l
blizzard and -33 deg..

_November 10. Early morning._ A perfect night for marching, but about
-20 deg. and chilly for waiting about. The mules are going well, but Lal Khan
is thinning down a lot: Abdullah and Khan Sahib are also off their feed.
Their original allowance of 11 lbs. oats and oilcake has been reduced to
9 lbs., and they are not eating this. The dogs took another 300 lbs. off
them to-day, and pulled it very well. The surface has been splendidly
hard, which is most surprising. Wright does not think that there has been
an abnormal deposition of snow the last winter; he says it is about 11/2
feet, which is much the same as last year. The mules are generally not
sinking in more than two inches, but in places, especially latterly, they
have been in five, or six. This is the first we have had this year of
crusts, and some of them to-day have been exceptionally big: two at lunch
must have lasted several seconds. The dogs seem to think the devil is
after them when one of these goes off, and put on a terrific spurt. It is
interesting to watch them snuffing in the hoof-marks of the mules, where
there is evidently some scent left. In these temperatures they are always
kicking their legs about at the halts. As the sun gained power this
morning a thick fog came up very suddenly. I believe this is a sign of
good weather.

[Illustration: THE DOG PARTY LEAVES HUT POINT--November 1, 1912]

_November 11. Early morning. One Ton Depot._ Wright got a latitude sight
yesterday putting us six miles from One Ton, and our sledge-meter shows
53/4, and here we are. More frost-bite this morning, and it was pretty cold
starting in a fair wind and -7 deg. temperature. We have continued this
really splendid surface, and now the sastrugi are pointing a little more
to the south of S.W. While there are not such big mounds, the surface
does not yet show any signs of getting bad. There were the most beautiful
cloud-effects as we came along--a deep black to the west, shading into
long lines of grey and lemon yellow round the sun, with a vertical shaft
through them, and a bright orange horizon. Now there is a brilliant
parhelion. Given sun, two days here are never alike. Whatever the
monotony of the Barrier may be, there is endless variety in the sky, and
I do not believe that anywhere in the world such beautiful colours are to
be seen.

I had a fair panic as we came up to the depot. I did not see that one
body of the ponies had gone ahead