into dog and pony shelters, two inner compartments were screened off by bulkheads made of biscuit cases, a cook’s table was somehow fashioned and a reliable stove erected out of petrol tins and scrap-iron.  Our engineers in this work of art were Oates and Meares.  For a short while we burnt wood in the stove, but the day soon came when seal blubber was substituted, and the heat from the burning grease was sufficient to cook any kind of dish likely to be available, and also to heat the hut after a fashion.

Round the stove we built up benches to sit on for meals, and two sleeping spaces were chosen and made snug by using felt, of which a quantity had been left by Scott’s or Shackleton’s people.  The “Soldier” and Meares unearthed same fire bricks and a stove pipe from the debris heap outside the hut and then we were spared the great discomfort of being smoked out whenever a fire was lit.  An awning left by the “Discovery” was fixed up by several of us around the sleeping and cooking space, and although rather short of luxuries such as sugar and flour, we were never in any great want of good plain food.

On March 14 the depot party was joined by Griffith Taylor, Debenham, Wright, and Petty Officer Evans.

Taylor’s team had been landed by the “Terra Nova” on January 27, after the start of the depot party, to make a geological reconnaissance.  In the course of their journeying they had traversed the Ferrar Glacier and then come down a new glacier, which Scott named after Taylor, and descended into Dry Valley, so called because it was entirely free from snow.  Taylor’s way had led him and his party over a deep fresh-water lake, four miles long, which was only surface frozen—­this lake was full of algae.  The gravels below a promising region of limestones rich in garnets were washed for gold, but only magnetite was found.  When Taylor had thoroughly explored and examined the region of the glaciers to the westward of Cape Evans, his party retraced their footsteps and proceeded southward to examine the Koettlitz Glacier.  Scott had purposely sent Seaman Evans with this party of geologists, reasoning with his usual thoughtfulness that Evans’s sledging experience would be invaluable to Taylor and his companions.

Taylor and his party made wonderful maps and had a wonderful store of names, which they bestowed upon peak, pinnacle, and pool to fix in their memories the relative positions of the things they saw.  Griffith Taylor had a remarkable gift of description, and his Antarctic book, “The Silver Lining,” contains some fine anecdotes and narrative.

According to Taylor’s chart the Koettlitz Glacier at its outflow on to the Great Ice Barrier is at least ten miles wide.  The party proceeded along the north of the glacier for a considerable distance, sketching, surveying, photographing, and making copious notes of the geological and physiographical conditions in the neighbourhood, and one may say fearlessly that no Antarctic expedition ever sailed yet with geologists and physicists who made better use of the time at their disposal, especially whilst doing field work.