Tuesday 5 Dec. [Actually December 04]

Have gone completely blind all day. Breeze from N. with thick drift, and greater, more constant snowfall than I have yet seen in these regions.
It has gone very well. The terrain has allowed us to get ahead, albeit with some trouble. Some large sastrugi that has given rise to some capsizing and other troubles. We have worked our way ahead by 20 nautical miles in this impenetrable weather, and at the moment are 10,200 ft. asl. by boiling point. During the am there were still large stretches of ice between the sastrugi, but during the afternoon we finally lost them. I saw the moon here a couple of days ago. I don't know that this has happened to me before – the moon and the midnight sun simultaneously. Left a black packing case at the camp site this morning.

This transcript comes from “Race for the South Pole - The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen” by Roland Huntford. It appears by courtesy of the author and The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.