Stumbling and groping our way along as we had been during the last blizzard we were totally unprepared for the sight which met us during our next march on November 29.  The great ramp of mountains which ran to the west of us, and would soon bar our way to the South, partly cleared:  and right on top of us it seemed were the triple peaks of Mount Markham.  After some 300 miles of bleak, monotonous Barrier it was a wonderful sight indeed.  We camped at night in latitude 82 deg. 21’ S., four miles beyond Scott’s previous Farthest South in 1902.  Then they had the best of luck in clear fine weather, which Shackleton has also recorded at this stage of his southern journey.

It is curious to see how depressed all our diaries become when this bad weather obtained, and how quickly we must have cheered up whenever the sun came out.  There is no doubt that a similar effect was produced upon the ponies.  Truth to tell, the mental strain upon those responsible was very great in these early days, and there is little of outside interest to relieve the mind.  The crystal surface which was an invisible carpet yesterday becomes a shining glorious sheet of many colours to-day:  the irregularities which caused you so many falls are now quite clear and you step on or over them without a thought:  and when there is added some of the most wonderful scenery in the world it is hard to recall in the enjoyment of the present how irritable and weary you felt only twenty hours ago.  The whisper of the sledge, the hiss of the primus, the smell of the hoosh and the soft folds of your sleeping-bag:  how jolly they can all be, and generally were.

    I would that I could once again
      Around the cooker sit
    And hearken to its soft refrain
      And feel so jolly fit.

    Instead of home-life’s silken chains,
      The uneventful round,
    I long to be mid snow-swept plains,
      In harness, outward bound.

    With the pad, pad, pad, of fin’skoed feet,
      With two hundred pounds per man,
    Not enough hoosh or biscuit to eat,
      Well done, lads!  Up tent!  Outspan. 
                (NELSON in The South Polar Times.)

Certainly as we skirted these mountains, range upon range, during the next two marches (November 30 and December 1), we felt we could have little cause for complaint.  They brought us to lat. 82 deg. 47’ S., and here we left our last depot on the Barrier, called the Southern Barrier Depot, with a week’s ration for each returning party as usual.  “The man food is enough for one week for each returning unit of four men, the next depot beyond being the Middle Barrier Depot, 73 miles north.  As we ought easily to do over 100 miles a week on the return journey, there is little likelihood of our having to go on short commons if all goes well."[209] And this was what we all felt—­until we found the Polar Party.  This was our twenty-seventh camp, and we had been out a month.