to our
troubles the ground all about the place was precarious and unsafe.

Mertz and Ninnis therefore lowered me down and I attached a rope to the
tail-end of the sledge. The bow-rope and tail-rope were then manipulated
alternately until the bow of the sledge was manoeuvred slowly through
the gaping hole in the snow-lid and was finally hauled up on to level
ground. No more remarkable test of the efficiency of the sledge straps
and the compactness of the load could have been made.

After lunch Mertz ascended a high point and was able to trace out a
route which conducted us in a few hours to a better surface.

We were now at an elevation of from four hundred to five hundred feet
above sea-level, running across a beam-wind on our right which increased
during the afternoon. A rising blizzard made it necessary to camp after
a day's run of ten and one-third miles.

The wind blew up to seventy miles an hour during the night, but eased in
strength early on November 30. At 10 A.M. we tried to make a start, but
the dogs refused to face the drift. On the wind becoming gusty in the
afternoon, it was once more possible to travel, and we set out.

Dense drift was still to be seen pouring over the highlands to the
south-east. Above the glacier ahead whirlies, out-lined in high
revolving columns of snow, "stalked about" in their wayward courses.

The sledges ran through a sea of crevassed, blue ice, over ridges and
past open chasms. Seven miles brought us to the "foot-hills" on the
eastern border of the Ninnis Glacier, where we pitched camp.

The first day of December was still and hot, with brilliant sunshine.
The shade temperature reached 34 degrees F. and the snow became so
sticky that it was as much as we and the dogs could do to move the
sledges up the slopes. As the evening lengthened and the sun sank
lower the surface froze hard and our toil was lightened. At midnight we
reached an altitude of nine hundred feet.

December 2 was another warm, bright day. The surface was atrociously
bad; hard, sharp sastrugi, never less than two feet high and in many
instances three feet six inches from crest to trough. The dogs were not
able to exert a united pull for there were never more than half of them
in action at a time.

Once more we were at a comparatively high altitude and a fine view
presented itself to the north. One could look back to the mainland
slopes descending on the western side of the Ninnis Glacier. Then the
glacie