d with the ship's company. On the sea-ice, that day,
there stood with me my comrades--the Western Party; G. Dovers, C. T.
Harrisson, C. A. Hoadley, S. E. Jones, A. L. Kennedy, M. H. Moyes and A.
D. Watson.

We proceeded to the top of the cliff, where the remainder of the
stores and gear were hauled up. Tents were then erected and the work of
hut-building at once commenced. The site selected for our home was
six hundred and forty yards inland from the spot where the stores were
landed, and, as the edge of the glacier was very badly broken, I was
anxious to get a supply of food, clothing and fuel moved back from the
edge to safety as soon as possible.

Of the twenty-eight Greenland dogs that had reached Antarctica in the
'Aurora', nineteen were landed in Adelie Land and nine with us. So far,
none of these had been broken in for sledging, and all were in poor
condition. Their quarters on the ship had been very cramped, and many
times they had been thoroughly soaked in salt water, besides enduring
several blizzards in Antarctic waters.

Harrisson, Hoadley, Kennedy and Jones "turned the first sod" in the
foundations of the hut, while Dovers, Moyes, Watson and I sledged along
supplies of timber and stores. Inward from the brink of the precipice,
which was one hundred feet in height, the surface was fairly good for
sledges, but, owing to crevasses and pressure-ridges, the course was
devious and mostly uphill.

Until the building was completed, the day's work commenced at 6 A.M.,
and, with only half an hour for a midday meal, continued until 7 P.M.
Fortunately, the weather was propitious during the seven days when the
carpenters and joiners ruled the situation; the temperature ranging from
-12 degrees F. to 25 degrees F., while a moderate blizzard interrupted
one day. The chief trouble was that the blizzard deposited six feet of
snow around the stack of stores and coal at the landing-place, thereby
adding considerably to our labour. As evidence of the force of the wind,
the floe was broken and driven out past the foot of the "flying-fox,"
tearing away the lower anchor and breaking the sheer-legs on the
glacier.

An average day's work on the stores consisted in bringing thirteen loads
over a total distance of nine and a half miles. First of all, the cases
had to be dug out of the snow-drifts, and loading and unloading the
sledges was scarcely less arduous.

On February 27, while working on the roof, Harrisson made an addi