The Annual Dinner 



33 



to be here in fear, but the fact that I 

 know you are all brother explorers 

 gives me courage. Every person, as in 

 the days of old, in the days of adven- 

 ture, who is looking to or doing some- 

 thing new, is an explorer, so that I 

 feel that I am with my friends, brother 

 explorers. (Applause.) The toast is a 

 large one, and I won't attempt to treat 

 fully of it. I know I could not respond 

 to it as it should be. There are veterans 

 in this room, one in particular, who 

 could tell more of the Arctic than I 

 could. Since the days of Herodotus 

 and several of those early explorers, 

 and later on in the days of the Norse- 

 men, men have been trying to find out 

 things about this open world of ours ; 

 they have been following the original 

 command to Adam to subdue the earth, 

 and it is pretty nearly subdued. There 

 are only two places, practically, on this 

 globe where there is still a chance of 

 investigation, of discovery, the chance 

 of making new maps, that is in the Arc- 

 tic and the Antarctic. 



A returned explorer has generally to 

 face three questions — I know they have 

 come to me. One is, "How far north 

 did you get"? That is a hard one to 

 answer ; it makes the explorer feel 

 badly. The second one is, "What is 

 this all good for anyway?" and the 

 third, "What do you go up there for 

 and waste your life away in that region 

 of ice and snow?" and yet your answer 

 to that last question brings back the 

 first one, as to how far north you got — 

 showing they have an interest in why 

 you went there. 



I have often thought of our trip into 

 the north. The first year, two sledge 

 trips went over -the ice and were fail- 

 ures, and then there was the return to 

 Cape Flora, 160 miles south, where our 

 relief ship was anchored in the ice, and 

 there a large number of men waited 

 while another party went north during 

 the month of September, reaching our 

 northern outpost November 20. Now 



the sun went below the horizon on 

 October 22, and so you can imagine 

 how much light there was to travel 

 over these ice fields after the sun was 

 down. Mr Peters and myself with a 

 sledge ran repeatedly into ice columns 

 which neither of us had seen, because 

 of the darkness being so dense. The 

 moon fortunately appeared, and we 

 traveled over a glacier a thousand feet 

 high to reach our camp, and that 

 Thanksgiving Day will be a Thanksgiv- 

 ing Day that every member of that 

 party will remember as long as he lives. 

 To you who have traveled in other 

 countries the daily life of the man on 

 the polar trail is possibly of interest. 

 These great fields of ice are in constant 

 motion under the currents and the 

 winds. Imagine yourself on 500 miles 

 of solid ice grinding with that im- 

 measurable force against a rock-bound 

 coast ; can you possibly comprehend 

 what sort of conditions you have to 

 combat? 



You have to take care of your dogs ; 

 you have been traveling over ten hours 

 a day, and when the time comes to 

 camp at night the first thing the dogs 

 have to be unharnessed, and the tem- 

 perature is possibly 30 or 40 below 

 zero, and you have to take your mittens 

 off to get the dogs out of the harness. 

 The poor dogs are tired, every one 

 of the party is tired, and the little 

 dogs crawl down in the holes made 

 for them to sleep in. Then you 

 go to put your tent up, and when 

 you light your lamp and start to 

 cook the interior of the tent fills with 

 an intense vapor which you can hardly 

 see through, and this vapor condenses 

 on the interior of the tent and forms 

 clusters of frost crystals that you have 

 to brush off, and then it melts and 

 forms part of the little rivulets of water 

 that accompany your sleep that night. 

 The sleeping bag itself, however, is a 

 great place of comfort, and you know 

 of what pleasant times you have in 



