On the 22nd of March the first detachment began its return journey; it consisted of Lieutenant Querini and two men, and it was never heard of again. The way northwards continued extremely difficult, with channels and ridges plentiful and the road so rough that the sledges began to break up in the bows and runners, some at last so badly that their fragments had to be used to repair the others with. On the 31st the second detachment was sent back, consisting of the doctor and two men, and it got safely to the ship. The third detachment, consisting of Cagni with two Courmayeur guides—Petigax and Fenoillet—and a sailor, Canepa, all four Italians, made the final effort. That day they were on level ice and covered seventeen miles, but at night a snowstorm came on and there was trouble. After a rest they pressed forward in rapid marches amid bad weather over the drifting fields. On the 12th of April while raising camp a strong pressure piled up within a hundred yards of them a wall from thirty-six to forty-five feet high, the highest ridge they had seen. Enormous blocks rolled down towards them with loud crashes after being thrown up by other blocks, lifted to the brow of the ridge and rolled over in their turn, raising a cloud of ice-dust in their fall, the loud continual creaking of the pressure drowned by the booming of the cascade which shook the ice for yards around. These ridges were constantly forming, most of them remaining, some of them subsiding as the edges drifted apart, and the channels thus caused were even more difficult to deal with, some having to be passed over thin ice, some ferried over on small floes. But they did not cross the track all along, and during the last few days the travelling was easy.