a white, even pall of cloud,
and cloud and plateau seem as one. One walks into a deep trench or a
sastruga two feet high without noticing it. The world seems one huge,
white void, and the only difference between it and the pitch-dark night
is that the one is white and the other black.

Light snow commenced at 2.30 P.M., the wind rising to forty-five miles
per hour with heavy drift. Thirteen miles out we pitched camp.

This, the first "snow-blind day" claimed McLean for its victim. By the
time we were under cover of the tent, his eyes were very sore, aching
with a throbbing pain. At his request I placed a zinc-cocaine tablet
in each eye. He spent the rest of the day in the darkness of his
sleeping-bag and had his eyes bandaged all next day. Up till then we had
not worn goggles, but were careful afterwards to use them on the trying,
overcast days.

For four and a half days the weather was too bad to travel. On the
14th the wind increased and became steady at sixty miles per hour,
accompanied by dense drifting snow. We found it very monotonous lying in
the tent. As always happens during heavy drifts, the temperature outside
was high, on this day averaging about 12 degrees F.; inside the tent it
was above freezing-point, and the accompanying thaw was most unpleasant.

Stillwell's party had pitched their tent about ten paces to the leeward
side of ours, of which stratagem they continually reminded us. Going
outside for food to supply our two small meals per day was an operation
fraught with much discomfort to all. This is what used to happen. The
man on whom the duty fell had to insinuate himself into a bundle of wet
burberrys, and, as soon as he was outside, they froze stiff. When, after
a while, he signified his intention of coming in, the other two would
collect everything to one end of the tent and roll up the floor-cloth.
Plastered with snow, he entered, and, despite every precaution, in
removing burberrys and brushing himself he would scatter snow about
and increase the general wetness. On these excursions we would visit
Stillwell's tent and be hospitably, if somewhat gingerly, admitted; the
inmates drawing back and pulling away their sleeping-bags as from one
with a fell disease. As a supporting party they were good company, among
other things, supplying us with tobacco ad libitum. When we parted, five
days after, we missed them very much.

During the night the wind blew harder than ever--that terrible wind,
lad