The boxes of provisions which had been landed were fashioned by the crew into three box-houses, a large one some thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide which, roofed with the spanker and fitted with a stove and fuel, was to serve as an immediate refuge in case of mishap to the ship, and two smaller ones. The larger tents were also set up ashore, the boats turned bottom up and the barrels arranged in such a way as to serve as wind shelters for the dogs. Later on houses and tents were heavily banked with snow. All the heavy ice next to the ship on the starboard side was cut down on a gentle slope ending at the water level against the ship’s side, and a bank of small fragments of ice filled against the ship her entire length to serve as a cushion. On top of this a wall of snow blocks was built as high as the rail and from the mainmast to the mizzenmast as high as the top of the deck house. The deck was covered deep with snow and the forward and after deck-houses covered and banked in with the same. No attempt was made to house in the deck with sails, but snow vestibules or entrances were constructed at all of the outer doors. The Eskimo men when not in the field were occupied in making sledges and harnesses, each man his own sledge, and with the waning of the light, I had a fleet of some twenty-five sledges in commission. Attempts were made to hoist the rudder on deck so that it could be repaired, but without success. Marvin erected a tide gauge on the ice-foot protected by a snow igloo, and took tidal observations during a period in excess of a lunar month. A disagreeable feature of this time was the frequent occurrence of violent southerly winds varying from vicious squalls of a few hours’ duration to furious gales lasting two or three days. These winds invariably denuded the land in our vicinity of snow and were always accompanied by more or less extended open water. As late as October 16th, a ship located south of Rawson could have come around that cape and made our present location with even greater ease than did the _Roosevelt_ on the 5th of September. On one occasion such a ship could have gone on without obstruction to Cape Joseph Henry, passing about one hundred yards outside of our position. Naturally under these conditions the mean temperature was unexpectedly high.