Chapter fourteen 



LIFE AND WORK IN WINTER QUARTERS 



AFTER the journey to the summit of Erebus we began 

 to settle down and prepare for the long winter 

 months that were rapidly approaching. Already the 

 nights were lengthening and stars becoming familiar 

 objects in the sky. Our main work was to secure 

 the hut firmly against possible damage from the south- 

 east blizzards. After everything had been made safe 

 as far as it lay in our power, we felt that if anything 

 untoward happened it would not be our fault, so we 

 turned our attention to the scientific studies that lay 

 to our hand. As we were only a small party, it was 

 impossible for all of us to carry on scientific work and, 

 at the same time, attend to what I might call the house- 

 hold duties. It was most important for the geologists 

 of the expedition to get as far afield as practicable 

 before the winter night closed in on us, so every day 

 both the Professor and Priestley were out early and 

 late, with their collecting-bags and geological hammers, 

 finding on every successive trip they made within 

 a radius of three or four miles of the winter quarters 

 new and interesting geological specimens, the examina- 

 tion of which would give them plenty of work in the 

 winter months. Scattered around Cape Royds were 

 large numbers of granite boulders of every size and 

 colour, deposited there by the great receding ice-sheet 

 that once filled McMurdo Sound and covered the lower 

 slopes of Erebus. The geologists were full of delight 

 that circumstances should have placed our winter 



198 



