We were about sixteen miles below Cape Parry, and about midway between Whale Sound and Wolstenholme Sound. We pitched our tent thirty yards from the sea on a rocky upland. After securing in a safe place the boats and equipments, we began to look about us for a place to build a hut. It was, indeed, a dreary, death-threatening region. Time was too pressing for us to think of building an Esquimo hut, if, indeed, our strength and skill was sufficient. While we were looking round and debating what to build and where, one of our party found a crevice in a rock. This crevice ran parallel with the coast, and was opposite to, and near, the landing. It was eight feet in width, and level on the bottom. The rock on the east side was six feet high, its face smooth and perpendicular, except breaks in two places, making at each a shelf. On the other--the ocean side--the wall was scarcely four feet high, round and sloping; but a cleft through it made an opening to the crevice from the west. We at once determined to make our hut here, as the natural walls would save much work in its construction. The only material to be thought of was rocks. These we had to find beneath the snow, and then loosen them from the grasp of the frost. For this we fortunately had an ice-chisel--a bar of iron an inch in diameter and four feet long, bent at one end for a handle, and tempered and sharpened at the other. With this Bonsall loosened the rocks, and others bore them on their shoulders to the crevice. When a goodly pile was made we began to construct the walls. Instead of mortar we had sand to fill in between the stones. This was as hard to obtain as the stones themselves, as it had to be first picked to pieces with the ice-chisel, then scooped up with our tin dinner plates into cast-off bread-bags, and thus borne to the builders. This work was done by four of us only, the other four being engaged in hunting, to keep away threatened starvation. In two days our walls were up. They run across the crevice, that is, east and west, were fourteen feet apart, four feet high, and three thick. The natural walls being eight feet apart, our hut was thus in measurement fourteen feet by eight. The entrance was through the cleft, from the ocean side. We laid across the top of this door-way the rudder of the "Hope," and erected on it the "gable." One of the boat's masts was used for a ridgepole, and the oars for rafters. Over these we laid the boats' sails, drew them tightly, and secured them with heavy stones. Being sadly deficient in lumber, Petersen constructed a door of light frame-work and covered it with canvas; he hung it on an angle, so that when opened it shut of its own weight. A place was left for a window over the door-way, across which we drew a piece of old muslin well greased with blubber, and through which the somber light streamed when there was any outside.