Tongue on to the sea-ice beyond!

It was determined to start on the following day with five weeks’ provisions for men and animals; to go forward for about fourteen days, depot two weeks’ provisions and return.  Most unfortunately Atkinson would have to be left behind with Crean to look after him.  He had chafed his foot, and the chafe had suppurated.  To his great disappointment there was no alternative but to lie up.  Luckily we had another tent, and there was the cooker and primus we had dug out of Shackleton’s tent.  Poor Crean was to spend his spare time in bringing up loads from the Fodder Depot to Safety Camp and, worse still from his point of view, dig a hole downwards into the Barrier for scientific observations!

We left the following morning, February 2, and marched on a patchy surface for five miles (Camp 4).  The temperature was above zero and Scott decided to see whether the surface was not better at night.  On the whole, it is problematical whether this is the case—­we came to the conclusion later that the ideal surface for pulling a sledge on ski was found at a temperature of about +16 deg..  But there is no doubt whatever that ponies should do their work at night, when the temperature is colder, and rest and sleep when the sun has its greatest altitude and power.  And so we camped and turned in to our sleeping-bags at 4 P.M. and marched again soon after midnight, doing five miles before and five miles after lunch:  lunch, if you please, being about 1 A.M., and a very good time, for just then the daylight seemed to be thin and bleak and one always felt the cold.

Our road lay eastwards through the Strait, some twenty-five miles in width, which runs between the low, rather uninteresting scarp of White Island to the south, and the beautiful slopes of Erebus and Terror to the north.  This part of the Barrier is stagnant, but the main stream in front of us, unchecked by land, flows uninterruptedly northwards towards the Ross Sea.  Only where the stream presses against the Bluff, White Island and, most important of all, Cape Crozier, and rubs itself against the nearly stationary ice upon which we were travelling, pressures and rendings take place, forming some nasty crevasses.  It was intended to steer nearly east until this line was crossed some distance north of White Island, and then steer due south.