3. Pickets for horses.

4. Lighter ponies to take 10 ft. sledges?

The surface is so crusty and friable that the question of snow-shoes
again becomes of great importance.

All the sastrugi are from S.W. by S. to S.W. and all the wind that
we have experienced in this region--there cannot be a doubt that the
wind sweeps up the coast at all seasons.

A point has arisen as to the deposition. David [11] called the crusts
seasonal. This must be wrong; they mark blizzards, but after each
blizzard fresh crusts are formed only over the patchy heaps left by the
blizzard. A blizzard seems to leave heaps which cover anything from
one-sixth to one-third of the whole surface--such heaps presumably
turn hollows into mounds with fresh hollows between--these are filled
in turn by ensuing blizzards. If this is so, the only way to get at
the seasonal deposition would be to average the heaps deposited and
multiply this by the number of blizzards in the year.

_Monday, February_ 15.--14 Camp. 7 miles 775 yards. The surface was
wretched to-day, the two drawbacks of yesterday (the thin crusts which
let the ponies through and the sandy heaps which hang on the runners)
if anything exaggerated.

Bowers' pony refused work at intervals for the first time. His hind
legs sink very deep. Weary Willy is decidedly better. The Soldier
takes a gloomy view of everything, but I've come to see that this is
a characteristic of him. In spite of it he pays every attention to