Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/109

Eventually, however, the northerly wind came over, rising, and forming a complete overcast beneath which one could see the Western and Southern Mountains and horizon all perfectly clear.

We saw to-day and yesterday, hanging round the summits of Erebus and Terror, some very unusually delicate spider-web-like cirrus cloudlets, coloured dark reddish, and looking like tangled thread or like unravelled silk—they were slight and thin, but very well defined, and they changed very slowly.

Monday, July 31, 1911.—We turned out soon after 5 a.m. and had calm clear weather again ahead of us, though Terror was apparently again in trouble, for it was covered in a cap cloud.

We had good going and had covered 5½ miles in 5½ hours by the time we reached the edge of the Barrier about 1½ miles off the Pram Point ridges.

The surface of the Barrier during this march had to-day become very much harder and more windswept. It was not cut into sastrugi, but polished into low, flatly rounded areas, with only occasional drifts of sandy snow, which dragged heavily and allowed the feet to sink in through a thin crust. The difference this walking on a hard surface made to the warmth of our feet was very noticeable, notwithstanding that the temperature was still −57°.

At the Barrier edge we simply ran down a drift slope on to the sea ice, which had only a few inches of snow covering, six inches at the most as noted by Bowers, and hard and wind-swept. Here again we felt the flow