amp will be heard
of again and again in this story: it is thirty miles from Hut Point.

By 4 P.M. it was blowing our first Barrier blizzard. We were to find out
afterwards that a Corner Camp blizzard blows nearly as often as a Hut
Point wind. The Bluff seems to be the breeding-place for these
disturbances, which pour out towards the sea by way of Cape Crozier.
Corner Camp is in the direct line between the two.

One summer blizzard is much like another. The temperature, never very
low, rises, and you are not cold in the tent. Sometimes a blizzard is a
very welcome rest: after weeks of hard pulling, dragging yourself awake
each morning, feeling as though you had only just gone to sleep, with
the mental strain perhaps which work among crevasses entails, it is most
pleasant to be put to bed for two or three days. You may sleep
dreamlessly nearly all the time, rousing out for meals, or waking
occasionally to hear from the soft warmth of your reindeer bag the deep
boom of the tent flapping in the wind, or drowsily you may visit other
parts of the world, while the drifting snow purrs against the green tent
at your head.

But outside there is raging chaos. It is blowing a full gale: the air is
full of falling snow, and the wind drives this along and adds to it the
loose snow which is lying on the surface of the Barrier. Fight your way a
few steps away from the tent, and it will be gone. Lose your sense of
direction and there is nothing to guide you back. Expose your face and
hands to the wind, and they will very soon be frost-bitten. And this at
midsummer. Imagine the added cold of spring and autumn: the cold and
darkness of winter.

The animals suffer most, and during this first blizzard all our ponies
were weakened, and two of them became practically useless. It must be
remembered that they had stood for five weeks upon a heaving deck; they
had been through one very bad gale: the time during which we were
unloading the ship was limited, and since that time they had dragged
heavy loads the greater part of 200 miles. Nothing was left undone for
them which we could manage, but necessarily the Antarctic is a grim place
for ponies. I think Scott felt the sufferings of the ponies more than the
animals themselves. It was different for the dogs. These fairly warm
blizzards were only a rest for them. Snugly curled up in a hole in the
snow they allowed themselves to be drifted over. Bieleglas and Vaida, two
half brothers who pulled