landing of fodder, and I led the ponies Miki, Jehu, and Blossom; the
latter, having suffered greatly on the outward voyage, was in poor
condition. Still, most of the ponies were doing well, and at night were
picketed on a snowdrift behind the hut. They occasionally got adrift, but
I usually heard them and got up to make them fast, my small sleeping-tent
being right alongside their tethering space.

Nelson continued working with me unless the requirements of his
biological work called him away. In less than a week we had the whole of
our stores and equipment landed, and from the beginning many of us took
up our quarters at Cape Evans itself. We pitched several small tents on
the beach; and it was an agreeable change to roll up and sleep in a fur
bag after the damp, cold berths we had occupied in the ship. Teddy Nelson
became my particular friend in the shore party and shared a sledging tent
with me. The rest of the shore staff paired off and slept in the small
tents, while Captain Scott had one to himself. We called it the "Holy of
Holies," and from the privacy of this tiny dwelling Scott issued his
directions, supervised, planned, and improved whenever improvement could
be made in anything. He had a marvellous brain and a marvellous way of
getting the best possible work out of his subordinates, still he never
spared himself. One did with extraordinary little sleep, and in the sunny
days it became necessary to leave tent doors wide open, otherwise the
close-woven wind-proof tent cloth kept all the fresh air out and one woke
with a terrific head.

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