162 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
Now Pram Point during the summer months is one of 
the most populous seal nurseries in McMurdo Sound. In 
this neighbourhood the Barrier, moving slowly towards the 
Peninsula, buckles the sea-ice into pressure ridges. As the 
trough of each ridge is forced downwards, so in summer 
pools of sea water are formed in which the seal make their 
holes and among these ridges they lie and bask in the sun: 
the males fight their battles, the females bring forth their 
young: the children play and chase their tails just like 
kittens. Now that the sea-ice had broken up, many seal 
were to be found in this sheltered corner under the green 
and blue ice-cliffs of Crater Hill. 
If you go seal killing you want a big stick, a bayonet, 
a flensing knife and a steel. Any big stick will do, so long 
as it will hit the seal a heavy blow on the nose: this stuns 
him and afterwards mercifully he feels no more. The 
bayonet knife (which should be fitted into a handle with a 
cross-piece to prevent the slipping of the hand down on to 
the blade) should be at least 14 inches long without the 
handle ; this is used to reach the seal’s heart. Our flensing 
knives were one foot long including the handle, the blades 
were seven inches long by 14 inches broad: some were 
pointed and others round and I do not know which was 
best. The handles should be of wood as being warmer to 
hold. | 
Killing and cutting upseals isa gruesome but very neces- 
sary business, and the provision of suitable implements is 
humane as well as economic in time and labour. ‘The skin — 
is first cut off with the blubber attached: the meat is then | 
cut from the skeleton, the entrails cleaned out, the liver — 
carefully excised. The whole is then left to freeze in pieces 
on the snow, which are afterwards collected as rock-like — 
lumps. The carcass can be cut up with an axe when 
needed and fed to the dogs. Nothing except entrails was 
wasted. | 
Lighting was literally a burning question. I do not 
know that any lamp was better than a tin matchbox fed 
with blubber, with strands of lamp wick sticking up in it, 
but all kinds of patterns big and small were made by proud 
