eful work to cross by daylight, must be crossed and re-crossed at
every visit to the breeding site in the bay. There is no possibility even
by daylight of conveying over them the sledge or camping kit, and in the
darkness of mid-winter the impracticability is still more obvious. Cape
Crozier is a focus for wind and storm, where every breath is converted,
by the configuration of Mounts Erebus and Terror, into a regular drifting
blizzard full of snow. It is here, as I have already stated, that on one
journey or another we have had to lie patiently in sodden sleeping-bags
for as many as five and seven days on end, waiting for the weather to
change and make it possible for us to leave our tents at all. If,
however, these dangers were overcome there would still be the difficulty
of making the needful preparations from the eggs. The party would have to
be on the scene at any rate early in July. Supposing that no eggs were
found upon arrival, it would be well to spend the time in labelling the
most likely birds, those for example that have taken up their stations
close underneath the ice-cliffs. And if this were done it would be easier
then to examine them daily by moonlight, if it and the weather generally
were suitable: conditions, I must confess, not always easily obtained at
Cape Crozier. But if by good luck things happened to go well, it would by
this time be useful to have a shelter built of snow blocks on the sea-ice
in which to work with the cooking lamp to prevent the freezing of the egg
before the embryo was cut out, and in order that fluid solutions might
be handy for the various stages of its preparation; for it must be borne
in mind that the temperature all the while may be anything between zero
and -50 deg. F. The whole work no doubt would be full of difficulty, but it
would not be quite impossible, and it is with a view to helping those to
whom the opportunity may occur in future that this outline has been added
of the difficulties that would surely beset their path."[20]

We shall meet the Emperor penguins again, but now we must go back to the
Discovery, lying off Hut Point, with the season advancing and twenty
miles of ice between her and the open sea. The prospects of getting out
this year seeming almost less promising than those of the last year, an
abortive attempt was made to saw a channel from a half-way point. Still,
life to Scott and Wilson in a tent at Cape Royds was very pleasant after
sledging, and the