when Meares cut him up for the dogs and brought our tent a fine piece of
undercut.

On December 2 we had a trying time, starting off in a perfectly poisonous
light, which strained our eyes and made them very painful. It snowed
almost incessantly throughout the day. Nevertheless we had a dim, sickly
sun visible which helped the steering. As the pony food was running short
the pony "Victor" was shot on camping.

I visited Meares and Dimitri in the dog-tent, and they gave me some
"overs" in the shape of cocoa and biscuit, for which I was truly
grateful, as I had been hungry for a month.

A blizzard started on December 4, which delayed us for some hours. Our
party found it had a surplus of 27 whole biscuits--no one could account
for this; we told Bowers, however, and he did not seem surprised, so I
think he shoved in a few biscuits here and there. He told me that some
tins carried 2 lb. more than was marked on them. We covered about 13
miles despite the bad weather beginning the day.

On December 4 we arrived within 12 miles of Shackleton's gap or Southern
Gateway: we could see the outflow of the Beardmore Glacier stretching
away to our left like a series of huge tumbling waves. As we advanced
southwards hopes ran high, for we still had the dogs and five ponies to
help us. Scott expected to camp on the Beardmore itself after the next
march, but bad luck, alas, was against us. The land visible extended from
S.S.W. through S. to N.W. More wonderful peaks or wedge-shaped spines of
snow-capped rock. The first and least exciting stage of our journey was
practically complete. A fifth pony was sacrificed to the hungry
dogs--"Michael," of whom Cherry Garrard had only good words to say--but