CHRISTMAS 187 



contests. In order to afford a study in Eskimo psychol- 

 ogy, there was in each case a choice between prizes. 

 Tookoomah, for instance, who won in the women's 

 race, had a choice among three prizes: a box of three 

 cakes of scented soap; a sewing outfit, containing 

 a paper of needles, two or three thimbles, and several 

 spools of different-sized thread; and a round cake 

 covered with sugar and candy. The young woman did 

 not hesitate. She had one eye, perhaps, on the sewing 

 outfit, but both hands and the other eye were directed 

 toward the soap. She knew what it was meant for. 

 The meaning of cleanliness had dawned upon her — a 

 sudden ambition to be attractive. 



The last time that all the members of the expedition 

 ate together was at the four o'clock dinner on December 

 29, for that evening Marvin, the captain, and their 

 parties started for the Greenland coast; and when we 

 met together at the ship after my return from the Pole 

 there was one who was not with us — one who would 

 never again be with us. 



Ross Marvin was, next to Captain Bartlett, the 

 most valuable man in the party. Whenever the captain 

 was not in the field, Marvin took command of the work, 

 and on him devolved the sometimes onerous, sometimes 

 amusing labor of breaking in the new members. During 

 the latter part of the former expedition in the Roosevelt, 

 Marvin had grasped more fully than any other man the 

 underlying, fundamental principles of the work. 



He and I together had planned the details of the 

 new method of advance and relay parties. This 

 method, given a fixed surface over which to travel, 

 could be mathematically demonstrated, and it has 



