Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/38

reaching the top. [Got both hands bitten going up Barrier—all ten fingers.]

It was now 6.30 p.m., and we camped at 7, the last half-hour on the Barrier surface being uphill, and very heavy compared with the easy going on the snow-covered sea ice from Cape Armitage. There was no doubt as to the existence of this slope up; we confirmed it on our return, and I take it to be a proof that the Barrier at this point has in recent years broken back at any rate half a mile or a mile farther than it did this year—for the previous broken edges can be supposed to fill up successively in this way and so to produce a gradient without steps.

We had nothing but light variable airs all day with a clear sky. The temp. ranged from −24·5° in the morning by Castle Rock to −26·5° at Hut Point and −47° at the edge of the Barrier.

Thursday, June 29, 1911.—We spent a cold night with temp. down to −56·5° [Frightful cold last night—bad night. Bill has hardly slept for two nights—clothes beginning to get bad], and it was −49° when we turned out at 9 a.m.; but the day was fine and calm on the whole, with occasional light easterly airs only.

Curtains of aurora covered a great part of the sky to the east both morning and evening, and it was one of the chief pleasures of our journey out that we were facing east, where almost all the aurora occurred, and so we could watch its changes as we marched, almost the whole time. Nine-tenths of the aurora we saw was in the east and S.E. of the sky, often well up to the zenith,