ckly. The temperature this morning was + 17 deg.;
minimum +11 deg.. But now the wind is increasing from the S.E. and it is
momentarily getting colder.

_Thursday, March_ 23, A.M.--No signs of depot party, which to-night
will have been a week absent. On Tuesday afternoon we went up to
the Big Boulder above Ski slope. The geologists were interested,
and we others learnt something of olivines, green in crystal form
or oxidized to bright red, granites or granulites or quartzites,
hornblende and feldspars, ferrous and ferric oxides of lava acid,
basic, plutonic, igneous, eruptive--schists, basalts &c. All such
things I must get clearer in my mind. [19]

Tuesday afternoon a cold S.E. wind commenced and blew all night.

Yesterday morning it was calm and I went up Crater Hill. The sea
of stratus cloud hung curtain-like over the Strait--blue sky east
and south of it and the Western Mountains bathed in sunshine, sharp,
clear, distinct, a glorious glimpse of grandeur on which the curtain
gradually descended. In the morning it looked as though great pieces
of Barrier were drifting out. From the hill one found these to be
but small fragments which the late gale had dislodged, leaving in
places a blue wall very easily distinguished from the general white
of the older fractures. The old floe and a good extent of new ice
had remained fast in Pram Point Bay. Great numbers of seals up as
usual. The temperature was up to +20 deg. at noon. In the afternoon a very
chill wind from the east, temperature rapidly dropping till zero in
the evening. The Strait obstinately refuses to freeze.

We are scoring another success in the manufacture of blubber lamps,
which relieves anxiety as to lighting as the hours of darkness
increase.

The young ice in Pram Point Bay is already being pressed up.

_Friday, March_ 24, A.M.--Skuas still about, a few--very shy--very
dark in colour after moulting.

Went along Arrival Heights yesterday with very keen over-ridge wind--it
was difficult to get shelter. In the evening it fell calm and has
remained all night with temperature up to + 18 deg.. This morning it is
snowing with fairly large flakes.

Yesterday for the first time saw the ice foot on the south side of the
bay, a wall some 5 or 6 ft. above water and 12 or 14 ft. below; the
sea bottom quite clear with the white wall resting on it. This must
be typical of the ice foot all along the coast, and the wasting of
caves at sea level alone gives the idea