ime, to visualize the Antarctic as a white
land is a mistake, for, not only is there much rock projecting wherever
mountains or rocky capes and islands rise, but the snow seldom looks
white, and if carefully looked at will be found to be shaded with many
colours, but chiefly with cobalt blue or rose-madder, and all the
gradations of lilac and mauve which the mixture of these colours will
produce. A White Day is so rare that I have recollections of going out
from the hut or the tent and being impressed by the fact that the snow
really looked white. When to the beautiful tints in the sky and the
delicate shading on the snow are added perhaps the deep colours of the
open sea, with reflections from the ice foot and ice-cliffs in it, all
brilliant blues and emerald greens, then indeed a man may realize how
beautiful this world can be, and how clean.

Though I may struggle with inadequate expression to show the reader that
this pure Land of the South has many gifts to squander upon those who
woo her, chiefest of these gifts is that of her beauty. Next, perhaps, is
that of grandeur and immensity, of giant mountains and limitless spaces,
which must awe the most casual, and may well terrify the least
imaginative of mortals. And there is one other gift which she gives with
both hands, more prosaic, but almost more desirable. That is the gift of
sleep. Perhaps it is true of others as is certainly the case with me,
that the more horrible the conditions in which we sleep, the more
soothing and wonderful are the dreams which visit us. Some of us have
slept in a hurricane of wind and a hell of drifting snow and darkness,
with no roof above our heads, with no tent to help us home, with no
conceivable chance that we should ever see our friends again, with no
food that we could eat, and only the snow which drifted into our
sleeping-bags which we could drink day after day and night after night.
We slept not only soundly the greater part of these days and nights, but
with a certain numbed pleasure. We wanted something sweet to eat: for
preference tinned peaches in syrup! Well! That is the kind of sleep the
Antarctic offers you at her worst, or nearly at her worst. And if the
worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes
disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than as
a gruesome foe. She treats you thus when you are in the extremity of
peril and hardship; perhaps then you can imagine what dra