ii8 BRADLEY'S ACCOUNT OF THE COOK EXPEDITION 



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kerosene or oil for making tea. Our stoves were made of aluminum, 

 their weight was three pounds each and they did precisely the same 

 work. We got rid of twelve or fifteen pounds on each stove, and 

 without impairing our efficiency disposed of as much unnecessary 

 weight as a dog can pull and had so much more for food. We pro- 

 posed to make our tea only once a day and to keep it at an even tem- 

 perature by carrying it in a patented heat-preserving bottle. 



"Dr. Cook is one of the ablest men with all kinds of appliances 

 I ever met. He has wonderful mechanical skill and for twenty years 

 he has been taking observations of the kind necessary to find out if 

 a man were really at the North Pole. He is a trained scientist and 

 an explorer of experience. I am no scientist but a hunter of big 

 game. With his experience in the Arctic and the Antarctic, I think 

 that Dr. Cook knew very well what he was doing. I have seen him 

 taking the observation for the day on board the yacht both alone and 

 with either the commander or the mate. He had a sextant of 

 aluminum which was an especially fine instrument, and was so much 

 admired by Captain Bartlett that he said that if he were not a 

 strictly moral man he would have stolen it long ago. The sextant 

 was used in taking the observations of the "Bradley" all the way 

 and much of the time it was handled by Dr. Cook himself. He also 

 had tight or ten of the best compasses that money could buy, an 

 artificial horizon, as well as various meteorological instruments. It 

 seems to me that Dr. Cook was eminently qualified by long experi- 

 ence for the task of reaching the North Pole, and I think that scien- 

 tists will agree that he was sufficiently versed in the knowledge 

 necessary for him to tell whether or not he had arrived. 



"Dr. Cook has been breaking precedents in this trip to the Pole. 

 His methods violated all the old traditions. He went at a different 

 'season; he did not leave a ship frozen in the ice in the old, regular 

 way. Also, he was taking a course which no explorer ever took 

 before, in keeping away from the eastern drift of the ice from the 

 Bering Strait. He profited by other men's mistakes. He made his 



