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.

Apart from the surface we enjoyed the weather, a wonderful calm and
beautiful blue sky. On November 15, after building a guiding snow cairn,
we continued southward to Lat. 80 degrees 31 minutes 40 seconds S. Long.
169 degree