The Southern Party marching into the White Unknown, (See page 112)
In respect to books also we were well supplied, for I took Shakespeare's Comedies with me, Marshall had Borrow's "The Bible in Spain," Adams, Arthur Young's "Travels in France," and Wild "Sketches by Boz." By changing round when we had finished, we had literature enough to keep us going for many hours when we were unable to march.
No literature, however, could prevent us from chafing at the weather which kept us in our bags until the morning of November 9, but the difficulties of travelling over snow and ice in a bad light are practically insurmountable.
When the light is diffused by clouds or mist, it casts no shadows on the dead white surface, which consequently appears to the eye to be uniformly level. Often when we thought that we were marching on a level surface, we would suddenly fall two or three feet, and the strain on the eyes under these conditions was very great.
It is, indeed, when the sun is covered and the weather thickish that one is in danger of snow-blindness, that painful complaint with which we all became too well acquainted during the southern journey.
The only way to guard against an attack is to wear goggles the whole time, but when one is perspiring on account of exertion with the sledges, the glasses fog and they have to be taken off so that they may be wiped. When they were removed, the glare from the surrounding whiteness was intense, and the only relief was to get inside a tent, which was made of a green material very restful to the eyes.
On the night of the 8th the weather cleared, and we saw that we were in a regular nest of crevasses, Marshall and Wild finding that their tent was pitched on the edge of a previously unseen one.
To stand in drift for four days with 24° of frost was so bad for the ponies that we were thankful that their appetites for the hot food we gave to them was not affected, but we wanted to get under way and put some good marches in before we could feel really happy.
The distance as the crow flies from our winter quarters to the Pole is 750 geographical miles and as yet we had only done fifty-one. That a polar explorer needs a large stock of patience in his equipment is not to be denied, and as we lay in our bags anxious to be marching yet unable to move we drew heavy draughts upon our stock.