i9"l LANDING 6 1 



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 iSth 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 

 2 ist, 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. 



