Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/188

again after breakfast. The Antarctic teaches one patience if nothing else.

We are fairly sheltered, but can hear the wind roaring in the crags on the side of the glacier, and the snow and drift are so thick that we can only see a few yards. Occasionally in the lulls we can see the blue icefalls looming up through the drift, and then everything shuts down again.

The conditions remained the same until breakfast on January 19, when it began to clear from the southward. We started away after breakfast with the surface awful, and the snow so deep I doubt if we should have got the sledges along at all if we had not had ski, which enabled us to break a trail. As soon as it was clear to the northward, Priestley and I climbed the slopes on our left on ski, leaving the remainder halted at the bottom. The view from the ridge was not promising. The icefalls reached right up to the ridge, a mass of séracs and crevasses as far as we could see, and I decided to return and try the Boomerang Glacier, which lay a few miles south of us. The sun now came out, and in the deep sticky surface it took all six of us to pull one sledge. We had to relay all the way, and it was six o'clock before we reached the N. lateral moraine of the Boomerang Glacier, where we camped.

January 20.—After breakfast we divided into two parties. I, taking Levick and Dickason, climbed the mountain on the N. side of the glacier. Priestley, taking Abbott and Browning, went up the glacier on the moraine, where Priestley wanted to collect.