INTRODUCTION 



WHEN the explorer comes home victorious, everyone 

 goes out to cheer him. We are all proud of his 

 achievement proud on behalf of the nation and of 

 humanity. We think it is a new feather in our cap, 

 and one we have come by cheaply. 



How many of those who join in the cheering were 

 there when the expedition was fitting out, when it was 

 short of bare necessities, when support and assistance 

 were most urgently wanted? Was there then any race 

 to be first? At such a time the leader has usually 

 found himself almost alone; too often he has had to 

 confess that his greatest difficulties were those he had 

 to overcome at home before he could set sail. So it 

 was with Columbus, and so it has been with many since 

 his time. 



So it was, too, with Roald Amundsen not only the 

 first time, when he sailed in the Gjoa with the double 

 object of discovering the Magnetic North Pole and of 

 making the North- West Passage, but this time again, 

 when in 1910 he left the fjord on his great expedition 



xxvii 



