1911] LANDING | 61 
It appeared to have altered considerably since Borchgre- 
“vink’s time, as he charts only one long tongue. It was not a 
good place for wintering, the surface being crevassed and the 
sides too steep to be climbed; the ice tongue would have been 
a good place to lie alongside and land stores, but as some of 
this broke away and drifted out to sea a week later, it was as 
well we did not try. 
After having a look at Duke of York Island we steamed 
up to the head of the bay, but with no better success. So 
about midnight we turned and made for Ridley Beach, a tri- 
angular beach on the west side of Cape Adare, the place where 
the Southern Cross Party wintered in 1900. 
I was very much against wintering here, as until the ice 
forms in Robertson Bay one is quite cut off from any sledging 
operations on the mainland, for the cliffs of the peninsula descend 
sheer into the sea. 
Pennell, however, had only just enough coal as it was to get 
back to New Zealand, so at 3 A.M. on the 18th we anchored off 
the south shore of the beach and commenced landing stores. 
A cold, wet job it was. A lot of loose ice round the shore and 
a surf made it difficult for the boats to get in; the water shoaled 
some way out, which meant wading backwards and forwards 
with the stores, while several times the boats broached to as they 
touched and half swamped. We worked from 3 A.M. till mid- 
night, and started again at 4 A.M. on Sunday. 
The way everyone behaved was splendid, Davies the car- 
penter in particular working at the hut for 48 hours on end. 
Communication with the ship was twice cut off by heavy pack 
setting into the bay. 
By 4 A.M. Monday everything was landed, the ship party 
re-embarked, and the ship proceeded north, while we of the 
shore party, who were all dead tired, turned in for a few hours’ 
sleep. One of Borchgrevink’s huts was standing, but was half 
full of snow; the other one had no roof and had evidently been 
used as a nesting place by generations of penguins. After clear- 
ing out the snow of the former we had quite comfortable quar- 
ters while we built our own hut. With the exception of the 
21st, when we had a mild blizzard, we had fine weather for 
building the hut, for which we were very thankful, as that, and 
carrying up all the stores, proved a long job for a small party. 
