On the same day that saw the death of Chinaman we made our second depot, and left there 80 lb. of pony meat, one tin of biscuits weighing 27 lb., some sugar, and one tin of oil to see us back to Depot A.
With three ponies dragging 500 lb. each we left our depot, with its black flag flying on the bamboo lashed to a discarded, sledge, and were soon in new land to the south—land never before seen by human eyes.
The land consisted of great snow-clad heights rising beyond Mount Longstaff, and also far inland to the north of Mount Markham. We found that our latitude was 81° 8′ south.
The weather still remained splendid for marching, with a cool breeze from the south and the sun slightly hidden, but our enjoyment of the glorious view of peaks new to human eyes was marred by Wild being temporarily unwell, and by Adams suffering badly from toothache. Our first attempt to pull out this tooth merely resulted in the tooth breaking, but at a second attempt Marshall succeeded in getting it out, an achievement—under the conditions—as creditable to the one as it was welcome to the other.
Steady progress was made until November 26, which is a day which we travellers at least shall remember, for on it we passed the "farthest south" previously reached by man. On this night we reached latitude 82° 18 south, and our "farthest south" in the march with Captain Scott was 82° 16½′.
As each hour passed on this memorable day we found new interest to the west where the land lies, for we opened out Shackleton Inlet, and up the inlet a great chain of mountains, and far into the west still more peaks. To the west of Cape Wilson another chain of peaks about 10,000 ft. high appeared, and to the south-south-east new mountains were continually coming into view. It falls to the lot of few men to see land not previously looked upon by human eyes, and it was with feelings of keen curiosity and awe (mingled in my case with a fervent hope that no land would block our path) that we watched the new mountains rise from the great unknown that lay before us.
No man of us could even guess what wonders might be revealed to us in our march south, and our imaginations took wings until a stumble in the snow or the sharp pangs of hunger brought back our attention to the needs of the immediate present.
Our anxiety, however, to learn what lay before us was as keen as it could be, and the long days of marching over the Barrier surface were saved from monotony by the continued appearance of land to the south-east. As we marched on and new mountains kept on rising, we were concerned to notice that they trended more and more to the eastward, for that meant that we must alter our course from nearly due south. Nevertheless, we hoped that when we reached them some strait might be found which would enable us to go right through them and on south. Really, however, patience was of more use to us than speculation, for, come what might, we meant to push on until our limit of strength was reached.
By November 28 we had reached a truly awful surface, and poor Grisi, who had been smitten with snow-blindness, had to be shot in the evening. Having made Depot C. and left one week's provisions and oil to carry us back to Depot B, we went on the next morning with 1200 lb. weight, which we decided to pull with the ponies, but we quickly discovered that the ponies would not pull when we did, so we had to untoggle our harness.
The whole country seemed to be made up of range upon range of mountains, but the surface over which we were going was so bad that the ponies sank in right up to their bellies, and we had to pull with might and main to get the sledges to move.