aid the table with a fine linen cloth and our
best silver. The wall of the mess room was decorated with the American
flag. We had musk-ox meat, an English plum pudding, sponge cake covered
with chocolate, and at each plate was a package containing nuts, cakes,
and candies, with a card attached: "A Merry Christmas, from Mrs. Peary."

After dinner came the dice-throwing contests, and the wrestling and
pulling contests in the forecastle. The celebration ended with a
graphophone concert, given by Percy.

But perhaps the most interesting part of our day was the distribution of
prizes to the winners in the various contests. In order to afford a
study in Eskimo psychology, there was in each case a choice between
prizes. Tookoomah, for instance, who won in the women's race, had a
choice among three prizes: a box of three cakes of scented soap; a
sewing outfit, containing a paper of needles, two or three thimbles, and
several spools of different-sized thread; and a round cake covered with
sugar and candy. The young woman did hot hesitate. She had one eye,
perhaps, on the sewing outfit, but both hands and the other eye were
directed toward the soap. She knew what it was meant for. The meaning of
cleanliness had dawned upon her--a sudden ambition to be attractive.

The last time that all the members of the expedition ate together was at
the four o'clock dinner on December 29, for that evening Marvin, the
captain, and their parties started for the Greenland coast; and when we
met together at the ship after my return from the Pole there was one who
was not with us--one who would never again be with us.

Ross Marvin was, next to Captain Bartlett, the most valuable man in the
party. Whenever the captain was not in the field, Marvin took command of
the work, and on him devolved the sometimes onerous, sometimes amusing
labor of breaking in the new members. During the latter part of the
former expedition in the _Roosevelt_, Marvin had grasped more fully than
any other man the underlying, fundamental principles of the work.

He and I together had planned the details of the new method of advance
and relay parties. This method, given a fixed surface over which to
travel, could be mathematically demonstrated, and it has proved to be
the most effective way to carry on an arctic sledge journey.

The party that started for the Greenland coast, across the ice of
Robeson Channel, on the evening of December 29, consisted of Marvin, the
captai