COOK'S RETURN 271 



MADE NAUTICAL OBSERVATIONS. 



A. We have told that the aUitude of the sun gave us our positions ; that 

 is all there is to say about that. We made regular astronomical observations, 

 such as would be made by the compass and other instruments. We merely made 

 the nautical observations that a captain would have made aboard a ship. 



Q. Will you describe in detail any single observation taken by you at the 

 North Pole, with the exact figures of the results and the corrections applied ? 



A. Not at this present moment. We will describe every one of them in 

 detail when they go to the University of Copenhagen. They will go there 

 within two months. The entire records will be delivered to the university, and 

 after that they will go to everybody that wants to examine them. 



Q. In your original narrative you said : — "The night of April 7 was made 

 notable by the swinging of the sun at midnight over the northern ice. Our ob- 

 servation on April 6 placed the camp in latitude 86.36, longitude 94.2." The 

 astronomers say that in the latitude you mention the midnight sun would have 

 been visible on April i and that if you really saw it for the first time on April 7 

 you must have been 550 miles from the pole instead of 234, as you supposed. 

 Therefore to have reached the pole on April 21 you would have had to travel 

 thirty-nine miles daily. What is your explanation of the apparent discrepancy? 



A. In the first place, that indicates the point I have taken; that nobody 

 can pronounce judgment on a matter of this kind until they get the complete 

 record. The northern horizon at midnight had been so obscure that we could 

 not tell whether the sun was below the horizon or above it. We were not mak- 

 ing observations at midnight. Therefore this statement is based on the fact 

 that we have said that it was possible to see the sun on midnight of that day. 

 I have not looked through the Herald's story, as it has been written out in full. 

 My impression is that we were absolutely unable to see the sun the midnight 

 before that. The horizon was obscured. 



Dr. Cook in reply to several questions said that he could not have gone 

 back to civilization any sooner than he did. 



"Unless," he began, "I started through the ice for three hundred miles in an 

 open boat and went to — Well, no, just take that out ; I could not have got 

 back any sooner." 



He described in detail his provisioning for the final journey. He had 

 started from Greenland with eleven sledges, 103 dogs and eleven Eskimos, and 

 had started on his last stage northward with two Eskimos and twenty-six dogs 

 and two sledges, on which were laden rations for eighty days. He had made 



