November 9.  Early morning. Twelve more miles to the good, and we must consider ourselves fortunate in still carrying on the same good surface, which is almost if not quite as good as that of yesterday.  This is the only time I have ever seen a hard surface here, not more than fifteen miles from One Ton, and it looks as if there had been much higher winds.  The sastrugi, which have been facing S.W., are now beginning to run a little more westerly.  I believe this to be quite a different wind circulation from Ross Island, which as a whole gets its wind from the Bluff.  The Bluff is, I believe, the dividing line, though big general blizzards sweep over the whole, irrespective of local areas of circulation.  This was amply corroborated by our journey out here last autumn.  Well, this is better than then—­just round here we had a full blizzard and -33 deg..

November 10.  Early morning. A perfect night for marching, but about -20 deg. and chilly for waiting about.  The mules are going well, but Lal Khan is thinning down a lot:  Abdullah and Khan Sahib are also off their feed.  Their original allowance of 11 lbs. oats and oilcake has been reduced to 9 lbs., and they are not eating this.  The dogs took another 300 lbs. off them to-day, and pulled it very well.  The surface has been splendidly hard, which is most surprising.  Wright does not think that there has been an abnormal deposition of snow the last winter; he says it is about 11/2 feet, which is much the same as last year.  The mules are generally not sinking in more than two inches, but in places, especially latterly, they have been in five, or six.  This is the first we have had this year of crusts, and some of them to-day have been exceptionally big:  two at lunch must have lasted several seconds.  The dogs seem to think the devil is after them when one of these goes off, and put on a terrific spurt.  It is interesting to watch them snuffing in the hoof-marks of the mules, where there is evidently some scent left.  In these temperatures they are always kicking their legs about at the halts.  As the sun gained power this morning a thick fog came up very suddenly.  I believe this is a sign of good weather.

[Illustration:  THE DOG PARTY LEAVES HUT POINT—­November 1, 1912]

November 11.  Early morning.  One Ton Depot. Wright got a latitude sight yesterday putting us six miles from One Ton, and our sledge-meter shows 53/4, and here we are.  More frost-bite this morning, and it was pretty cold starting in a fair wind and -7 deg. temperature.  We have continued this really splendid surface, and now the sastrugi are pointing a little more to the south of S.W.  While there are not such big mounds, the surface does not yet show any signs of getting bad.  There were the most beautiful cloud-effects as we came along—­a deep black to the west, shading into long lines of grey and lemon yellow round the sun, with a vertical shaft through them, and a bright orange horizon.  Now there is a brilliant parhelion.  Given sun, two days here are never alike.  Whatever the monotony of the Barrier may be, there is endless variety in the sky, and I do not believe that anywhere in the world such beautiful colours are to be seen.