, A MONTH IN THE OLD DISCOVERT HUT 199 



while Gran, Taff Evans, Keohane, and Crean lay around the 

 stove. 



With so many human furnaces at work, the temperature 

 inside the hut rose to 46 F. on one occasion. As a natural 

 result, our ceiling dripped abominably. We laid hands on all 

 the empty tins about, and tied them on strings to the ceiling 

 under the more obnoxious drops ! Very skilfully we each 

 tried to lie between two small cataracts, with the result that 

 boundary commissions were frequently necessary to decide on 

 encroachment into foreign territory ! 



The activities of the geologists incited all the other officers 

 to emulation. Bowers was the most indefatigable of these 

 " pseudo-scientists," and was always bringing some huge 

 specimen along to Debenham or myself. " Here you are," 

 Birdie would say of a particularly uninteresting block, " here's 

 a gabbroid nodule impaled in basalt with felspar and olivine 

 rampant." 



The sun was giving us his farewell before winter. Very 

 beautiful were the sunset tints ; and on the 25th I wrote : 

 " Over Mt. Discovery are bands of stratus, across a black 

 sky, while in the foreground are pools in thin ice looking 

 like bog lands. To the south the sky shows orange-yellow 

 to white tints ; to the north, beautiful lemon-green verging 

 into grey and yellow on the east. To the west, grey-green, 

 with a bright orange band against which stands the purple 



line of Mount Lister. D fine, only I'd rather have two 



feet of solid sea-ice, and no lemon-green reflections in the 

 pools ! " 



Later in the day, Wilson gave Oates and myself a talk on 

 tone-values. At 6 p.m. the landscape was rosy pink every- 

 where where the sun glanced on the snow-fields, salmon to 

 buff colour on the open water, and on the newly freezing sea 

 iridescent like tar. The shadow of Brown Island was lemon- 

 green, changing to purple on Mount Discovery — while for a 

 few minutes our own shadows were the most vivid bright 

 blue! 



It is impossible to imagine how striking if evanescent 

 these colours were, and as possibly some critics believe that 

 Wilson's sketches erred on the bright side, I have here copied 

 my notes made on the spot, while Dr. Bill was drawing his 

 sketches. 



