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Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12498, 26 March 1909, Page 3

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the top of the mountain, we saw an apparently smooth glacier rising, with a gentle gradient "to- what was apparently inland ico or a plateau. \\ eat once decided to go up this glacier. We called the mountain Mount Hope ana the entrance between the two mountains the -Southern Gateway. x.\o last pony we took with us. We started on sth December to go up the glacier. Our general direction now was botween south west and south south west. At once we saw we were not going to have such an easy time of it, because tho apparently smooth glacier was simply honeycombed with crevasses. We managed to get the pony in on the rocks on the sth, and- , ;6th.. ,Of course we. could not draw the sledges" over the rocks as that would tear the wooden runners. On the 6th we. had to unload the 'sledges and relay them with a little equipment on at a time, and on. that day wo were all day doing 600 yards, and that was the slowest travelling ; up to then we had been doing 12 to 15 statute miles per day. On the 7th one section of , the party, three men, went ahead with one" sledge, whilst Wild leading the pony in socks followed in our' wake with the other sledge. We were looking out . for crevasses, and altering our course to avoid them. The object was to get a perfectly safe course for the pony. Suddenly wo heard a shout during the afternoon from Wild, and on looking round we saw the sledge tilted and Wild with liis arms and shoulders on the edge of the crevasse. He was sunk to tho shoulder right on the edge - • of the crevasse and was -keeping him- « self up by the arms. • No pony was to be seen. We at once went to his assitance and found that the pony had stopped on the snow lid of a hidden crevasse, and gone, straight, down an enormous chasm, snapping 'the swingle tree- and thus saving both Wild and tho sledge. There was no sound to be heard down below';. Wild said all ho felt was a sudden rush of wind and then it was all over. From this time onwards, continued Lieut Shackleton, in answer -to further questions, we were crossing crevasses the whole time. The under runners of the sledges suffered severely by the sharp ice tearing. the wood. Now a sledge to travel well on a snow surface such as we had eventually on the plateau ought to be absolutely smooth. The friction was so' great ultimately that we had only one whole runner, and tbat^was on our - last sledge. The runner on the other side was worn away almost from the middle, and the pulling then became ' very arduous. We reached the 6500 ft | altitude of the glacier about the 19th Dec, and there we thought we could see .the plateau level ahead of us, so we depoted everything except the food, to carry us on, the necessary instruments for finding our position, and the clothes we stood up in. We left our warm clothes behind, which as it turned out, was inopportune, for the plateau level was not reached until we had ascended to a height of 10,500 foot above the sea level. From 9000 feet upwards we had a constant blizzard, the wind from the south being " dead in our faces, with the temperature always below zero. Sometimes "wo had 60 degrees of frost. The clothes we were wearing consisted or two pairs of socks ,a pair of Jaeger pyjama trousers (we wore these be- - cause they did not chafe' so much), a singlet, a shirt and a guernSey, then a burbery overall. The whole outfit weighed from 9to 10 lbs. By this time we had reduced our daily ration of food to 20ozs per man per day. In this climate, with the temperature and winds prevailing, coupled with the - high altitude, it was not sufficient to 'keep the necessary amount of heat in our bodies. All this time we were sighting new mountains. Adams was taking meteorological observations, T -:and i-fc-was~in.lo.-fc So o <2eg soTitk that Wild discovered, on going up a,mountain to look at the plateau, seven distinct seams of coal. This was a most interesting discovery, as showing that the Antarctic regions onco' had a very different climato. Dr Marshall, who had charge. of the surveying, had a very cold job. At every «arap he was taking theodolite angles, and putting in a great" deal of time on his 'work. He also, took all the .photographs on this journey. On January 4th wo decided to risk leaving a depot on the plateau. We had no land then to take bearings by and had to trust t6 Providence to find our depot, with the help of guiding poles. These we made by all hands using one tent, and dividing the tent poles of the 'second tent for posts. On these poles we put flags made from the provision bag. Thus lightened we pushed rapidly south, till on Jan 7th we had reached latitude 88, 5 degrees south. The constant S.E. wind developed then into one of extreme violence, the wind travelling at 70 miles per tiour, and the temperature was down to 72 degrees of frost. ./This continued for 60 hours, and many times we had to take our feet out out of the sleeping bags to have them restored to feeling, after being frostbitten. We were very cramped in the one little tent, the four of us being in a tent made to accommodate three. By this time our food was getting very low, and when the blizzard was over we realised that it would be impossible for us to continue -sledging further south, both from lack of food and our "diminished strength. Our body temperature showed only 93 -... degrees. Wo therefore decided to .leave the camp and make a forced ' march. to the. south, taking food, with ' us, and in latitude 88, 23 decrees, we hoisted the Union Jack which her Majesty had given us in England before leaving. , .-■■••"