y dragging
we were forced to camp when only nine and a half miles had been laid
between us--we really couldn't see ten yards. Just after we camped the
wind increased to about force 6, alternately freshening up and dying
away, and a good deal of snow fell. Temperature 32.5 below zero."

One year later Scott was facing weather conditions and surfaces almost
identical, but the difference lay in that he had marched more than
sixteen hundred miles, was short of food, and his party were suffering
from the tragic loss of two of their companions and the intense
disappointment of having made this great sledge journey for their
country's honour to find that all their efforts had been in vain, and
that they had been anticipated by men who had borne thither the flag of
another nation.

When Scott found that we sledgers were getting temperatures as low as
minus forty he decided to discontinue sledging rather than risk anything
in the nature of severe frostbite assailing the party and rendering them
unfit for further work, for it must be remembered that we had already
been away from our base ten weeks, that many of us had never sledged
before, and that the depot journey was partly undertaken to give us
sledging experience and to point out what improvements could be made in
our clothing and equipment.

The first and second weeks in April brought the ice changes that we had
so long awaited, and after one or two false starts two teams set out from
Hut Point on April 11 to make their way across the fifteen miles of sea
ice to Cape Evans.

This turned out to be a somewhat hazardous journey, since it had to be
made in the half light with overcast weather and hard wind. Scott took
charge of one tent and had with him Bowers, Griffith Taylor, and Petty
Officer Evans, while I had in my party Wright, Debenham, Gran, and Crean.
The seven who remained at Hut Point in charge of dogs and ponies helped
us out a league or so for the first part of our journey.

The route led first up the steep ice slope over-hanging Hut Point, and
then to the summit of the ridge, which is best described as the Castle
Rock promontory. Our sojourn at Hut Point had given us plenty of chance
to learn the easier snow roads and the least dangerous, and Scott chose
the way close eastward of Castle Rock to a position four miles beyond it,
which his first expedition had named Hutton Cliffs. From Castle Rock
onward the way took us to the westward of two conical