NORTH POLE OF THE WINDS 



come from?" It was Captain Wilkins on his way- 

 back from a successful flight across the Arctic 

 and now flying from Berhn to London to be 

 knighted by King George the following day. His 

 companion Eielson had gone up to the city so I 

 did not see him. After perhaps 20 minutes of 

 rapid-fire conversation we each got into our planes 

 and flew in opposite directions. Flying as one 

 now does in passenger planes in Europe, one is 

 constantly meeting with explorer friends in this 

 way. 



Before leaving Paris the press dispatches had 

 reported the sudden death in an auto-bus accident 

 at Goteborg in Sweden of my good friend Dr. 

 Nils Otto Nordenskjold, a distinguished Swedish 

 Arctic and Antarctic explorer, in whose honor 

 the glacier tongue east of Holstensborg had been 

 named by our Expedition in 1926. A few days 

 later as I was flying from Hamburg to Copen- 

 hagen and was about to step into the plane, I fell 

 in with Baron Nordenskiold, the late explorer's 

 cousin, from whom I learned tile sad details of the 

 accident. It had been only six months earlier 

 that I had given an address before the Geograph- 

 ical Society at Goteborg, at which meeting Dr. 

 Nordenskjold had presided and his cousin the 

 baron had been at dinner with us. 



206 



