f falling on their
faces.

Experiments were tried in the steady winds; firmly planting the feet
on the ground, keeping the body rigid and leaning over on the invisible
support. This "lying on the wind," at equilibrium, was a unique
experience. As a rule the velocity remained uniform; when it fluctuated
in a series of gusts, all our experience was likely to fail, for no
sooner had the correct angle for the maximum velocity been assumed than
a lull intervened--with the obvious result.

[TEXT ILLUSTRATION]

A copy of the wind-velocity (anenometer) and the wind direction
(anemograph) for a period of twenty-four hours, Adelie Land

This particular record illustrates a day of constant high velocity wind.
In the case of the upper chart each rise of the pen from the bottom to
the top of the paper indicates that another 100 miles of wind has passed
the instrument. The regularity of these curves shows the steadiness of
the wind. It will be observed that the average velocity for twenty-four
hours was 90.1 miles, and the maximum of the average hourly velocities
throughout that period was ninety-seven miles. The lower chart, the
record of the direction from which the wind blew, is marked only by a
single broad bar in the position of South-by-East, the wind not having
veered in the slightest degree.

Before the art of "hurricane-walking" was learnt, and in the primitive
days of ice-nails and finnesko, progression in high winds degenerated
into crawling on hands and knees. Many of the more conservative
persisted in this method, and, as a compensation, became the first
exponents of the popular art of "board-sliding." A small piece of board,
a wide ice flat and a hurricane were the three essentials for this new
sport.

Wind alone would not have been so bad; drift snow accompanied it in
overwhelming amount. In the autumn overcast weather with heavy falls
of snow prevailed, with the result that the air for several months was
seldom free from drift. Indeed, during that time, there were not
many days when objects a hundred yards away could be seen distinctly.
Whatever else happened, the wind never abated, and so, even when the
snow had ceased falling and the sky was clear, the drift continued until
all the loose accumulations on the hinterland, for hundreds of miles
back, had been swept out to sea. Day after day deluges of drift streamed
past the Hut, at times so dense as to obscure objects three feet away,
until it seemed as if t