84 NEAREST THE POLE 



Thanksgiving Day was marked by the presence of 

 plum-pudding, candy and cigars on the dinner table, 

 and a graphophone performance by the Doctor in 

 the evening. December 4th, on the first of the moon, 

 two Eskimos came in from the interior reporting 

 thirty-three musk-oxen killed during the past month 

 and that twelve to fifteen more dogs had died. Dur- 

 ing the December moon the Doctor made a number 

 of photos of the ship. 



On the 1 6th Henson and six Eskimos came in and 

 reported twenty musk-oxen killed since the last report. 

 This makes sixty-two in all since the exodus from the 

 ship the last of November. This is very satisfactory, 

 but is more than balanced by the news of additional 

 deaths among the dogs. Two large buck reindeer 

 were found on the southern slopes of the United 

 States Range with their horns locked, frozen in a death 

 struggle. On the 17th with the running of the spring 

 tides there were again serious complaints from the 

 Roosevelt and the neighbouring ice. On the i8th, 

 Marvin left with four Eskimos for the Lake Hazen 

 colonies to remain until the February moon. The 

 winter solstice occurred on the 2 2d, the sun (invisible 

 to us of course) in the early morning hours reaching 

 his greatest southern declination, the midnight hour 

 of the "Great Night." From now on he would be 

 slowly coming back to us. This is the New Year's 

 day of the northern hemisphere, a world-day beside 

 which our artificial dates and holidays pale, and no- 

 where else meaning so much as here in this black 

 disk of the "Great Night." 



About 2 A. M. of Christmas Day the wind began 



