The dogs were tethered to a long chain or rope.  The ponies’ stable was built against the northern side of the hut, and was thus sheltered from the blizzards which always blow here from the south.  Against the south side of the hut Bowers built himself a store-room.  “Every day he conceives or carries out some plan to benefit the camp."[106]

“Scott seems very cheery about things,” I find in my diary about this time.  And well he might be.  A man could hardly be better served.  We slaved until we were nearly dead-beat, and then we found something else to do until we were quite dead-beat.  Ship’s company and landing parties alike, not only now but all through this job, did their very utmost, and their utmost was very good.  The way men worked was fierce.

“If you can picture our house nestling below this small hill on a long stretch of black sand, with many tons of provision cases ranged in neat blocks in front of it and the sea lapping the ice-foot below, you will have some idea of our immediate vicinity.  As for our wider surroundings it would be difficult to describe their beauty in sufficiently glowing terms.  Cape Evans is one of the many spurs of Erebus and the one that stands closest under the mountain, so that always towering above us we have the grand snowy peak with its smoking summit.  North and south of us are deep bays, beyond which great glaciers come rippling over the lower slopes to thrust high blue-walled snouts into the sea.  The sea is blue before us, dotted with shining bergs or ice floes, whilst far over the Sound, yet so bold and magnificent as to appear near, stand the beautiful Western Mountains with their numerous lofty peaks, their deep glacial valley and clear cut scarps, a vision of mountain scenery that can have few rivals."[107]

[Illustration:  MT.  EREBUS, THE RAMP AND THE HUT]

“Before I left England people were always telling me the Antarctic must be dull without much life.  Now we are in ourselves a perfect farmyard.  There are nineteen ponies fifty yards off and thirty dogs just behind, and they howl like the wolves they are at intervals, led by Dyk.  The skuas are nesting all round and fighting over the remains of the seals which we have killed, and the penguins which the dogs have killed, whenever they have got the chance.  The collie bitch which we have brought down for breeding purposes wanders about the camp.  A penguin is standing outside my tent, presumably because he thinks he is going to moult here.  A seal has just walked up into the horse lines—­there are plenty of Weddell and penguins and whales.  On board we have Nigger and a blue Persian kitten, with rabbits and squirrels.  The whole place teems with life.

“Franky Drake is employed all day wandering round for ice for watering the ship.  Yesterday he had made a pile out on the floe, and the men wanted to have a flag put on it, and have it photographed, and called ‘Mr. Drake’s Furthest South.’"[108]