Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/49

relaying impossible, but we found we could manage the two sledges together again on the improving surface.

Our chief difficulty was to avoid gradually and unwittingly mounting the slopes of Mt. Terror to our left, where there are any number of crevassed patches of ice, and running into the pressure ridges on our right. Between these two lay an area of more or less level land ice which was safe going—but in two or three places I knew it was necessary to cross long snow capes running across our path from Mt. Terror—and here, if one wished to avoid very long uphill drags one had to approach the pressure ridges fairly closely—a thing quite easy with daylight, but affording us constant trouble in the dark and fog which hampered us all along this part of our journey.

To-day no landmarks were visible at all. We made a little over one mile in the forenoon and ¾ mile more in the afternoon. It was a great relief to have done so without relaying. The moon was invisible [only a glow where she is] and everything was obscured by fog, but the surface was improving every hour. In the afternoon we ran into crevassed ground, after having suspected we were pulling the sledges up and down several rises of moderate gradient. As we expected this, however, before reaching the second long snow cape, we went on. The surface was again hard and icy in places, with sometimes six inches of snow loose upon it. Our feet went through this snow and slipped upon the ivory-hard surface underneath. This was often near the top of the ridges. In the hollows the surface was deep and soft and crusted.

One could judge much of the nature of the surface, and