One passed out of the hut hourly at least and, on moonlight nights especially, one found something beautiful in the scenery about Cape Evans.  At full moon time everything turned silver, from towering Erebus with gleaming sides to the smooth ice slopes of Ross Island in the north-east, while away to the southward the high black Dellbridge Islands thrust up from a sea of flat silver ice.  Even the conical hills and the majestic Castle Rock, fifteen miles away, stood out quite clearly on occasions.  The weirdest thing of all was to hear the dogs howling in the middle of the night, they made one think of wolves and of Siberia.

All things considered, the winter passed quickly enough:  we had three lectures a week, and our professional occupations, our recreations and different interests soon sped away the four months’ winter darkness.  The lectures embraced the technical and the practical side of the Expedition; thus, besides each of the scientific staff lecturing on his individual subject, Oates gave us two lectures on the care and management of horses; Scott outlined his plans for the great southern journey, giving probable dates and explaining the system of supporting parties which he proposed to employ; Ponting told us about Japan, and illustrated his subject with beautiful slides made from photographs that he himself had taken; Bowers lectured on Burma, until we longed to be there; and Meares gave us a light but intensely interesting lecture on his adventures in the Lolo country, a practically unknown land in Central Asia.

In connection with the work of Simpson at the base station, I must not forget the telephones.  Certain telephones and equipment sufficient for our needs were presented to us in 1910 by the staff of the National Telephone Co., and they were very largely used in scientific work at the base station as well as for connecting Cape Evans to Hut Point, fifteen miles away.  Simpson made the Cape Evans-Hut Point connection in September, 1911, by laying the bare aluminium wire along the surface of the snow-covered sea ice, and for a long time there was no difficulty in ringing up by means of magnetos.  However, when the sun came back and its rays became reasonably powerful, difficulty in ringing and speaking was experienced.

We used the telephones almost daily for taking time, and Simpson used to stand inside the hut at the sidereal clock whilst I took astronomical observations outside in the cold.  We also telephoned time to the ice cave in which the pendulums were being swung when determining the force of gravity.  Telephones were quite efficient in temperatures of 40 degrees and more below zero.

Midwinter Day arrived on June 22, and here one must pay an affectionate and grateful tribute to Bowers, Wilson, Cherry-Garrard, and Clissold the cook.