hich we hang
out to dry at night become immediately covered with long feathery
crystals exactly like plumes. Socks, mitts and finnesko dry splendidly up
here during the night. We have little trouble with them compared with
spring and winter journeys. I generally spread my bag out in the sun
during the 11/2 hours of lunch time, which gives the reindeer hair a chance
to get rid of the damage done by the deposit of breath and any
perspiration during the night."[296]

Plenty of sun, heavy surfaces, iridescent clouds ... the worst windcut
sastrugi I have seen, covered with bunches of crystals like gorse ... ice
blink all round ... hairy faces and mouths dreadfully iced up on the
march ... hot and sweaty days' work, but sometimes cold hands in the
loops of the ski sticks ... windy streaky cirrus in every direction, all
thin and filmy and scrappy ... horizon clouds all being wafted about....
These are some of the impressions here and there in Wilson's diary during
the first ten days of the party's solitary march. On the whole he is
enjoying himself, I think.

You should read Scott's diary yourself and form your own opinions, but I
think that after the Last Return Party left him there is a load off his
mind. The thing had worked so far, it was up to _them_ now: that great
mass of figures and weights and averages, those years of preparation,
those months of anxiety--no one of them had been in vain. They were up
to date in distance, and there was a very good amount of food, probably
more than was necessary to see them to the Pole and off the plateau on
full rations. Best thought of all, perhaps, the motors with their
uncertainties, the ponies with their suffering, the glacier with its
possibilities of disaster, all were behind: and the two main supporting
parties were safely on their way home. Here with him was a fine party,
tested and strong, and only 148 miles from the Pole.

I can see them, working with a business-like air, with no fuss and no
unnecessary talk, each man knowing his job and doing it: pitching the
tent: finishing the camp work and sitting round on their sleeping-bags
while their meal was cooked: warming their hands on their mugs: saving a
biscuit to eat when they woke in the night: packing the sledge with a
good neat stow: marching with a solid swing--we have seen them do it so
often, and they did it jolly well.

And the conditions did not seem so bad. "To-night it is flat calm; the
sun so warm that in spite