280 PREPARING FOR WINTER 



that the hours of work were excessively long, the circum- 

 stances forbade that. But during those hours the work 

 was brisk. 



On several previous sledge journeys I had made the 

 experience that thermometers are very fragile things. 

 It often happens that at the beginning of a journey one 

 breaks all one's thermometers, and is left without any 

 means of determining the temperature. If in such cir- 

 cumstances one had accustomed oneself to guess the 

 temperature, it would have given the mean temperature 

 for the month with a fair degree of accuracy. The 

 guesses for single days might vary somewhat from 

 reality on one side or the other, but, as I say, one would 

 arrive at a fair estimate of the mean temperature. With 

 this in my mind I started a guessing competition. As 

 each man came in in the morning he gave his opinion 

 of the temperature of the day, and this was entered in a 

 book. At the end of the month the figures were gone 

 through, and the one who had guessed correctly the 

 greatest number of times won the prize a few cigars. 

 Besides giving practice in guessing the temperature, it 

 was a very good diversion to begin the day with. When 

 one day is almost exactly like another, as it was with 

 us, the first hour of the morning is often apt to be a 

 little sour, especially before one has had one's cup of 

 coffee. I may say at once that this morning grumpi- 

 ness very seldom showed itself with us. But one never 

 knows one cannot always be sure. The most amiable 



