246 British Antarctic Expedition. 
much. But how favourable must the ice conditions 
of that time have been to have enabled him to 
penetrate so far south at such an early date as this. 
Great spirit in man who was the successful pioneer 
in these regions, how little did I know that I was 
destined to be the first in this land ;which you 
first told the world existed! In boyhood I read 
your difficulties with enthusiasm, and when I now 
read them, more than half a century has crowned 
your achievements, and I feel that reverence defines 
my appreciation. The difficulties were great at that 
time; they are now. Inventions have made the 
work lighter apparently, in one way; but to utilise 
those new inventions creates new difficulties, new 
risks, and fresh claims upon the human brain. 
On January 18th a violent gale started with 
snowdrift from S.E. On the roth it was still 
blowing; the wind increased in strength, with the 
barometer at 28:830; the dry bulb thermometer 
showed 26:5, the wet 26, and the solar 27. d has 
gale continued until the 26th and was the longest 
we had. The appearance of the air seemed 
threatening, and had the Southern Cross been near 
land at the time there would have been anxious 
hours for those on board. However, had I then 
known, as I now do, how local most of these gales 
are, I would, perhaps, have been more easy in my 
mind about her. Our abode at Cape Adare was, 
in fact, lying within a close elliptic isobar of the 
lowest barometric pressure within the Antarctic Circle. 
The ice had now broken up in Robertson Bay. 
During the gales we had experienced the greatest 
dryness, or rather the least humidity of the air that 
