Splendid weather it was when we turned out on the morning of January 3.  We had now agreed to go as it suited us, and take no notice of day or night; for some time past we had all been sick of the long hours of rest, and wanted to break them up at any price.  As I have said, the weather could not have been finer brilliantly clear and a dead calm.  The temperature of -2.2deg.  F. felt altogether like summer in this bright, still air.  Before we began our march all unnecessary clothes were taken off and put on the sledges.  It almost looked as if everything would be considered superfluous, and the costume in which we finally started would no doubt have been regarded as somewhat unseemly in our latitudes.  We smiled and congratulated ourselves that at present no ladies had reached the Antarctic regions, or they might have objected to our extremely comfortable and serviceable costume.  The high land now stood out still more sharply.  It was very interesting to see in these conditions the country we had gone through on, the southward trip in the thickest blizzard.  We had then been going along the foot of this immense mountain chain without a suspicion of how near we were to it, or how colossal it was.  The ground was fortunately quite undisturbed in this part.  I say fortunately, as Heaven knows what would have happened to us if we had been obliged to cross a crevassed surface in such weather as we then had.  Perhaps we should have managed it —­ perhaps not.

The journey before us was a stiff one, as the Butcher’s lay 2,680 feet higher than the place where we were.  We had been expecting to stumble upon one of our beacons before long, but this did not happen until we had gone twelve and a half miles.  Then one of them suddenly came in sight, and was greeted with joy.  We knew well enough that we were on the right track, but an old acquaintance like this was very welcome all the same.  The sun had evidently been at work up here while we were in the south, as some of the beacons were quite bent over, and great icicles told us clearly enough how powerful the sunshine had been.  After a march of about twenty-five miles we halted at the beacon we had built right under the hill, where we had been forced to stop by thick weather on November 25.

January 4 was one of the days to which we looked forward with anxiety, as we were then due at our depot at the Butcher’s, and had to find it.  This depot, which consisted of the finest, fresh dogs’ flesh, was of immense importance to us.  Not only had our animals got into the way of preferring this food to pemmican, but, what was of still greater importance, it had an extremely good effect on the dogs’ state of health.  No doubt our pemmican was good enough —­ indeed, it could not have been better —­ but a variation of diet is a great consideration, and seems, according to my experience, to mean even more to the dogs than to the men on a long journey like this.  On former occasions I have seen dogs refuse pemmican, presumably because they were tired of it, having no variety; the result was that the dogs grew thin and weak, although we had food enough.  The pemmican I am referring to on that occasion was made for human use, so that their distaste cannot have been due to the quality.