“I put on my windproof blouse and nosed out the track for two miles, when we suddenly came upon the tent of the leading party.  They had camped owing to the difficulty of steering a course in such thick weather.  The ponies, however, with the wind abaft the beam were going along splendidly, and Scott thought it worth while to shove on.  We therefore carried on another four miles, making ten in all, a good half march, before we camped.  On ski it was simply ripping, except for the inability to see anything at all.  With the wind behind, and the good sliding surface made by the wind-hardened snow, one fairly slithered along.  Camping was less pleasant as it was blowing a gale by that time.  We are all in our bags again now, with a good hot meal inside one, and blow high or blow low one might be in a worse place than a reindeer bag."[211]

It was all right for the people on ski (and this in itself gave us a certain sense of grievance), but things had not been so easy with the ponies, who were sinking very deeply in places, while we ourselves were sinking well over our ankles.  This day we began to cross the great undulations in the Barrier, with the crests some mile apart, which here mark the approach to the land.  We had built the walls to the north of the ponies on camping, because the wind was from that direction, but by breakfast on December 4 it was blowing a thick blizzard from the south-east.  We began to feel bewildered by these extraordinary weather changes, and not a little exasperated too.  Again we could not march, and again we had to dig out the sledges and ponies, and to move them all round to the other side of the walls which we had partly to rebuild.  “Oh for the simple man-hauling life!” was our thought, and “poor helpless beasts—­this is no country for live stock.”  By this time we could not see the neighbouring tents for the drift.  The situation was not improved by the fact that our tent doors, the tents having been pitched for the strong north wind then blowing, were now facing the blizzard, and sheets of snow entered with each individual.  The man-hauling party came up just before the worst of the blizzard started.  The dogs alone were comfortable, buried deep beneath the drifted snow.  The sailors began to debate who was the Jonah.  They said he was the cameras.  The great blizzard was brewing all about us.

But at mid-day as though a curtain was rolled back, the thick snow fog cleared off, while at the same time the wind fell calm, and a great mountain appeared almost on the top of us.  Far away to the south-east we could distinguish, by looking very carefully, a break in the level Barrier horizon—­a new mountain which we reckoned must be at least in latitude 86 deg. and very high.  Towards it the ranges stretched away, peak upon peak, range upon range, as far as the eye could see.  “The mountains surpassed anything I have ever seen:  beside the least of these giants Ben Nevis would be a mere mound, and yet they are so immense as to dwarf each other.  They are intersected at every turn with mighty glaciers and ice-falls and eternally ice-filled valleys that defy description.  So clear was everything that every rock seemed to stand out, and the effect of the sun as he came round (between us and the mountains) was to make the scene still more beautiful."[212]