and nothing whatever could be seen. From under the tent
came noises as though some giant was banging a big empty tank. All the
signs were for a blizzard, and indeed we had not long finished our supper
and were thawing our way little by little into our bags when the wind
came away from the south. Before it started we got a glimpse of black
rock and knew we must be in the pressure ridges where they nearly join
Mount Terror.

It is with great surprise that in looking up the records I find that
blizzard lasted three days, the temperature and wind both rising till it
was +9 deg. and blowing force 9 on the morning of the second day (July 11).
On the morning of the third day (July 12) it was blowing storm force
(10). The temperature had thus risen over eighty degrees.

It was not an uncomfortable time. Wet and warm, the risen temperature
allowed all our ice to turn to water, and we lay steaming and beautifully
liquid, and wondered sometimes what we should be like when our gear froze
up once more. But we did not do much wondering, I suspect: we slept. From
that point of view these blizzards were a perfect Godsend.

We also revised our food rations. From the moment we started to prepare
for this journey we were asked by Scott to try certain experiments in
view of the Plateau stage of the Polar Journey the following summer. It
was supposed that the Plateau stage would be the really tough part of the
Polar Journey, and no one then dreamed that harder conditions could be
found in the middle of the Barrier in March than on the Plateau, ten
thousand feet higher, in February. In view of the extreme conditions we
knew we must meet on this winter journey, far harder of course in point
of weather than anything experienced on the Polar Journey, we had
determined to simplify our food to the last degree. We only brought
pemmican, biscuit, butter and tea: and tea is not a food, only a pleasant
stimulant, and hot: the pemmican was excellent and came from Beauvais,
Copenhagen.

[Illustration: CAMP WORK IN A BLIZZARD, PASSING IN THE COOKER--E. A.
Wilson, del.]

The immediate advantage of this was that we had few food bags to handle
for each meal. If the air temperature is 100 degrees of frost, then
everything in the air is about 100 degrees of frost too. You have only to
untie the lashings of one bag in a -70 deg. temperature, with your feet
frozen and your fingers just nursed back after getting a match to strike
for the candle (you will h