Sound, yet so bold and magnificent as to appear near, stand the beautiful
Western Mountains with their numerous lofty peaks, their deep glacial
valley and clear cut scarps, a vision of mountain scenery that can have
few rivals."[107]

[Illustration: MT. EREBUS, THE RAMP AND THE HUT]

"Before I left England people were always telling me the Antarctic must
be dull without much life. Now we are in ourselves a perfect farmyard.
There are nineteen ponies fifty yards off and thirty dogs just behind,
and they howl like the wolves they are at intervals, led by Dyk. The
skuas are nesting all round and fighting over the remains of the seals
which we have killed, and the penguins which the dogs have killed,
whenever they have got the chance. The collie bitch which we have
brought down for breeding purposes wanders about the camp. A penguin is
standing outside my tent, presumably because he thinks he is going to
moult here. A seal has just walked up into the horse lines--there are
plenty of Weddell and penguins and whales. On board we have Nigger and a
blue Persian kitten, with rabbits and squirrels. The whole place teems
with life.

"Franky Drake is employed all day wandering round for ice for watering
the ship. Yesterday he had made a pile out on the floe, and the men
wanted to have a flag put on it, and have it photographed, and called
'Mr. Drake's Furthest South.'"[108]

January 25 was fixed as the day upon which twelve of us, with eight
ponies and the two dog-teams, were to start south to lay a depot upon the
Barrier for the Polar Journey. Scott was of opinion that the bays between
us and the Hut Point Peninsula would freeze over in March, probably early
in March, and that we should most of us get back to Cape Evans then. At
the same time the ponies could not come down over the cliffs of this
tongue of land, and preparations had to be made for a lengthy stay at Hut
Point for them and their keepers. For this purpose Scott meant to use the
old Discovery hut at Hut Point.[109]

On January 15 he took Meares and one dog-team, and started for Hut Point,
which was fifteen statute miles to the south of us. They crossed Glacier
Tongue, finding upon it a depot of compressed fodder and maize which had
been left by Shackleton. The open water to the west nearly reached the
Tongue.

On arrival at the hut Scott was shocked to find it full of snow and ice.
This was serious, and, as we found afterwards the drifted snow had thawed
down