Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 1.djvu/335

224 unfortunately attached to this mass was a strip of the lining of the intestine."

The recovery of Bones was uninterrupted. Two days later another pony went off his feed and lay down, but was soon well again.

Considerable speculation as to the original cause of this illness never found a satisfactory answer. Some traced it to a want of ventilation, and it is necessary to say that both the ponies who were ill stood next to the blubber stove; at any rate a big ventilator was fitted and more fresh air let in. Others traced it to the want of water, supposing that the animals would not eat as much snow as they would have drunk water; the easy remedy for this was to give them water instead of snow. We also gave them more salt than they had had before. Whatever the cause may have been we had no more of this colic, and the improvement in their condition until we started sledging was uninterrupted.

All the ponies were treated for worms; it was also found that they had lice, which were eradicated after some time and difficulty by a wash of tobacco and water. I know that Oates wished that he had clipped the ponies at the beginning of the winter, believing that they would have grown far better coats if this had been done. He also would have wished for a loose box for each pony.

No account of the ponies would be complete without mention of our Russian pony boy, Anton. He was small in height, but he was exceedingly strong and had a chest measurement of 40 inches.

I believe both Anton and Dimitri, the Russian dog driver, were brought originally to look after the ponies and dogs on their way from Siberia to New Zealand. But they proved such good fellows and so useful that we were very glad to take them on the strength of the landing party. I fear that Anton, at any rate, did not realize what he was in for. When we arrived at Cape Crozier in the ship on our voyage south, and he saw the two great peaks of Ross Island in front and the Barrier Cliff disappearing in an unbroken wall below the eastern horizon, he imagined that