THE WHITE WORLD 



Cape Tegetthoff, Lat. 8o° 4', and prepared to pass the 

 winter there. But the North Pole was our objective, and 

 to facilitate progress toward it when the time should come 

 for the supreme effort, which would be the following spring, 

 we established an outpost about the 81 st parallel. As 

 this outpost afterward became the scene -of the extraordi- 

 nary tragedy of which I am writing, and as the question 

 has been often asked why it was established, what good 

 purpose it was designed to serve, a word or two of explan- 

 ation should here be entered. 



The aim of every Pole-seeker is to get his base as far 

 north as possible; that is, to assemble his supplies and his 

 outfit of all sorts as near to the Pole as he can get them. 

 The state of the ice was such that we could not force our 

 ship more than a few miles beyond the 80th parallel. But 

 before the winter set in we endeavored to push an outpost 

 as far to the north as we could. The economy of the out- 

 post was that all the surplus supplies assembled there 

 could be used by the Pole-seeking party the following 

 spring. If able to find so many hundred pounds of food 

 at the outpost, they would be saved the labor and time of 

 dragging that much from the base. Travel in the Arctic 

 region is more a matter of weight than of distance. If one 

 could go to the Pole and back without carrying food or 

 other baggage, the Pole would have been reached many 

 years ago. But everything must be carried — food for 

 men and dogs, tents, sleeping-bags, extra clothing, guns 

 and ammunition, scientific instruments, fuel for melting ice 

 into drinking and cooking water, a boat of some sort for 

 use in case of meeting open water or crossing channels in 

 the ice. Nothing except ice can be had on the way — no 

 game or food or fuel of any sort. Enough must be car- 

 ried for the outward journey and for the return trip. 

 Thus the weights at starting are sure to be pretty heavy, 

 pare them down to the lowest possible limit though one 

 does. The heavier you are loaded the slower will be your 

 progress; hence the advantage of having some of your 

 supplies advanced a distance along the road. If it were 

 possible to have depots at various points on the way to 

 the top of the earth, that would be ideal. Frequently every 

 Arctic man is asked: "Why don't you use two or three 



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