rs went off and made many
finds on the moraines, and the specimens were cached in heaps, to be
later brought home by the dogs, some of which were receiving their first
lessons in sledge-pulling.

Rather belated, but none the less welcome, our midwinter wireless
greetings arrived on August 17 from many friends who could only
imagine how much they were appreciated, and from various members of the
Expedition who had spent the previous year in Adelie Land and who knew
the meaning of an Antarctic winter. A few evenings later, Macquarie
Islanders had their reward in the arrival of the 'Tutanekai' from New
Zealand with supplies of food, and, piecing together a few fragments of
evidence "dropped in the ether," we judged that they were having a night
of revelry.

The wind was in a fierce humour on the morning of August 16, mounting to
one hundred and five miles per hour between 9 and 10 A.M., and carrying
with it a very dense drift.

We were now in a position to sit down and generalize about the wind. It
is a tiresome thing to have it as the recurring insistent theme of our
story, but to have had it as the continual obstacle to our activity, the
opposing barrier to the simplest task, was even more tedious.

A river, rather a torrent, of air rushes from the hinterland northward
year after year, replenished from a source which never fails. We had
reason to believe that it was local in character, as apparently a
gulf of open water about one hundred miles in width--the D'Urville
Sea--exists to the north of Adelie Land. Thus, far back in the
interior--back to the South Geographical Pole itself--across one
thousand six hundred miles of lofty plateau--is a zone of high
barometric pressure, while to the north lies the D'Urville Sea and
beyond it the Southern Ocean--a zone of low pressure. As if through a
contracted outlet, thereby increasing the velocity of the flow, the wind
sweeps down over Adelie Land to equalize the great air-pressure system.
And so, in winter, the chilling of the plateau leads to the development
of a higher barometric pressure and, as the open water to the north
persists, to higher winds. In summer the suns shines on the Pole for six
months, the uplands of the continent are warmed and the northern zone of
low pressure pushes southward. So, in Adelie Land, short spells of calm
weather may be expected over a period of barely three months around
the summer solstice. This explanation is intentionally popular. The