312 THENORTHPOLE 



long with these instinctive children of Nature that my 

 sense of location is almost as keen as their own. 



At midnight we came upon pieces of a sledge which 

 Egingwah had abandoned on the way up, and at 

 three o'clock in the morning of the 19th we reached 

 the MacMillan-Goodsell return igloos. We had cov- 

 ered Henson's three pioneer marches in fifteen and 

 one-half hours of travel. 



Another dog played out that day and was shot, 

 leaving me with thirty. At the end of this march we 

 could see the mountains of Grant Land in the far 

 distance to the south, and the sight thrilled us. It 

 was like a vision of the shores of the home land to 

 sea-worn mariners. 



Again, the next day, we made a double march. 

 Starting late in the afternoon we reached the sixth out- 

 ward camp, "boiled the kettle," and had a light lunch; 

 then plunged on again until early in the morning of the 

 20th, when we reached the fifth outward camp. 



So far we had seemed to bear a charm which pro- 

 tected us from all difficulties and dangers. While 

 Bartlett and Marvin and, as I found out later, Borup 

 had been delayed by open leads, at no single lead had 

 we been delayed more than a couple of hours. Some- 

 times the ice had been firm enough to carry us across; 

 sometimes we had made a short detour; sometimes we 

 halted for the lead to close; sometimes we used an ice- 

 cake as an improvised ferry : but whatever the mode of 

 our crossing, we had crossed without serious difficulty. 



It had seemed as if the guardian genius of the 

 polar waste, having at last been vanquished by man, 

 had accepted defeat and withdrawn from the contest. 



