Saturday, December 25, 2010

25 December, 1911 Christmas Day

The wind was strong last night and this morning; a light snowfall in the night; a good deal of drift, subsiding when we started, but still about a foot high. It was fine for a while but then we got amongst crevasses again. Got our ski sticks out, which improved matters, but we had to tack a good deal and several of us went half down. After half an hour of this I looked round and found the second sledge halted some way in rear -- evidently someone had gone into a crevasse. We saw rescue work going on, but had to wait half an hour for the party to come up, and got mighty cold. It appears that Lashly went down very suddenly, nearly dragging the crew with him. The sledge ran on and jammed the span so that the Alpine rope had to be got out and used to pull him to the surface again. He said the crevasse was 50 feet deep and 8 feet across, showing that the word "unfathomable" can rarely be applied. It's his birthday today too - he is 44 and hard as nails. Damned annoying to make us all cold, though.

Camp 47.

I am so replete that I can scarcely type. After sundry luxuries, such as chocolate and raisins at lunch, we started off well, but soon got among crevasses again. I marched on till 7:30. We covered 15 miles.

I knew that supper was going to be a "tightener" and indeed it has been -- we had four courses. The first, pemmican, full whack, with slices of horse meat flavored with onion and curry powder and thickened with biscuit; then an arrowroot, cocoa and biscuit hoosh sweetened; then a plum pudding; then cocoa with raisins; and a finally a dessert of caramels and ginger.

After hte feast it was difficult to move. Wilson and I couldn't finish our share of the plum pudding. This full feeding will keep us wonderfully warm tonight.

This time last year we were stuck in ice at sea! How time flies!

No comments:

Post a Comment