30 
SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [July 
at all times by day and night, and often working on 
when there was great difficulty to see anything : one day 
Birdie was digging with the hurricane lamp by his side.] 
The hut was placed so as to escape the force of the 
southerly wind under the moraine ridge. We were about 
800 feet above sea level. Our method of construction 
was to build four walls of solid rock, leaving a small gap 
for a door in the lee end. The weather wall was highest, 
and the breadth of the hut was 7^ to 8 ft., so that the 
9-foot sledge rested across from wall to wall as a cross 
rafter to support the canvas roof. The two side walls 
were built up to the height of the weather wall at the 
weather end, but were not so high by a couple of feet at 
the door end. The length of the hut was about 10 ft. 
Against the outer side of the rock-walls were laid 
large slabs of hard snow like paving stones, each having 
its icy windswept surface outside. Between the slabs 
of snow and the rock walls we shovelled moraine gravel. 
Over all this fell the canvas roof, anchored by lanyards 
to heavy rocks all round, and battened down to its outer 
side again by a double banking of ice slabs and gravel ; 
finally, every crevice was packed in by hand with soft 
snow until the whole wall was uniformly tight all round. 
The work took us all the light we had of three days to 
finish. The canvas roof was made so ample in size that 
it came right down to the ground on the weather side 
and more than half-way down all the other sides. This, 
we thought, could not fail to make the walls tight when 
packed in and over as explained above, but it completely 
failed to keep out either snow drift or gravel dust when 
