s
over the vast basin of the Southern Ocean.

All spoke of the clear and beautiful days amid the floating ice and of
the wonderful coloured sunsets; especially the photographers. The
pack was so loosely disposed, that the ship made a straight course for
Commonwealth Bay, steaming up to Cape Denison on the morning of December
14 to find us all eager to renew our claim on the big world up North.

There was a twenty-five-knot wind and a small sea when we pulled off in
the whale-boat to the ship, but, as if conspiring to give us for once a
gala-day, the wind fell off, the bay became blue and placid and the sun
beat down in full thawing strength on the boundless ice and snow. The
Adelians, if that may be used as a distinctive title, sat on the warm
deck and read letters and papers in voracious haste, with snatches of
the latest intelligence from the Macquarie Islanders and the ship's
officers. No one could erase that day from the tablets of his memory.

Late in the afternoon the motor-launch went ashore, and the first of the
cargo was sent off. The weather remained serene and calm, and for the
next six days, with the exception of a "sixty-miler" for a few hours and
a land breeze overnight, there was nothing to disturb the embarkation of
our bulky impedimenta which almost filled the outer Hut. Other work
went on apace. The skua gulls, snow and Wilson petrels were laying their
eggs, and Hamilton went ashore to secure specimens and to add to our
already considerable collection of bird skins. Hunter had a fish-trap
lowered from the forecastle, used a hand dredge from the ship, and did
tow-netting occasionally from the launch in its journeys to and from the
land. Hurley and Correll had bright sunshine to ensure good photographic
results. Bage and Hodgeman looked after the transport of stores from the
Hut, and Gillies, Bickerton and Madigan ran the motor-launch. McLean,
who was now in possession of an incubator and culture tubes, grew
bacteria from various sources--seals and birds, soils, ice and snow.
Ainsworth, Blake and Sandell, making their first acquaintance with
Adelie Land, were most often to be seen quarrying ice on the glacier or
pulling loaded sledges down to the harbour.

[TEXT ILLUSTRATION]

Mackellar Islets

On the 18th a party of us went off to the Mackellar Islets in the
motor-launch, taking a tent and provisions, intending to spend two days
there surveying and making scientific observations.

These islets