We learned from the Governor-General, Lord Denman, that her Majesty the Queen was "graciously pleased to consent to the name 'Queen Mary Land' being given to newly discovered land." The message referred to the tract of Antarctic coast which had been discovered and mapped by Wild and his party to the west.
On August 6 Macquarie Island signalled that they had run short of provisions. The message was rather a paradox: " Food done, but otherwise all right." However, on August 11, we were reassured to hear that the 'Tutanekai', a New Zealand Government steamer, had been commissioned to relieve the party, and that Sawyer through ill-health had been obliged to return to Australia. A sealing-ship, the 'Rachel Cohen', after battling for almost the whole month of July against gales, in an endeavour to reach the island, with stores for our party and the sealers, had returned damaged to port.
Marvellous to relate we had two calm days in succession, and on the 6th the snow lay so deeply round the Hut that progression without skis was a laborious flounder. The dogs plunged about in great glee, rolling in the snow and "playing off" their surplus energy after being penned for a long spell in the shelter.
On skis one could push up the first slopes of the glacier for a long distance. Soft snow had settled two feet thick even on the steep icy downfalls. The sea to the north was frozen into large cakes between which ran a network of dark water "leads." With glasses we could make out in the near distance five seals and two tall solitary figures which were doubtless Emperor penguins. During the whole day nimbus clouds had hung heavily from the sky, and snow had fallen in grains and star-like crystals. Gradually the nimbus lightened, a rift appeared overhead, and,the edges of the billowy cumulus were burnished in the light of the low sun. The sea-horizon came sharply into sight through fading mist. Bergs and islands, from being ghostly images, rose into sharp-featured reality. The masts and Hut, with a dark riband of smoke floating from the chimney, lay just below, and two of the men were walking out to the harbour-ice where a seal had just landed, while round them scampered the dogs in high spirits. That was sufficient to set us sliding downhill, ploughing deep furrows through the soft drift and reaching the Hut in quick time.
During August we were able to do more work outside, thus enlarging our sphere of interest. Bage, who had been busy up till August 8 with his daily magnetograph records, ran short of bromide papers and now had to be contented with taking "quick runs" at intervals, especially when the aurora was active. His astronomical observations had been very disappointing owing to the continuous wind and drift. Still, in September, which was marked by periods of fine weather, a few good star observations were possible. Shafts were sunk in the sea-ice and up on the glacier, just above the zone where the ice was loaded with stones and debris—the lower moraine. The glacier shaft was dug to a depth of twenty-four feet, and several erratics were met with embedded in the ice. In this particular part the crystalline structure of the ice resembled that of a gneiss, showing that it had flowed under pressure. I was able to make measurements of ablation on the glacier, to take observations of the temperature and salinity of the sea-water, and to estimate the forward movement of the seaward cliffs of the ice-cap.
Geological collecting now became quite a popular diversion. With a slight smattering of "gneiss," "felspar," "weathered limestone," "garnets," and "glacial markings" the amateurs 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 meteorological problem is one which can only be fully discussed when all the manifold observations have been gathered together, from other contemporary Antarctic expeditions, from our two stations on the Antarctic continent, and from Macquarie Island; all taken in conjunction with weather conditions around Australia and New Zealand. Then, when all the evidence is arrayed and compared, some general truths of particular value to science and, maybe, to commerce, should emerge.