SOUTH 
sun also disappears, so that one cannot enjoy it as much as one would 
like. 
As a rule, too, southerly winds brought fine clear weather, with 
marked faU in the temperature, and those from the north were 
accompanied hy mist, fog, and overcast skies, with comparatively 
higli temperatures. In the Antarctic a temperature of 30'', i.e. 2° 
below freezing, is considered unbearably hot. 
The greatest difficulty that was experienced was due to the 
accumulation of rime on the instruments. In low temperatures 
everything became covered with ice-crystals, deposited from the au-, 
which eventually grew into huge blocks. Sometimes these blocks 
became dislodged and fell, making it dangerous to walk along the 
decks. The rime collected on the thermometers, the glass bowl of 
the sunshine recorder, and the bearings of the anemometer, neces- 
sitating the frequent use of a brush to remove it, and sometimes 
effectively preventing the instruments from recording at all. 
One of our worst blizzards occiu-red on August 1,1915, which was, 
for the ship, the beginning of the end. It lasted for four days, 
with cloudy and overcast weather for the three foUoAving days, and 
from that time onwards we enjoyed very httle sun. 
The weather that we experienced on Elephant Island can only 
be described as appalling. Situated as we were at the mouth of a 
gully, down which a huge glacier was slowly moving, with the open 
sea in front and to the left, and towering, snow-covered mountains 
on our right, the aix- was hardly ever free from snow-drift, and the 
winds increased to terrific violence through being forced over the 
glacier and through the narrow gully. Huge blocks of ice were 
hurled about hke pebbles, and cases of clothing and cooking utensils 
were whisked out of our hands and carried away to sea. For the 
first fortnight after our landing there, the gale blew, at times, at over 
one hundred miles an hour. Fortunately it never again quite reached 
that intensity, but on several occasions violent squalls made us 
very fearful for the safety of our hut. The island was almost con- 
tinuously covered with a pall of fog and snow, clear weather ob- 
taining occasionally when pack-ice surrounded us. Fortunately a 
series of south-westerly gales had blown all the ice away to the north- 
east two days before the rescue ship arrived, leaving a comparatively 
clear sea for her to approach the island. 
Being one soUtary moving station in the vast expanse of the 
WeddeU Sea, with no knowledge of what was happening anywhere 
around us, forecasting was very difficult and at times impossible. 
Great assistance in this dkection was afforded by copies of Mr. R. C. 
Mossmann's researches and papers on Antarctic meteorology, which 
he kindly supphed to us. 
350 
