Constant preparation for the sledging soon superseded the winter evening routine. School was suspended, and the theatrical season closed on 24th February with a very successful burlesque written by our chaplain. On the following Thursday the weekly lectures were concluded by an address from the captain on the sledging work we were about to undertake, and on the prospects that lay before us. Those prospects were not promising, however we looked at them; they were no more encouraging than when we first rounded Cape Rawson and saw no land to the northwards. The very first elements of success were absent, but it was still possible that the land might trend to the north somewhere beyond Cape Joseph Henry. It was possible, too, that sledges journeying northward over the floes might reach some land where depôts could be left, and which might next year serve as a fresh base for poleward sledges. A few in the ship cherished a third hope, founded on the character of our ice. It seemed not unlikely that if sledges could penetrate that zone of the floating ice-cap which had been fractured year after year by contact with the shores, they might reach a broad mass of almost continental ice rounded into hills and valleys by ages of summers, but not offering insuperable obstacles to poleward travel. If the floes had not been in rapid motion all the autumn, and if Sir Leopold M’Clintock’s method of pushing forward sledges on depôts deposited in the autumn could have been applied to the polar pack, we might start from the land with fair hopes of practical success. But, as it was, our sledges would have to leave shore carrying _all_ their fuel and provisions, and therefore greatly limited in point of time, for no men can drag more than between forty and fifty days’ provisions and fuel, together with tent, bedding, cooking-gear, and sledge. The system of supporting sledges was still applicable. By it additional sledges would fall back from the main party when say one-third of their provisions were expended, retaining a third to return on, and filling up the advancing sledges with the remainder.