THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 127 



equivocal nor friendly to my hypothesis. Nansen and Johansen 

 made their remarkable journey first north from the Fram and 

 then towards the Franz Josef Island group without any plan of 

 sustaining themselves on the road by the products of hunting. 

 They carried rifles and ammunition and made good use of these 

 when they got into the shore waters of the Franz Josef group, 

 but did not rely on them at all, while on the high seas. 



One need not go to any declaration on this point made by 

 Nansen for his actions speak louder than words. The two of them 

 started from the Fram driving three sledges, each with a large 

 team of dogs. Any one used to dog driving would instantly object 

 that it is not practical for two men to drive three sledges, but 

 Nansen's answer is that they needed all the dogs they could take, 

 for they intended to use them as food, first for each other and, in 

 an extremity, for themselves. He looked upon dogs as portable, or 

 rather self-carrying, provisions. 



He tells us that as they struggled northward he gradually be- 

 came fonder and fonder of the more faithful of his dogs. Some 

 of them worked more consistently and single-mindedly for his 

 success every day than he did himself. This is the common ex- 

 perience of all men of feeling who have used dogs in polar work. 

 It is common experience also in more southern lands that we be- 

 come fond of even the toy dogs that are useless and incapable of 

 doing us any service. How much more affection then would one 

 in Nansen's position have for the dogs that labored for him more 

 faithfully day by day than any but the rarest men would have 

 had the moral strength to do, growing hungrier, thinner and weaker 

 with each strenuous march but never sparing their strength, never 

 whimpering, always eager to please and to do their best. 



But day by day the food became less in the sledges and the 

 time drew nearer when some of these faithful friends had to be 

 sacrificed on the altar of science and geographic discovery. At 

 first he could kill the lazier ones without quite so much compunc- 

 tion, and this made easier because more gradual the approach to 

 the final horror of killing the ones he most dearly loved. Our 

 imagination makes it easy for us to fill in the gaps, and there 

 are few, in Nansen's descriptions of his own mental sufferings as 

 he killed these friends of his and cut their exhausted bodies into 

 pieces of food. We all agree that his feeling does him credit, 

 although some wonder how any goal can be worth the deliberate 

 planning of things like these. For this had been the plan not 



