the motor engineer, had been down here before--both he and Priestley came
from the Shackleton Expedition. The former had a decidedly comic vein
which made him popular all round. From start to finish Day showed himself
to be the most undefeated sportsman, and it was not his fault that the
motor sledges did badly in the end.

Perhaps my diary from January 7, 1911, to the 8th gives a good idea of
the progress we were making with the base station and of the general
working day here. It reads as follows:

"_Saturday, January_ 7, 1911.

"All hands hard at work landing stores. Meares and Dimitri running dog
teams to and fro for light gear.

"Captain Scott, Dr. Wilson, Griffith Taylor, Debenham, Cherry-Garrard,
and Browning leading ponies. Campbell, Levick, and Priestley hauling
sledges with colossal energy and enormous loads, the majority of the
ship's party unloading stores; Bowers, two seamen, Atkinson, and I
unloading sledges on the beach and carrying their contents up to their
assigned positions, Simpson and Wright laying the foundations for a
magnetic hut, and so on. Every one happy and keen, working as
incessantly as ants. I took on the job of ice inspector, and three or
four times a day I go out and inspect the ice, building snow bridges
over the tide cracks and thin places. The ice, excepting the floe to
which the ship is fast, is several feet thick. The floe by the 'Terra
Nova' is very thin and rather doubtful. We, ashore, had dinner at 10
p.m. and turned in about 11."

But the following day, although included here, was by no means typical.