The weather and surface were both in our favour at last. It was sunny, warm, and clear now, and there was nothing to impede us. Wilson did a large amount of sketching on the Beardmore—his sketches, besides being wonderful works of art, helped us very much in our surveys.
Fringing the great glittering river of ice were dark granite and dolerite hills, some were snow-clad and some quite bare, for their steepness resisted the white cloak of this freezing clime. The new hills were surveyed, headlands plotted, and names bestowed where Shackleton had not already done so. Of course we had Shackleton's charts, diaries, and experience to help us. We often discussed Shackleton's journey, and were amazed at his fine performance. We always had full rations, which Shackleton's party never enjoyed at this stage. After December 17 our marches worked up from 13 to 23 miles a day.
Shackleton bestowed the name of Queen Alexandra Range on the huge mountains to the westward of the Beardmore.
The most conspicuous is the "Cloudmaker," which he gives as 9.971—I like the 1 foot when heights are so hard to determine hereabouts! To the three secondary ranges, on the S.W. extreme of the Beardmore, nearly in 85 degrees, he gave the names Adams, Marshall, and Wild, after his three companions on the farthest South march. To get into one's head what we had to look at on the upper half of the Beardmore, imagine a moderate straight slope: this is the Glacier like a giant road, white except where the sun has melted the snow and bared the blue ice. Looking up the Glacier an overhang of ice-falls and disturbances, with three nunataks or mountains sticking through the ice-sheet like islands—the disturbance is mostly to the left (Eastwards) of these, and the road here looks cruelly steep even where it is not broken up. Down the Glacier the great white way is broken here and there where tributary glaciers join it, and above the Cloudmaker the glacier is cut up badly in several places, how badly we were not to know until the middle of January, 1912—but of that more anon. To the left (S.E.) a great broad river of ice, the Mill Glacier, and so on.
The land is extraordinary—gigantic snow drifts like huge waves breaking against a stone pier beset the lower cliff faces and steeper slopes, then dark red-brown rock carved by glaciers long since vanished, and above this rocky bands of limestone, sandstone; and dolerite. Some rocky talus showing through the big snow drifts, and in some cases talus alone.
From my letter to be taken by the next homeward party in case I missed the ship:
"The Wild range is extraordinary in its curious stratification, and one feels when gazing at it some-thing of a wish to scramble along the crests, if only to feel land underfoot instead of ice, ice, ice.
"The prevailing colours here are blacks, grays, reds, like the cliffs at Teignmouth and Exmouth, and another more chocolate red. Then the whites in all kind of shade—fancy different shades of white, but there are here any amount of them, and a certain sparkle of blue ice down the Glacier where the sun is shining on it that reminds one of a tropical sea. Except when marching we don't spend much time out of our tents, but I take a breather now and again when surveying, and then I sit on a sledge-box and wonder what is in store for us and where all this will lead us. Amundsen has certainty not come this way, although dogs could work here easily enough."
On December 20 Scott came into our tent after supper and told us that the first return party would be Atkinson (in charge), Wright, Cherry-Garrard, and Keohane, and that they would turn back after the next day's march. We were all very sad, but each one thus detailed loyally abided by the decision of our chief. I worked till nearly midnight getting out copy of route and bearings for Wright to navigate back on.
Here is a specimen page of my diary: