chap, v CAIRN CAMP 67 



one. The daylight night seemed yet more miserable, not 

 that the temperature was specially low, measured by the 

 thermometer. There is really no relation between thermo- 

 metric scales and the sensation of cold. A blustering wind, 

 edged with the keenness of the neighbouring ice, howled 

 over the dreary waste. When the time for rising came, the 

 warm sleeping-bags were hard to quit, but quitted they 

 were, and work went forward, Trevor-Battye skinning birds, 

 Studley excavating a huge fireplace, Ted sketching, Garwood 

 and I disentangling the stores and supplies needed for load- 

 ing the sledges. Sledge-loading was new to both of us and 

 took an unconscionable time. By two P.M. one sledge 

 was finished, the canvas cover laced over it, a pony caught 

 and harnessed, and we were ready for an experimental 

 march, exactly forty-eight hours from the moment when 

 the Raftsund first cast anchor in Advent Bay. 



We started along the shore, which here was terraced by 

 a series of sharply-defined parallel ribs, following the curva- 

 ture of the coast and very neatly sloped. They were made 

 by the edge of the fast ice pressing against the beach and 

 leaving its mark at different tide-levels. A belt of fast ice 

 still hung by the shore, some hundred yards wide, all round 

 the open part of the bay. We toiled over the flat ground, 

 sinking deeply in from the first step, but rejoicing to observe 

 how well the sledge slipped along on its ski runners. It was 

 but a brief moment of satisfaction, for very soon came the 

 wide bed of a torrent, or rather a whole series of channels 

 made by the changeful stream, a ridged and furrowed stretch 

 of large broken stones. Here the sledge began to bump and 

 bang, pitching down into the channels and being hauled up 

 the other side, the sharp edges of the rocks scraping and 

 shaving the ash runners, and the unevenness of the ground 

 straining the sledge in every direction. Clearly, if there was 

 to be much of this kind of work, the sledges would not 



