ON COLLECTING AT CAPE ROYDS 9 



stuff. Thus alternately picking and shovelling, a few inches at a time, the trench 

 gradually deepens to five or six feet. Up to this time everything is easy. The debris 

 is easily shovelled out with force enough to carry it well clear of the hole. With 

 every increase in depth this becomes more difficult, till at last the chips come shower- 

 ino- back on the worker below. It then becomes necessary to have another man to 

 pull up the chips in a bucket, or if one man attempts to do everything, he must inter- 

 rupt his work below every little while, climb out of the hole and pull up a load of 

 chips. Beyond a depth of five feet it is necessary to construct a stairway. It was 

 usual to have a few broad steps near the top, and lower down to cut niches for the 

 feet alternately at one side and the other. 



Blizzards are apt to interfere with the work, filling the trenches with snow. 

 After some experience we learnt wisdom, and covered the trenches with sacking, 

 which was secured with ice-picks whenever we had to go away for a time. The most 

 laborious part of the picking was the squaring of the corners. Some of the latest 

 shafts were made round, and of just the diameter at which a human arm can con- 

 veniently wield an ice-pick. In these the minimum of material had to be removed. 



At depths of fifteen feet and more progress becomes very slow. It is necessary 

 to have a ladder to get down. If there are two men the ladder can be drawn up out 

 of the way after one man has gone down. If there is only one the ladder is very 

 much in the way. The man below is in some danger when the bucket is being 

 hauled up, as the breaking of the line would let it fall upon him. 



Collecting in the Sea. Mr. Hodgson has given an account * of his collecting at 

 Hut Point, and he mentions some of the difficulties which attend the collector in 

 polar regions. Though our location at Cape B/oyds was only twenty miles north of 

 the Discovery winter quarters the local conditions differ very considerably. The 

 temperature appears to be usually ten degrees or more (Fahrenheit) higher than at 

 Hut Point. Being close to the spot where McMurdo Sound opens into the Ross Sea 

 we had open water close by throughout the year. In fact, even in winter the edge 

 of the permanent ice was never more than a mile from our camp. Beyond the fast 

 ice the Sound frequently filled with pack-ice stretching as far as eye could see. 

 Sometimes, in a period of calm, the pack was cemented into a solid field by new ice, 

 but this was broken up by every storm, and it was therefore always unsafe to go out 

 on it. The marginal zone of even the permanent winter ice was liable to be broken 

 off in a severe storm. 



From this cause marine dredging was confined within a very small area. We 

 could work steadily during winter only in a little bay between Cape Royds and Cape 

 Barne, where the ice formed early and stayed late. Here, as early as the beginning 

 of May, the ice was strong enough to allow us to cut holes and put down traps. The 

 traps were baited, and brought up Amphipods and Molluscs. Some pieces of a den- 

 droid sponge were entangled in the net and from these we got a number of minute 



* " On Collecting in Antarctic Seas." By T. V. Hodgson. " National Antarjt. Exped. 1901-4," vol. iii. 

 BRIT. ANTARCT. EXPED. 1907-9. VOL. I. B 



