18 SCOTT’S LAST EXPEDITION [Jury 
down over it and all was well. My nerves were about on edge 
at end of day. ] 
AT THE KNOLL 
Saturday, July 15, 1911.—The min. temp. for the night was 
— 34°5°, but at 10.30 A.M. it was — 19-2°, with a breeze of force 
3 from the $.S.W. We got a clear view this morning, however, 
and could see the moraine shelf facing the Knoll, where we had 
decided to build our stone hut. We had a short, steep, uphill 
three miles’ pull over very hard and deep-cut sastrugi to this 
spot, and then, rounding the lower end of the moraine, we found 
ourselves in the Knoll gap and pitched our last outward camp 
in a large open smooth snow hollow, hard and windswept as to 
surface, but in places not cut up by sastrugi. This camp lay 
about 150 yards below the ridge where we proposed to build 
our stone hut. [Here we are after a real slog—zoo feet up, 
camped on very hard snow with our hut site chosen off to W. 
on some moraine—we have been discussing what to call the hut 
which we hope to build under a big boulder on the slope, walling 
one side of it—Terra Igloo I expect. It seems too good to be 
true—19 days out, this is our 15th camp—four days’ blizzard. 
Surely seldom has anyone been so wet—our bags hardly possible 
to get into—our windclothes just frozen boxes. Birdie’s patent 
balaclava is like iron—it is wonderful how our cares have van- 
ished.] We had originally intended building on the Adeélie 
penguin rookery, but so much of our time has been taken up in 
getting here, and our oil was already so short, that we decided 
to build as close as we could to our work with the Emperor 
penguins, and take the chance of doing so in the blizzard area. 
In the Adélie penguin rookery we should have been out of the 
blizzards, but five miles from our principal work. We hoped, 
however, to find something of a lee for our hut, and to put up 
with the blizzards. 
On the ridge top above the snow hollow where we were 
camped was a low, rough mass of rock in situ with a quantity 
of loose rock masses of erratics of various kinds, some granite, 
some hard basalt, and some crumbly volcanic lava lying around. 
There was also a lot of rough gravel and plenty of hard snow 
which could be cut into paving stone slabs. So here we had 
all the material we wanted, and as the corner under the rock 
