fitted with dark glasses.  However, we always came through it very well; only a few of us had a little touch of this unpleasant complaint.  Curiously enough, snow-blindness has something in common with seasickness.  If you ask a man whether he is seasick, in nine cases out of ten he will answer:  “No, not at all —­ only a little queer in the stomach.”  It is the same, in a slightly different way, with snow-blindness.  If a man comes into the tent in the evening with an inflamed eye and you ask him whether he is snow-blind, you may be sure he will be almost offended.  “Snow-blind?  Is it likely?  No, not at all, only a little queer about the eye.”

We did seventeen miles[5] that day without exertion.  We had two tents, and slept two in a tent.  These tents were made for three men, but were too small for four.  Cooking was only done in one, both for the sake of economy, so that we might leave more at the depot, and because it was unnecessary, as the weather was still quite mild.

On this first trip, as on all the depot journeys, our morning arrangements took far too long.  We began to get ready at four, but were not on the road till nearly eight.  I was always trying some means of remedying this, but without success.  It will naturally be asked, What could be the cause of this? and I will answer candidly —­ it was dawdling and nothing else.  On these depot journeys it did not matter so much, but on the main journey we had to banish dawdling relentlessly.

Next day we did the allotted seventeen miles in six hours, and pitched our camp early in the afternoon.  The dogs were rather tired, as it had been uphill work all day.  To-day, from a distance of twenty-eight miles, we could look down into the Bay of Whales; this shows that we had ascended considerably.  We estimated our camp that evening to be 500 feet above the sea.  We were astonished at this rise, but ought not to have been so really, since we had already estimated this ridge at 500 feet when we first saw it from the end of the bay.  But however it may be, most of us have a strong propensity for setting up theories and inventing something new.  What others have seen does not interest us, and on this occasion we took the opportunity —­ I say we, because I was one of them —­ of propounding a new theory —­ that of an evenly advancing ice-slope from the Antarctic plateau.  We saw ourselves in our mind’s eye ascending gradually to the top, and thus avoiding a steep and laborious climb among the mountains.

The day had been very warm, +12.2deg.  F., and I had been obliged to throw off everything except the most necessary underclothes.  My costume may be guessed from the name I gave to the ascent —­ Singlet Hill.  There was a thick fog when we turned out next morning, exceedingly unpleasant.  Here every inch was over virgin ground, and we had to do it blindly.  That day we had a feeling of going downhill.  At one o’clock land was reported right ahead.  From the gesticulations of those in front I made out that it must be uncommonly big.  I saw absolutely nothing, but that was not very surprising.  My sight is not specially good, and the land did not exist.