The Home of the Blizzard: Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914Mawson, Douglas, Sir
History
The Home of the Blizzard: Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914
Mawson, Douglas, Sir
Antarctica -- Discovery and exploration; Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914)
We soon had the cave clear of snow, had a good meal and then slept
the sleep of the just, feeling well content with the first day's
work--eleven and a half miles from home at an altitude of one thousand
nine hundred feet. We were off at last on a search for the Magnetic
Pole.
On the morrow some time was spent in rearranging the loads. Finally,
both parties moved off south into heavy wind and fairly thick drift.
What with the ground rising steadily, the pressure of the wind and our
lack of condition, two and a quarter hours of solid work realized only
two and a quarter miles; so we decided to camp.
All the night it blew hard, between seventy and eighty miles per hour,
and next day it was still blowing and drifting heavily. Our tent was
a good deal smaller than Murphy's, and, as Webb and Hurley are
both six-footers, we always had to put all gear outside when the
sleeping-bags were down. This is really a good thing when the weather is
bad, as one is not tempted to stay in the bag all the time.
Early in the afternoon as we were all feeling hungry and had been in
bags long enough to feel cold, although the weather was quite warm (10
degrees F.), we rolled bags, and, when our frozen burberrys were once
fairly on, quite enjoyed ourselves. After a boil-up and a few minutes'
"run" round in the drift and wind, we did some stitching on our light
drill tent, which was making very heavy weather of it, although pitched
close under the lee of Murphy's strong japara tent. A little reading,
some shouted unintelligible conversation with the other tent, another
boil-up, and, last but not least, a smoke, found us quite ready for
another sleep.
Next day (November 13), the wind having dropped to thirty-five miles
per hour, we set out about 11 A.M. in light drift. The sky was still
overcast, so the light was very trying. In the worst fogs at home one
can at any rate see something of the ground on which one is treading;
in Adelie Land, even when the air was clear of snow, it was easy to bump
against a four-foot sastruga without seeing it. It always reminded me
most of a fog at sea: a ship creeping "o'er the hueless, viewless deep."
When 6 P.M. arrived we had only covered five and a half miles, but
were all thoroughly exhausted and glad to camp. Lunch had been rather
barbarously served in the lee of the sledge. First came plasmon biscuit,
broken with the ice-axe into pieces small enough to go into the mouth
through the funnel of a burberry helmet; then followed two ounces of
chocolate, frozen rather too hard to have a definite taste; and finally
a luscious morsel--two ounces of butter, lovingly thawed-out in the
mouth to get the full flavour. Lunches like these in wind and drift are
uncomfortable enough for every one to be eager to start again as soon as
possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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