How to reach the Pole was still our engrossing subject of discussion, and on November 1 we decided that our only hope of reaching it, was by travelling on half-rations from the point we had reached to the point on the coast at the Drygalski Glacier, where we might hope to be able to turn inland with reasonable prospect of success. Mawson was convinced that we must keep six weeks of full rations for our inland journey, and this meant that we must march on half-rations for about 100 miles. While I was busy in calculating times and distances for the remainder of our journey, Mawson and Mackay conducted experiments upon the cooking of seal-meat with blubber. At winter quarters Mackay had experimented with blubber as a fuel, but his efforts had not been taken seriously, and, to our sorrow, his blubber lamp had been left behind. Eventually, however, as a result of Mackay and Mawson's experiments, we secured an effective cooking stove, which was made out of one of our large empty biscuit tins, and a broth from seal-meat was made upon this stove. The broth was apparently very nutritious, but in my case it was also indigestible. While Mawson was still engaged on cooking experiments, Mackay and I went to the highest point of the island, and chose a spot for a cairn to mark our depot and Mackay began to build the cairn. It had, of course, become clear to us, from what we had already seen of the cracking sea-ice, combined with our slow progress, that our retreat back to camp from the direction of the Magnetic Pole would probably be cut off altogether through the breaking up of the sea-ice. Under these circumstances we resolved to take the risk of the _Nimrod_ returning safely to Cape Royds, where she would be instructed to search for us along the western coast; and also the risk of her not being able to find our depot and ourselves. We knew that there was some danger in this course, but we also felt that we had got on so far with the work entrusted to us by our commander that we could not honourably turn back. Under these circumstances we each wrote farewell letters to those who were nearest and dearest, and at 4.30 A.M. on the following morning we posted them in one of our empty dried-milk tins, which had an air-tight lid, and, having walked up to the cairn, I lashed our post-office to the flagstaff by means of cord and copper wire. There we also left several bags of geological specimens, and with lighter loads were prepared to go onwards towards the Pole. It was later than usual when we left our depot, and as the sun's heat was already thawing the surface of the snow our progress was painfully slow. So terribly hard, indeed, was it to get along at all, that, after going two miles, we camped and resolved to go on again at midnight, when we hoped to avoid the sticky surface. This experiment was fairly successful, and by November 5 we were opposite to a most interesting panorama some twenty miles north of Granite Harbour.