“November 4, 1911.—­Called tent at 4.50 a.m. and after building a cairn started out at 7.25.  Marched up to ‘Blossom’ cairn (Lat. 78 degrees 2 minutes 33 seconds S. Long. 169 degrees 3 minutes 25 seconds E.) where we tied a piece of black bunting to pull Crean’s leg—­mourning for his pony.  We lunched here and then marched on till 6.55 p.m., when we camped, our day’s march being 15 miles 839 yards.  I built a snow cairn while supper was being prepared.  Surface was very good and we could have easily marched 20 miles, but, we were not record breaking, but going easy till the ponies came up.  All the same we shall have to march pretty hard to keep ahead of them.  Minimum temperature:  -12.7 degrees, temperature on camping +5 degrees.”

We were very happy in our party, and when cooking we all sang and yarned, nobody ever seemed tired once we got quit of the motors.  We built cairns at certain points to guide the returning parties.  We had a light snowfall on November 6 and occasional overcast, misty weather, but in general the visibility was good, and although far out on the Barrier we got some view of the Victoria Land mountain ranges.  Very beautiful they looked, too, but their very presence gave an awful feeling of loneliness.

I must admit it all had a dreadful fascination for me, and after the others had got into their sleeping-bags I used to build up a large snow cairn, and whilst resting, now and again I gazed wonderingly at that awful country.

The Bluff stood up better than the rest, as of course it was so much nearer to us, and the green tent looked pitifully small and inadequate by itself on the Barrier, nothing else human about us.  Just the sledge trail and the thrown-up snow on the tent valance, a confused whirl of sastrugi leading in no direction particularly, a glistening sparkle here, there, and everywhere when the sun was shining, and the far distant land sitting Sphinx-like on the Western horizon, with its shaded white slopes, and its bare outcrops of black basalt.  Wilson in our “South Polar Times” wrote some lines entitled, “The Barrier Silence”—­sometimes the silence was broken by howling blizzard, then and only then, except by the puny handful of men who have passed this way.  Only in Scott’s first and Shackleton’s “Nimrod” Expedition had men ever come thus far.

We reached One Top Depot on November 9, and took on four cases of biscuits and one pair of ski, which brought our loads up to 205 lb. per man.  Even this extra weight permitted us to keep our marches over 12 miles, but we had the virtue of being very early risers, a sledging habit to which I owe my life.

We snatched many an hour outward and home, ward due to this.

In Latitude 80 degrees we found an extraordinary change in the surface:  so soft in fact that we found ourselves sinking in from 8 to 10 inches—­this gave us a very hard day on 13th November when, with load averaging over 190 lb. per man, we hauled through it for 12 miles.  Fears were expressed for the ponies at this stretch, for here they would be pulling full loads.  The 14th offered no better conditions of surface, but we stuck it out for 10 hours’ solid foot slogging, when we camped after hauling 12 miles.