I find."[207] The next day (November 28) was no
better: "the most dismal start imaginable. Thick as a hedge, snow falling
and drifting with keen southerly wind."[208]

Bowers notes: "We have now run down a whole degree of latitude without a
fine day, or anything but clouds, mist, and driving snow from the south."
We certainly did have some difficult marches, one of the worst effects of
which was that we knew we must be making a winding course and we had to
pick up our depots on the return somehow. Here is a typical bad morning
from Bowers' diary:

"The first four miles of the march were utter misery for me, as Victor,
either through lassitude or because he did not like having to plug into
the wind, went as slow as a funeral horse. The light was so bad that
wearing goggles was most necessary, and the driving snow filled them up
as fast as you cleared them. I dropped a long way astern of the
cavalcade, could hardly see them at times through the snow, but the fear
that Victor, of all the beasts, should give out was like a nightmare. I
have always been used to starting later than the others by a quarter of a
mile, and catching them up. At the four-mile cairn I was about fed up to
the neck with it, but I said very little as everybody was so disgusted
with the weather and things in general that I saw that I was not the only
one in tribulation. Victor turned up trumps after that. He stepped out
and led the line in his old place, and at a good swinging pace
considering the surface, my temper and spirits improving at every step.
In the afternoon he went splendidly again, and finished up by rolling in
the snow when I had taken his harness off, a thing he has not done for
ten or twelve days. It certainly does not look like exhaustion!"

Indeed these days we were fighting for our marches, and Chinaman who was
killed this night seemed well out of it. He reached a point less than 90
miles from the glacier, though this was small comfort to him.

Stumbling and groping our way along as we had been during the last
blizzard we were totally unprepared for the sight which met us during our
next march on November 29. The great ramp of mountains which ran to the
west of us, and would soon bar our way to the South, partly cleared: and
right on top of us it seemed were the triple peaks of Mount Markham.
After some 300 miles of bleak, monotonous Barrier it was a wonderful
sight indeed. We camped at night in latitude 82 deg. 21' S., four miles