MEAT STORES 63 



last night, and celebrated the occasion with a great house 

 warming. We have also had time to put up the meteorological 

 screen and dig a beautiful ice house in a small stranded berg 

 on the south shore. Unfortunately, the day after the larder was 

 filled a big surf came rolling in and the berg began to break 

 up. We had only just time to rescue the forty penguins with 

 which we had stocked it, and carry the little corpses to a near 

 ice house built of empty cases filled with ice and well out of 

 reach of the sea. The whole beach we are on is a penguin 

 rookery in summer, and has been so for generations. We are 

 constantly reminded of it, in fact so forcibly is this so inside 

 the hut, that before putting down the floor Levick dressed the 

 ground with bleaching-powder. He did this so thoroughly, and 

 inhaled so much of the gas, that he had to retire to his bunk 

 blind in both eyes, with a bad sore throat, and all the symptoms 

 of a heavy cold in his head. 



This afternoon Abbott, Priestley, Levick, and I climbed to 

 the top of Cape Adare, and certainly the view over the bay was 

 lovely, the east side of the peninsula descending in a sheer 

 cliff to the Ross Sea. We collected some fine bits of quartz 

 and erratic boulders about 1000 feet up, and Levick got some 

 good photographs of the Admiralty Range. On the way down 

 I found some green alga on the rocks. 



Monday, March 6. We set to work on the coal and stores 

 and carried everything up to the hut, stacking them on the 

 weather side. 



We have now settled down into a regular routine; we turn 

 out at 7 A.M., have breakfast at 8 A.M., dinner at i P.M., and 

 supper at 7 P.M. 



The weather is fairly fine, the temperature keeping be- 

 tween 1 8 and 20 F., but with a cold east wind. Loose pack 

 sets into the bay with the flood and drifts out with the ebb 

 tide. 



March 9. We had a most magnificent surf breaking on 

 the western shore over a fringe of grounded pack, throwing 

 spray and bits of ice 30 or 40 feet into the air. 



On the nth and I2th we had our first blizzard with heavy 

 drift and the hut shook a little, but nothing gave way. The 

 remaining penguins began gathering in parties on the sea shore, 

 which looked as though they were going to leave us for the 



