96 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
always blow here from the south. Against the south side of 
the hut Bowers built himself a store-room. “ Every day he 
conceives or carries out some plan to benefit the camp.’’} 
“Scott seems very cheery about things,” I find in my 
diary about this time. And well he might be. A man could 
hardly be better served. We slaved until we were nearly 
dead-beat, and then we found something else to do until 
we were quite dead-beat. Ship’s company and landing 
parties alike, not only now but all through this job, did 
their very utmost, and their utmost was very good. The 
way men worked was fierce. 
‘If you can picture our house nestling below this small 
hill on a long stretch of black sand, with many tons of pro- 
vision cases ranged in neat blocks in front of it and the sea 
lapping the ice-foot below, you will have some idea of our 
immediate vicinity. As for our wider surroundings it would 
be difficult to describe their beauty in sufficiently glowing 
terms. Cape Evans is one of the many spurs of Erebus 
and the one that stands closest under the mountain, so that 
always towering above us we have the grand snowy peak 
with its smoking summit. North and south of us are deep 
bays, beyond which great glaciers come rippling over the 
lower slopes to thrust high blue-walled snouts into the sea. 
The sea is blue before us, dotted with shining bergs or ice 
floes, whilst far over the Sound, yet so bold and magni- 
ficent as to appear near, stand the beautiful Western Moun- 
tains with their numerous lofty peaks, their deep glacial 
valley and clear cut scarps, a vision of mountain scenery 
that can have few rivals.” ? 
“Before I left England people were always telling me 
the Antarctic must be dull without much life. Now we are 
in ourselves a perfect farmyard. There are nineteen ponies 
fifty yards off and thirty dogs just behind, and they howl — 
like the wolves they are at intervals, led by Dyk. The | 
skuas are nesting all round and fighting over the remains — 
of the seals which we have killed, and the penguins which 
the dogs have killed, whenever they have got the chance. _ 
1 Scott’s Last Expedition, vol. i. p. 128. 
2 Ibid. p. 129. 
