and clothes, and though you
cannot see your stretched-out hand, especially on a dark winter day, the
wind prevents you being smothered. The wind also prevents the land,
tents, hut and cases from being covered. But during this blizzard the
drift drove at you in such blankets of snow, that your person was
immediately blotted out, your face covered and your eyes plugged up. Gran
lost himself for some time on the hill when taking the 8 A.M.
observations, and Wright had difficulty in getting back from the magnetic
cave. Men had narrow escapes of losing themselves, though they were but a
few feet from the hut.

When this blizzard cleared the camp was buried, and even on unobstructed
surfaces the snowdrifts averaged four feet of additional depth. Two
enormous drifts ran down to the sea from either end of the hut. I do not
think we ever found some of our stores again, but the larger part we
carried up to the higher ground behind us where they remained fairly
clear. About this time I began to notice large sheets of anchor ice off
the end of Cape Evans, that is to say, ice forming and remaining on the
bottom of the open sea. Now also the open water was extending round the
cape into the South Bay behind us: but it was too dark to get any
reliable idea of the distribution of ice in the Sound. We were afraid
that we were cut off from Hut Point, but I do not believe that this was
the case; though the open water must have stretched many miles to the
south in the middle of the Sound. The days when it was clear enough even
to potter about outside the hut were exceptional. God was very angry.

"_Sunday, July 14._ A blizzard during the night, and after breakfast it
was drifting a lot. While we were having service some of the men went
over the camp to get ice for water. The sea-ice had been blown out of
North Bay, and the men supposed that the sea was open, and would look
black, but Crean tells me that they nearly walked over the ice-foot, and,
when it cleared later, we saw the sea as white as the ice-foot itself. A
strip of ice which was lying out in the Bay last night must have been
brought in by the tide, even against a wind of some forty miles an hour.
This shows what an influence the tides and currents have in comparison
with the winds, for just at this time we are having very big tides. It
was blowing and drifting all the morning, and the tide was flowing in,
pressing the ice in under the ice-foot to such an extent that later it
re