en with snow, that blows for ever across the vast, mysterious
plateau, the "wind that shrills all night in a waste land, where no one
comes or hath come since the making of the world." In the early hours of
the morning it reached eighty miles per hour.

Not till 9 next morning did the sky clear and the drift diminish.
Considering that it had taken us eight days to do thirteen miles, we
decided to move on the 16th at any cost.

Our library consisted of 'An Anthology of Australian Verse', Thackeray's
'Vanity Fair' and 'Hints to Travellers' in two volumes. McLean spent
much of the time reading the Anthology and I started 'Vanity Fair'. The
latter beguiled many weary hours in that tent during the journey. I read
a good deal aloud and McLean read it afterwards. Correll used to pass
the days of confinement arranging rations and costs for cycling
tours and designing wonderful stoves and cooking utensils, all on the
sledging, "cut down weight" principle.

On the 16th we were off at 9 A.M. with a blue sky above and a "beam"
wind of thirty-five miles per hour. Up a gentle slope over small
sastrugi the going was heavy. We went back to help Stillwell's party
occasionally, as we were moving a little faster.

Just after lunch I saw a small black spot on the horizon to the south.
Was it a man? How could Dr. Mawson have got there? We stopped and saw
that Stillwell had noticed it too. Field-glasses showed it to be a man
approaching, about one and a half miles away. We left our sledges in a
body to meet him, imagining all kinds of wonderful things such as the
possibility of it being a member of Wild's party--we did not know where
Wild had been landed. All the theories vanished when the figure assumed
the well-known form of Dr. Mawson. He had made a little more south than
we, and his sledges were just out of sight, about two miles away.

Soon Mertz and Ninnis came into view with a dog-team, which was
harnessed on to one sledge. All hands pulled the other sledge, and we
came up fifteen minutes later with Dr. Mawson's camp at eighteen and a
quarter miles. In the good Australian way we sat round a large pot of
tea and after several cups put up our two tents.

It was a happy evening with the three tents grouped together and the
dogs securely picketed on the great plateau, forming the only spot on
the limitless plain. Every one was excited at the prospect of the weeks
ahead; the mystery and charm of the "unknown" had taken a strange hold