THE LAST WINTER 451 



cargo on the main deck, and of course had a horrible time 

 during the gale, and any subsequent bad weather, which 

 did not however last very long. But it was quite impos- 

 sible to put them anywhere else, for every square inch 

 between decks was so packed that even our personal be- 

 longings for more than two years were reduced to one 

 small uniform case. Any seaman will easily understand 

 that to build houses or shelters on deck over and above 

 what we had already was out of the question. As a matter 

 of fact I doubt whether the dogs had a worse time than 

 we during that gale. In good weather at sea, and at all 

 times in the pack, they were comfortable enough. But 

 future explorers might consider whether they can give their 

 dogs more shelter during the winter than we were able to 

 do. Amundsen, whose Winter Quarters were on the Barrier 

 itself, and who experienced lower temperatures and very 

 much less wind than was our lot at Cape Evans, had his 

 dogs in tents, and let them run loose in the camp during 

 the day. Tents would have gone in the winds we experi- 

 enced, and I have explained that we had no snow in which 

 we could make houses, as was done by Amundsen in the 

 Barrier. 



Our more peaceable dogs were allowed to run loose, 

 especially during this last winter, at the beginning of 

 which we also built a dog hospital. We should have 

 liked to loose them all, but if we did so they immediately 

 flew at one another's throats. We might perhaps have 

 let them loose if we had first taken the precaution Am- 

 undsen took, and muzzled all of them before doing so. 

 The sport of fighting, so his dogs discovered, lost all its 

 charm when they found they could not taste blood, and 

 they gave it up, and ran about unmuzzled and happy. 

 But the slaughter among the seals and penguins would 

 have been horrible with us, and many dogs might have 

 been carried away on the breaking sea-ice. The tied-up 

 ones lay under the lee of a line of cases, each in his own 

 hole. They curled up quite snugly buried in the snow- 

 drift when blizzards were blowing, and lay exactly in the 

 same way when sledging on the Barrier, the first duty of 



