Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/221

1911] C. Armitage about 2 miles off. We saw Ferrar's old thermometer tubes standing out of the snow slope as though they'd been placed yesterday. Vince's cross might have been placed yesterday—the paint was so fresh and the inscription so legible.

The flagstaff was down, the stays having carried away, but in five minutes it could be put up again. We loaded some asbestos sheeting from the old magnetic hut on our sledges for Simpson, and by standing ¼ mile off Hut Point got a clear run to Glacier Tongue. I had hoped to get across the wide crack by going west, but found that it ran for a great distance and had to get on the glacier at the place at which we had left it. We got to camp about tea-time. I found our larder in the grotto completed and stored with mutton and penguins—the temperature inside has never been above 27°, so that it ought to be a fine place for our winter store. Simpson has almost completed the differential magnetic cave next door. The hut stove was burning well and the interior of the building already warm and homelike—a day or two and we shall be occupying it.

I took Ponting out to see some interesting thaw effects on the ice cliffs east of the Camp. I noted that the ice layers were pressing out over thin dirt bands as though the latter made the cleavage lines over which the strata slid.

It has occurred to me that although the sea ice may freeze in our bays early in March it will be a difficult thing to get ponies across it owing to the cliff edges at the side. We must therefore be prepared to be cut off for a longer