36 THENORTHPOLE 



the boilers. Nor were we so plagued with fog in 

 the early stages of our journey as we were in 1905. 

 In fact, every omen was auspicious from the very 

 start, so auspicious indeed that perhaps the more 

 superstitious of the sailors thought our luck was too 

 good to last, while one member of our expedition was 

 continually "knocking on wood," just as a precaution, 

 as he expressed it. It would be rash to say that his 

 forethought had much to do with our success, but it 

 eased his mind, at all events. 



As we steamed steadily northward the nights grew 

 shorter and shorter, and lighter and lighter, so that 

 when we crossed the Arctic Circle, soon after midnight 

 on July 26, we were in perpetual daylight. I have 

 crossed the Circle some twenty times, going and com- 

 ing, so the fine edge of that experience has been some- 

 what dulled for me; but the arctic "tenderfeet" among 

 my party, Dr. Goodsell, MacMillan, and Borup, were 

 appropriately impressed. They felt as one feels in 

 crossing the equator the first time — that it is an 

 event. 



The Roosevelt, steaming ever northward, was now 

 well on her way to one of the most interesting of all 

 arctic localities. It is the little oasis amid a wilder- 

 ness of ice and snow along the west coast of northern 

 Greenland midway between Kane Basin on the north 

 and Melville Bay on the south. Here, in striking 

 contrast to the surrounding country, is animal and 

 vegetable life in plenty, and in the course of the last 

 hundred years some half dozen arctic expeditions 

 have wintered here. Here, too, is the home of a little 

 tribe of Eskimos. 



