THE DEP6T ESTABLISHED 



north of Minna Bluff, but fortunately we were having 

 good weather at this time. Most of us had the exper- 

 rience at one time or other of dropping into a crevasse 

 to the length of our harness. Adams, Marshall and 

 Marston had not yet become accustomed to the little 

 misadventures incidental to travel in the Antarctic, 

 but it did not take them long to become inured. I 

 remember one night hearing Marston asking whether 

 it would be safe to have a look round outside. " Well, 

 you can play ' perhaps ' if you like," remarked some one. 

 Marston did not understand, and the other man explained 

 that the " game " was played on the basis of " perhaps 

 you go down and perhaps you don't." Marston was 

 making sketches and taking notes of colours, and his 

 work was rendered very difficult by the extreme cold. 

 There were wonderful lights in the sky at dawn and 

 dusk, and the snow and ice presented the gradations of 

 delicate colour that can hardly be realised by those 

 who have never seen a polar landscape, but heavy mits, 

 with one compartment for the four fingers and another 

 for the thumb, are hardly designed for the handling 

 of pencil or crayons, and the use of bare hands was out 

 of the question. Marston persisted in the face of his 

 various troubles, and managed to secure a good deal of 

 interesting and valuable material. 



We left one bag of maize at a depot on the way out, 

 but we never picked this up again. The main depot 

 was laid in latitude 79.36° South, longitude 168° East, 

 a distance of about one hundred and twenty geographical 

 miles from the winter quarters. We reached it on 

 October 6. This depot was out of sight of land, and 

 was marked with an upturned sledge and a black flag 

 on a bamboo rod. We left there a gallon tin of oil 

 and 167 lb. of pony maize, so that our load would be 



239 



