should, by moonlight, cross over with rope and axe the immense pressure ridges which form a chaos of crevasses at Cape Crozier.  These ridges, moreover, which have taken a party as much as two hours of careful work to cross by daylight, must be crossed and re-crossed at every visit to the breeding site in the bay.  There is no possibility even by daylight of conveying over them the sledge or camping kit, and in the darkness of mid-winter the impracticability is still more obvious.  Cape Crozier is a focus for wind and storm, where every breath is converted, by the configuration of Mounts Erebus and Terror, into a regular drifting blizzard full of snow.  It is here, as I have already stated, that on one journey or another we have had to lie patiently in sodden sleeping-bags for as many as five and seven days on end, waiting for the weather to change and make it possible for us to leave our tents at all.  If, however, these dangers were overcome there would still be the difficulty of making the needful preparations from the eggs.  The party would have to be on the scene at any rate early in July.  Supposing that no eggs were found upon arrival, it would be well to spend the time in labelling the most likely birds, those for example that have taken up their stations close underneath the ice-cliffs.  And if this were done it would be easier then to examine them daily by moonlight, if it and the weather generally were suitable:  conditions, I must confess, not always easily obtained at Cape Crozier.  But if by good luck things happened to go well, it would by this time be useful to have a shelter built of snow blocks on the sea-ice in which to work with the cooking lamp to prevent the freezing of the egg before the embryo was cut out, and in order that fluid solutions might be handy for the various stages of its preparation; for it must be borne in mind that the temperature all the while may be anything between zero and -50 deg.  F. The whole work no doubt would be full of difficulty, but it would not be quite impossible, and it is with a view to helping those to whom the opportunity may occur in future that this outline has been added of the difficulties that would surely beset their path."[20]

We shall meet the Emperor penguins again, but now we must go back to the Discovery, lying off Hut Point, with the season advancing and twenty miles of ice between her and the open sea.  The prospects of getting out this year seeming almost less promising than those of the last year, an abortive attempt was made to saw a channel from a half-way point.  Still, life to Scott and Wilson in a tent at Cape Royds was very pleasant after sledging, and the view of the blue sea framed in the tent door was very beautiful on a morning in January when two ships sailed into the frame.  Why two?  One was of course the Morning; the second proved to be the Terra Nova.