By the end of April our ship was snugly arranged for her winter imprisonment. A roof had been erected over the deck amidships, and under it were an anvil and a fire for the use of the engineer while making the necessary iron-work. The cabins were rearranged to offer the greatest possible amount of heat, light, and freedom from humidity. A floor was placed over the engine-room, and on it a small stove to heat the officers’ quarters. The galley was put between decks next to the forecastle, into which should go the superfluous heat. Double doors and double windows were made everywhere, and all possible openings where heat might escape were closed. Exteriorly, the sides of the ship were banked by snow blocks, the decks were blanketed by the constantly falling snow, and over it all the snow-charged winds drifted, making a neat and perfect embankment. Our antarctic home, then, was imbedded under a huge snowbank, on a field of ice which drifted with the winds over the unknown antarctic seas. [Illustration: The Ross Seal with Trachea Inflated. (_Ommatophoca Rossi._)] It was my delight to ascend to the masthead and from the crow’s nest view our horizon day by day. The general aspect of our view changed very little. Some new cracks formed in the ice, and old ones closed. Some of the icebergs occasionally turned a little, showing a different face, but no marked alteration was ever visible in the general topography of the pack. Moving about as we were, there always seemed to be a possibility of finding a speck of land, a rock, or something new in our path; but this never happened. We saw no land during the entire drift. Appearances of land were reported every few days, but always proved deceptions. They were only illuminated clouds. Along the edge of the field in which we were frozen were large ridges or pressure lines, where the contact and pressure against neighbouring fields raised fragments of ice above the surface. These ridges were from three to fifteen feet in height. The field, usually about two miles in diameter, was everywhere dotted by pyramidal and dome-shaped miniature mountains, which arose above the surface from two to twenty feet. These are technically called “hummocks.” Around the hummocks and along the edge of the floe penguins and seals rested, sheltered from the wind. Near the ship and about the outhouses the snow was thrown up in great banks, dotted by black spots representing sledges, snowshoes, sleighs, and general implements. As we emerged from the little hold on the port side which was our only exit, a narrow path led out about one hundred yards to a circular hole through the ice. Over this we had erected a large tripod, from which we suspended the instruments for sounding and fishing and recording deep-sea temperatures. About midway between this and the ship, we built a box-shaped hut for nautical observations. About one hundred yards from the stern of the ship, Mr. Danco contrived