By now we had realized that we must reverse the usual sledging routine and do everything slowly, wearing when possible the fur mitts which fitted over our woollen mitts, and always stopping whatever we were doing, directly we felt that any part of us was getting frozen, until the circulation was restored.  Henceforward it was common for one or other of us to leave the other two to continue the camp work while he stamped about in the snow, beat his arms, or nursed some exposed part.  But we could not restore the circulation of our feet like this—­the only way then was to camp and get some hot water into ourselves before we took our foot-gear off.  The difficulty was to know whether our feet were frozen or not, for the only thing we knew for certain was that we had lost all feeling in them.  Wilson’s knowledge as a doctor came in here:  many a time he had to decide from our descriptions of our feet whether to camp or to go on for another hour.  A wrong decision meant disaster, for if one of us had been crippled the whole party would have been placed in great difficulties.  Probably we should all have died.

On June 29 the temperature was -50 deg. all day and there was sometimes a light breeze which was inclined to frost-bite our faces and hands.  Owing to the weight of our two sledges and the bad surface our pace was not more than a slow and very heavy plod:  at our lunch camp Wilson had the heel and sole of one foot frost-bitten, and I had two big toes.  Bowers was never worried by frost-bitten feet.

That night was very cold, the temperature falling to -66 deg., and it was -55 deg. at breakfast on June 30.  We had not shipped the eider-down linings to our sleeping-bags, in order to keep them dry as long as possible.  My own fur bag was too big for me, and throughout this journey was more difficult to thaw out than the other two:  on the other hand, it never split, as did Bill’s.

We were now getting into that cold bay which lies between the Hut Point Peninsula and Terror Point.  It was known from old Discovery days that the Barrier winds are deflected from this area, pouring out into McMurdo Sound behind us, and into the Ross Sea at Cape Crozier in front.  In consequence of the lack of high winds the surface of the snow is never swept and hardened and polished as elsewhere:  it was now a mass of the hardest and smallest snow crystals, to pull through which in cold temperatures was just like pulling through sand.  I have spoken elsewhere of Barrier surfaces, and how, when the cold is very great, sledge runners cannot melt the crystal points but only advance by rolling them over and over upon one another.  That was the surface we met on this journey, and in soft snow the effect is accentuated.  Our feet were sinking deep at every step.