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Los Angeles San Francisco years to wear down the wood. The harder grain stood out in an interesting, attractive pattern.

\flashington, D.C.

"The hut at Cape Evans, quite fully exposed to the elements, showed few blemishes. In the Shackleton hut, in which snow had entered and then melted out, condensation had taken place and steel cans and other metal in it had corroded. However. there was little other damage."

Journals of the early expeditions reveal some of the construction details of the three huts. Captain Scott described Hut Point, the oldest of the three, as "quite a palatial residence."

"The main hut," he wrote, "had been brought from Aus. tralia and was, in fact, a fairly spacious bungalow of a design used by outlying settlers in their country." Its floor area was 36 feet square, with overhanging eaves of the pyrarnidal roof resting on supports some four feet beyond the sides. The supports were buried three or four feet in the volcanic rocl<. The house had a covered veranda, because it had been designed for the warm climate of the "sheep country" of Australia. It had a double layer of wood sheathing.

Explorer Shackleton had similar praise for his own headquarters at Cape Royds. After returning from a 22-day expedition, he wrote, "We were able to appreciate at their full value the warmth and comfort of our little hut."

The Shackleton hut was prefabricated in London. It was 33 by 19 feet. Shackleton wrote: "It was made of stout fir timbering of best quality in walls, roofs and floors, and the 'parts were morticed and tenoned to facilitate erection in the Antarctic. The walls were strengthened with iron cleats fitted to main posts and horizontal timbering, and the roof principals were provided with strong iron tie rods. The hut was lined

Ft. Lauderdale and Foreign Offices with match boarding, and the walls and roof were covered externally first with strong roofing felt, then one-inch tongued and grooved boards, and finally with another covering of felt."

The four-inch space in framing between the match-boarding was packed with granulated cork, Shackleton said.

"During our first severe blizzard, the hut shook and trembled so that every moment we expected the whole thing to carry away," he wrote.

The third hut at Cape Evans, built by Captain Scott on his second expedition, was described as a "snug, commodious house" by the Captain. It was 50 feet long and 25 feet wide. Its framework was lined with two thicknesses of tongue-andgrooved boards, between which was a layer of dried seaweed, quilted in sackcloth. The outer side was also covered with two thicknesses of boarding with seaweed insulation.

Roof and floor also had double boarding with insulation material between.

On January 17,l9ll, Scott wrote: "We took up our abode in the hut today and are simply overwhelmed with its comfort."

A year and a day later Captain Scott reached the South Pole, only to find that Norwegian Captain Roald Amundsen, using dogs and not stopping for scientific work, had won the race by a month. Captain Scott and four companions died of starvation, exhaustion and exposure on the way back to their lvood hut, leaving a heroic record of what has been described as "the worst journey in the world."

Explorpr Shackleton also died on a subsequent journey.

The wood huts they built stand today as three of the most unusual museums in the world.