he "wireless"
during the first year.

During February and March there were various other operations of more
immediate importance which prevented concentration of our workers on the
erection of the masts. There were many odd jobs to finish about the
Hut, the Magnetograph House and Absolute Hut were "under way," the
air-tractor sledge had to be efficiently housed, and all these and
many other things could be done in weather during which it was out of
question to hoist a mast into position. At first we were fastidious and
waited for a calm, but later, as we grew more impatient, a top-mast was
actually hauled up in a wind of thirty miles per hour, with gusts of
higher velocity. Such work would sometimes be interrupted by a more
furious outbreak, when all ropes would be secured and everything made as
ship-shape as possible.

On March 15 the following note was made: "The wind was on the cool side
just after breakfast. A few loads of wireless equipment were sledged up
to the rocks at the back of the Hut, and by the time several masts were
carried to the same place we began to warm to the work. One of Hannam's
coils of frozen rope (one hundred and twenty fathoms) had become kinked
and tangled, so we dragged it up the ice-slope, straightened it out and
coiled it up again. Several 'dead men' to hold the stays were sunk into
ice-holes, and, during the afternoon, one mast was dragged into position
by a willing crowd. Rocks were sledged to and packed around the 'dead
men' in the holes to make them compact. Towards sundown snow clouds
filled the northern sky and a blizzard sprang up which is now doing
sixty miles per hour. We philosophically expect another week cooped up
in the Hut."

It took a long time to establish the twenty good anchorages necessary
for the masts. Within a radius of eighty yards from the centre,
ice-holes were dug, cairns of heavy boulders were built and rocky
prominences dynamited off to secure an efficient holding for the stout
"strops" of rope. April 24 was a typical day: "We spent the morning
fixing up 'strops' for the wireless masts. The wind was blowing strongly
in fifty- to sixty-mile gusts with drift, but most of the fellows 'stuck
at it' all day. It was cold work on the hands and feet. Handling picks
and shovels predisposes to frost-bite. Several charges of dynamite were
fired in one hole wherein a mast will be stepped."

Each mast, of oregon timber, was in four sections. The lowest section
was ten