p.'

"During September 16 my right eyelid became frostbitten. I noticed that
it was hard and refused to shut, so I rubbed vigorously to bring it
round. However, it swelled and blistered badly and the eye remained
closed for two days.

"From twenty to fifty miles 'out', the surface was neve with areas
of sastrugi up to three feet in height. No crevasses were noticed. At
twenty-eight miles out, we lost sight of the sea, and at forty miles an
altitude of four thousand five hundred feet was reached.

"We turned out at 6 A.M. every morning and were on the move by 9 A.M.
Lunch only took half an hour and was a most uncomfortable meal. As we
sat in the lee of the sledge, the surface-drift swirled up in our
faces like fine sand. We never camped before 6 P.M. and were obliged to
consider five miles a good day's run.

"Pitching camp took nearly an hour. Blocks of snow were cut and arranged
in a semicircle, within which the tent was laid with its peak upwind. It
sounds simple enough, but, as we had to take off crampons so as not to
tread on the tent, our difficulties were enormously increased by having
to move about wearing finnesko on a smooth surface in a high wind. One
man crawled into the tent, and, at a given signal, the other two raised
the peak while the former held on to the upwind leg and kicked the other
legs into place with his feet. The others then quickly piled food-tanks
and blocks of snow on to the skirt, calling out as soon as there was
enough to hold it down, as the man gripping the bamboo leg inside would
soon have 'deadly cold' fingers. It was always a great relief when the
tent was up.

"Almost every night there was some sewing to do, and it was not long
before every one's fingers were in a bad state. They became, especially
near the tips, as hard as wood and devoid of sensation. Manipulating
toggles and buttons on one's clothing gave an immense amount of trouble,
and it always seemed an interminable time before we got away in the
morning. Our lowest temperature was -35 degrees F., early on September
18.

"We were fifty miles 'out' on September 19 on a white, featureless
plain. Through low drift we had seen very little of our surroundings
on the march. A bamboo pole with a black flag was raised, a mound was
built, and a week's provisions for three men and two gallons of kerosene
were cached.

"In the morning there was a howling eighty-mile blizzard with dense
drift, and our hopes of an early start homew