till they formed floes, which in their turn froze fast into great white
icefields strong enough to bear us and any weights we liked to take
along. One often turned in, confident that a passage could be made over
the frozen sea to Glacier Tongue at least, but in the morning everything
would be changed and absolutely no ice would be visible floating in the
sea. When Taylor's party had rested a little at Hut Point they threw in
their lot with the rest of us and made occasional trips out on the silent
Barrier as far as Corner Camp, to add sledge loads of provisions now and
again to the stores already depoted there in readiness for the southern
sledge journey, on which we built our hopes for ultimate triumph.

Eight of us went out for a week's sledging on March 16, but the
temperatures were now becoming too low to be pleasant and touching 40
degrees or so below zero. What tried us more than anything else was thick
weather and the fearfully bad light on days when no landmarks were
visible to guide us to the depot. Our sleeping-bags also were frozen and
uncomfortable, thick rime collecting on the insides of our tents which
every puff of wind would shake down in a shower of ice. When sitting
round on our rolled-up sleeping-bags at meal times we could not help our
heads and shoulders brushing off patches of this frost rime, which soon
accumulated in the fur of the sleeping-bags and made life at night a
clammy misery. The surfaces were very heavy, and dragging even light
sledges when returning from the depot proved a laborious business.

This autumn time gave a series of gales and strong winds with scarcely
ever more than a few hours of calm or gentle breeze, sandwiched in
between. Sometimes we used ski, but there are occasions when ski are
quite useless, owing to snow binding in great clogs underneath them. The
Norwegians use different kinds of paraffin wax and compositions of tar
and other ingredients for overcoming this difficulty. Gran had brought