"If you can picture our house nestling below this small hill on a long
stretch of black sand, with many tons of provision cases ranged in neat
blocks in front of it and the sea lapping the ice-foot below, you will
have some idea of our immediate vicinity. As for our wider surroundings
it would be difficult to describe their beauty in sufficiently glowing
terms. Cape Evans is one of the many spurs of Erebus and the one that
stands closest under the mountain, so that always towering above us we
have the grand snowy peak with its smoking summit. North and south of us
are deep bays, beyond which great glaciers come rippling over the lower
slopes to thrust high blue-walled snouts into the sea. The sea is blue
before us, dotted with shining bergs or ice floes, whilst far over the
Sound, yet so bold and magnificent as to appear near, stand the beautiful
Western Mountains with their numerous lofty peaks, their deep glacial
valley and clear cut scarps, a vision of mountain scenery that can have
few rivals."[107]
[Illustration: MT. EREBUS, THE RAMP AND THE HUT]
"Before I left England people were always telling me the Antarctic must
be dull without much life. Now we are in ourselves a perfect farmyard.
There are nineteen ponies fifty yards off and thirty dogs just behind,
and they howl like the wolves they are at intervals, led by Dyk.
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