Macquarie Island party, the Western Base,** and the
ship itself, when in Australian waters.

** They were supplied with masts and a receiving set sufficiently
sensitive to pick up messages from a distance of five or six hundred
miles.

It was my idea that Wild's party should proceed west and attempt to
effect a landing and establish a western wintering station at some
place not less than four hundred miles west of Adelie Land. On the way,
whenever opportunity presented itself, they were to cache provisions
at intervals along the coast in places liable to be visited by sledging
parties.

The location of such caches and of the Western Base, it was hoped, would
be communicated to us at the Main Base, through the medium of wireless
telegraphy from Hobart.

All members of the land parties and the ship's officers met in the
ward-room. There were mutual good wishes expressed all round, and then
we celebrated previous Antarctic explorers, more especially D'Urville
and Wilkes. The toast was drunk in excellent Madeira presented to us by
Mr. J. T. Buchanan, who had carried this sample round the world with him
when a member of the celebrated 'Challenger' expedition.

The motor-launch was hoisted and the anchor raised. Then at 8.45 P.M.
on January 19 we clambered over the side into one of the whale-boats and
pushed off for Cape Denison, shouting farewells back to the 'Aurora'.
Several hours later she had disappeared below the north-western horizon,
and we had set to work to carve out a home in Adelie Land.

CHAPTER IV NEW LANDS

Leaving the land party under my charge at Commonwealth Bay on the
evening of January 19, the 'Aurora' set her course to round a headland
visible on the north-western horizon. At midnight the ship came abreast
of this point and continued steaming west, keeping within a distance of
five miles of the coast. A break in the icy monotony came with a short
tract of islets fronting a background of dark rocky coastline similar to
that at Cape Denison but more extensive.

Some six miles east of D'Urville's Cape Discovery, a dangerous reef was
sighted extending at right angles across the course. The ship steamed
along it and her soundings demonstrated a submerged ridge continuing
some twelve miles out to sea. Captain Davis's narrative proceeds:

"Having cleared this obstacle we followed the coastline to the west from
point to point. Twelve miles away we could see the snow-covered slopes
rising f