Late in the afternoon the motor-launch went ashore, and the first of the cargo was sent off. The weather remained serene and calm, and for the next six days, with the exception of a "sixty-miler" for a few hours and a land breeze overnight, there was nothing to disturb the embarkation of our bulky impedimenta which almost filled the outer Hut. Other work went on apace. The skua gulls, snow and Wilson petrels were laying their eggs, and Hamilton went ashore to secure specimens and to add to our already considerable collection of bird skins. Hunter had a fish-trap lowered from the forecastle, used a hand dredge from the ship, and did tow-netting occasionally from the launch in its journeys to and from the land. Hurley and Correll had bright sunshine to ensure good photographic results. Bage and Hodgeman looked after the transport of stores from the Hut, and Gillies, Bickerton and Madigan ran the motor-launch. McLean, who was now in possession of an incubator and culture tubes, grew bacteria from various sources—seals and birds, soils, ice and snow. Ainsworth, Blake and Sandell, making their first acquaintance with Adelie Land, were most often to be seen quarrying ice on the glacier or pulling loaded sledges down to the harbour.
[TEXT ILLUSTRATION]
Mackellar Islets
On the 18th a party of us went off to the Mackellar Islets in the motor-launch, taking a tent and provisions, intending to spend two days there surveying and making scientific observations.
These islets, over thirty in number, are clustered mainly in a group about two miles off shore. The group is encircled by rocky "outposts," and there are several "links" to the southern mainland. Under a brilliant sun, across the pale blue water, heaving in a slow northerly swell, the motor-launch threaded her way between the granite knobs, capped with solid spray. The waves had undermined the white canopies so that they stood immobile, perched on the dark, kelp-fringed rocks, casting their pallid reflections in the turquoise sea. Steaming into a natural harbour, bordered by a low ice-foot on which scores of Weddell seals lay in listless slumber, we landed on the largest islet—a succession of salt-encrusted ridges covered by straggling penguin rookeries. The place just teemed with the sporadic life of an Antarctic summer.
It was calculated that the Adelie penguins exceeded one hundred and fifty thousand in number over an area of approximately one hundred acres. Near the landing-place there were at least sixty seals and snow petrels; skua gulls and Wilson petrels soon betrayed their nests to the biologists.
The islets are flat, and afford evidence that at one time the continental ice-cap has ridden over them. The rock is a hard grey gneiss. A rough plane-table map of the group was made by Hodgeman and myself.
Our scheme of local exploration was now continued to the west. For two years we had looked curiously at a patch of rocks protruding beneath the ice-cap eight miles away, within Commonwealth Bay. It had been inaccessible to sledging parties, and so we reserved Cape Hunter, as it was ultimately called, for the coming of the Ship.
The anchor was raised on the forenoon of the 22nd, and by midday the 'Aurora' steamed at half-speed along the ramparts of the glacier, stopping about four miles from the Cape, after sounding in four hundred and twenty-four fathoms. Through field-glasses much had already been seen; enough to arouse an intense interest.
One could not but respond to the idea that here was a new world, flawless and unblemished, into which no human being had ever pried. Here were open secrets to be read for the first time. It was not with the cold eye of science alone that we gazed at these rocks—a tiny spur of the great unseen continent; but it was with an indefinable wonder.