at right angles to our course, and got us safe home.

On a clear crisp day, with the full moon to show you the ridges and
cracks and sastrugi, it was most pleasant to put on your ski and wander
forth with no object but that of healthy pleasure. Perhaps you would make
your way round the bluff end of the cape and strike southwards. Here you
may visit Nelson working with his thermometers and current meters and
other instruments over a circular hole in the ice, which he keeps open
from day to day by breaking out the 'biscuit' of newly formed ice. He has
connected himself with the hut by telephone, and built round himself an
igloo of drifted snow and the aforesaid 'biscuits,' which effectually
shelter him from the wind. Or you may meet Meares and Dimitri returning
with the dog-teams from a visit to Hut Point. A little farther on the
silence is complete. But now your ear catches the metallic scratch of ski
sticks on hard ice; there is some one else ski-ing over there, it may be
many miles away, for sound travels in an amazing way. Every now and then
there comes a sharp crack like a pistol shot; it is the ice contracting
in the glaciers of Erebus, and you know that it is getting colder. Your
breath smokes, forming white rime over your face, and ice in your beard;
if it is very cold you may actually hear it crackle as it freezes in mid
air!

These were the days which remain visibly in the mind as the most
enjoyable during this first winter season. It was all so novel, these
much-dreaded, and amongst us much-derided, terrors of the Long Winter
Night. The atmosphere is very clear when it is not filled with snow or
ice crystals, and the moonlight lay upon the land so that we could see
the main outlines of the Hut Point Peninsula, and even Minna Bluff out on
the Barrier ninety miles away. The ice-cliffs of Erebus showed as great
dark walls, but above them the blue ice of the glaciers gleamed silvery,
and the steam flowed lazily from the crater carried away in a long line,
showing us that the northerly breezes prevailed up there, and were
storing up trouble in the south. Sometimes a shooting star would seem to
fall right into the mountain, and for the most part the Aurora flitted
uneasily about in the sky.

The importance of plenty of out-door exercise was generally recognized,
and our experience showed us that the happiest and healthiest members of
our party during this first year were those who spent the longest period
in the fr