To rightly get hold of our wintering place one must imagine a low spit of land jutting out into a fiord running, roughly north and south and bounded on both sides by a steep-to coast line indented with glaciers of vast size.  Here and there gigantic snow-slopes were to be seen which more gradually lowered into the sea, and all around ice-covered mountains with black and brown foothills.  A few islands rose to heights of 300 or 400 feet in McMurdo Sound, and these had no snow on them worth speaking of even in the winter.  The visible land was of black or chocolate-brown, being composed of volcanic tuff, basalts, and granite.  There were occasional patches of ruddy brown and yellow which relieved the general black and white appearance of this uninhabitable land, and close to the shore on the north side of Cape Evans were small patches of even gritty sand.  In the neighbourhood of our Cape hard, brittle rocks cropped up everywhere, rocks that played havoc with one’s boots.  Sloping up fairly steeply from Cape Evans itself we had more and more rock masses until a kind of rampart was reached, on which one could see a number of extraordinary conical piles of rock, which looked much as if they had been constructed by human hands for landmarks or surveying beacons—­these were called debris cones.  This part above and behind Cape Evans was christened The Ramp, and from it one merely had to step from boulders and stones on to the smooth blue ice-slope that extended almost without interruption to the summit of Erebus itself.  From The Ramp one could gaze in wonder at that magnificent volcano, White Lady of the Antarctic, beautiful in her glistening gown of sparkling crystal with a stole of filmy smoke-cloud wrapped about her wonderful shoulders.

We used to gaze and gaze at that constantly changing smoke or steam which the White Lady breathes out at all seasons, and has done for thousands of years.

Those were such happy days during the first Cape Evans summer.  For the most part we had hot weather and could wash in the thaw pools which formed from the melting snow, and even draw our drinking water from the cascades which bubbled over the sun-baked rock, much as they do in summer-time in Norway.

The progress made by Davis and his crew of voluntary carpenters was amazing.  One week after our arrival at the Cape, Nelson, Meares, and I commenced to cut a cave out of the ice cap above our camp for stowing our fresh mutton in.  When knock-off work-time came Bowers, Nelson, and I made our way over to the ship with a hundred gallons of ice from this cave to be used for drinking water, it all helped to save coal and nobody made a journey to or fro empty handed if it could be helped.  Once on board we took the opportunity to bath and shave.  In this country it is certainly a case of “Where I dines I sleeps,” so after supper on board we coiled down in somebody’s beds and slept till 5.30 next morning when we returned to camp and carried on all day, making great progress with the grotto, which was eventually lit by electric light.  We had plenty of variety in the matter of work; one part of the grotto was intended for Simpson’s magnetic work, and this was the illuminated section.  Whenever people visited the ice caves we got them to do a bit of picking and hewing; even roping in Captain Scott, who did a healthy half-hour’s work when he came along our way.