316 THENORTH POLE 



exhaustion. As Ootah sank down on his sledge he 

 remarked in Eskimo: "The devil is asleep or having 

 trouble with his wife or we should never have come back 

 so easily." We stopped long enough for a leisurely 

 luncheon with tea ad libitum and then pressed on until 

 Cape Columbia was reached. 



It was almost exactly six o'clock on the morning 

 of April 23 when we reached the igloo of "Crane 

 City" at Cape Columbia and the work was done. 

 Here I wrote these words in my diary: 



"My life work is accomplished. The thing which 

 it was intended from the beginning that I should do, 

 the thing which I believed could be done, and that I 

 could do, I have done. I have got the North Pole 

 out of my system after twenty-three years of effort, 

 hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations, 

 more or less suffering, and some risks. I have won the 

 last great geographical prize, the North Pole, for the 

 credit of the United States. This work is the finish, 

 the cap and climax of nearly four hundred years of 

 effort, loss of life, and expenditure of fortunes by the 

 civilized nations of the world, and it has been 

 accomplished in a way that is thoroughly American. 

 I am content." 



Our return from the Pole was accomplished in six- 

 teen marches, and the entire journey from land to 

 the Pole and back again occupied fifty-three days, or 

 forty-three marches. It had been, as a result of our 

 experience and perfected clothing and equipment, an 

 amazingly comfortable return as compared with pre- 

 vious ones, but a little difference in the weather would 

 have given us a different story to tell. There was no 



