minutes.

One of our best sledge dogs, 'Julick,' has disappeared. I'm afraid
he's been set on by the others at some distant spot and we shall see
nothing more but his stiffened carcass when the light returns. Meares
thinks the others would not have attacked him and imagines he has
fallen into the water in some seal hole or crack. In either case I'm
afraid we must be resigned to another loss. It's an awful nuisance.

Gran went to C. Royds to-day. I asked him to report on the open
water, and so he went on past the Cape. As far as I can gather he
got half-way to C. Bird before he came to thin ice; for at least 5
or 6 miles past C. Royds the ice is old and covered with wind-swept
snow. This is very unexpected. In the _Discovery_ first year the ice
continually broke back to the Glacier Tongue: in the second year it
must have gone out to C. Royds very early in the spring if it did
not go out in the winter, and in the _Nimrod_ year it was rarely fast
beyond C. Royds. It is very strange, especially as this has been the
windiest year recorded so far. Simpson says the average has exceeded
20 m.p.h. since the instruments were set up, and this figure has for
comparison 9 and 12 m.p.h. for the two _Discovery_ years. There remains
a possibility that we have chosen an especially wind-swept spot for
our station. Yet I can scarcely believe that there is generally more
wind here than at Hut Point.

I was out for two hours this morning--it was amazingly pleasant
to be able to see the inequalities of one's path, and the familiar
landmarks bathed in violet light. An hour after noon the northern
sky was intensely red.

_Monday, July_ 31.--It was overcast to-day and the light not quite
so good, but this is the last day of another month, and August means
the sun.

One begins to wonder what the Crozier Party is doing. It has been
away five weeks.

The ponies are getting buckish. Chinaman squeals and kicks in the
stable, Nobby kicks without squealing, but with even more purpose--last
night he knocked down a part of his stall. The noise of these animals
is rather trying at night--one imagines all sorts of dreadful things
happening, but when the watchman visits the stables its occupants
blink at him with a sleepy air as though the disturbance could not
possibly have been there!

There was a glorious northern sky to-day; the horizon was clear and the
flood of red light illuminated the under side of the broken stratus
cloud above, producin