e largest known glacier until Shackleton discovered the Beardmore.
Those who knew the Ferrar Glacier professed to find the Beardmore
unattractive, but to me at any rate it was grand. Its very vastness,
however, tends to dwarf its surroundings, and great tributary glaciers
and tumbled ice-falls, which anywhere else would have aroused admiration,
were almost unnoticed in a stream which stretched in places forty miles
from bank to bank. It was only when the theodolite was levelled that we
realized how vast were the mountains which surrounded us: one of which we
reckoned to be well over twenty thousand feet in height, and many of the
others must have approached that measurement. Lieutenant Evans and Bowers
were surveying whenever the opportunity offered, whilst Wilson sat on the
sledge or on his sleeping-bag, and sketched.

Before leaving on the morning of December 18 we bagged off three
half-weekly units and made a depot marked by a red flag on a bamboo which
was stuck into a small mound. Unfortunately it began to snow in the night
and no bearings were taken until the following morning when only the base
of the mountains on the west side was visible. We knew we might have
difficulty in picking up this depot again, and certainly we all did.

"It was thick, with low stratus clouds in the morning, and snow was
falling in large crystals. Our socks and finnesko, hung out to dry, were
covered with most beautiful feathery crystals. In the warm weather one
gets fairly saturated with perspiration on the march, and foot-gear is
always wet, except the outside covering which is as a rule more or less
frozen according to existing temperature. On camping at night I shift to
night foot-gear as soon as ever the tent is pitched, and generally slip
on my windproof blouse, as one cools down like smoke after the exertion
of man-hauling a heavy sledge for hours. At lunch camp one's feet often
get pretty cold, but this goes off as soon as some hot tea is got into
the system. As a rule, even when snowing, one's socks, etc., will dry if
there is a bit of a breeze. They are always frozen stiff in the morning
and can best be thawed out by bundling the lot [under one's] jersey
during breakfast. They can then be put on tolerably warm even if wet.

"We started off on a hard rippled blue surface like a sea frozen intact
while the wind was playing on it. It soon got worse and we had to have
one and sometimes two hands back to keep the sledge from skiddi