[Illustration:  HUT POINT FROM OBSERVATION HILL]

The two precious survivors of the eight ponies with which we started on our journey were housed in the verandah, which was made wind-proof and snow-proof.  The more truculent dogs lay tethered outside, the more docile were allowed their freedom, but even so the dog fights were not infrequent.  We had one poor little dog, Makaka by name.  When unloading the ship this dog had been overrun by the sledge which he was helping to pull; he suffered again when the team of dogs fell down the crevasse, and was now partially paralysed.  He was a wretched object, for the hair refused to grow on his hind quarters, but he was a real sportsman and had no idea of giving in.  Meares and I went out one night when it was blowing hard, attracted by the cries of a dog.  It was Makaka who had ventured to climb a steep slope and was now afraid to return.  When the dogs finally returned to Cape Evans, Makaka was allowed to run by the side of the team; but when Cape Evans was reached he was gone.  Search failed to find him and, after some weeks, hope of him was abandoned.  But a month afterwards Gran and Debenham went over to Hut Point, and here at the entrance of the hut they found Makaka, pitifully weak but able to bark to them.  He must have lived on seal, but how he did so in that condition is a mystery.

The reader may ask how it was that being so near our Winter Quarters at Cape Evans we were unable to reach them immediately.  Cape Evans is fifteen miles across the sea from Hut Point, and though both huts are on the same island—­Hut Point being at the end of a peninsula and Cape Evans on the remains of a flow of lava which juts out into the sea—­the land which joins the two has never yet been crossed by a sledge party owing to the great ice falls which cover the slopes of Erebus.  A glance at the map will show that although Hut Point is surrounded with sea, or sea-ice, on every side except that of Arrival Heights, the Barrier abuts upon the Hut Point Peninsula to the south beyond Pram Point.  Thus there is always communication with the Barrier by a devious route by which indeed we had just arrived, but farther progress north is cut off until the cold temperature of the autumn and winter causes the open sea to freeze.  We arrived at Hut Point on March 5 and Scott expected to be able to cross on the newly-frozen ice by about March 21.  However, it was nearly a month after that when the first party could pass to Cape Evans, and then only the Bays were frozen and the Sound was still open water, owing to the winds which swept the ice out to sea almost as soon as it was formed.