or traveling.
It was so cold much of the time on this last journey that the brandy was
frozen solid, the petroleum was white and viscid, and the dogs could
hardly be seen for the steam of their breath. The minor discomfort of
building every night our narrow and uncomfortable snow houses, and the
cold bed platform of that igloo on which we must snatch such hours of
rest as the exigencies of our desperate enterprise permitted us, seem
hardly worth mentioning in comparison with the difficulties of the main
proposition itself.

At times one may be obliged to march all day long facing a blinding
snowstorm with the bitter wind searching every opening in the clothing.
Those among my readers who have ever been obliged to walk for even an
hour against a blizzard, with the temperature ten or twenty degrees
_above_ zero, probably have keen memories of the experience. Probably
they also remember how welcome was the warm fireside of home at the end
of their journey. But let them imagine tramping through such a storm all
day long, over jagged and uneven ice, with the temperature between
fifteen and thirty degrees _below_ zero, and no shelter to look forward
to at the end of the day's march excepting a narrow and cold snow house
which they would themselves be obliged to build in that very storm
before they could eat or rest. I am often asked if we were hungry on
that journey. I hardly know whether we were hungry or not. Morning and
night we had pemmican, biscuit and tea, and the pioneer or leading party
had tea and lunch in the middle of the day's march. Had we eaten more,
our food supply would have fallen short. I myself dropped twenty-five
pounds of flesh between my departure from the ship and my return to it.

But fortitude and endurance alone are not enough in themselves to carry
a man to the North Pole. Only with years of experience in traveling in
those regions, only with the aid of a large party, also experienced in
that character of work, only with the knowledge of arctic detail and the
equipment necessary to prepare himself and his party for any and every
emergency, is it possible for a man to reach that long sought goal and
return.

CHAPTER XXII

ESSENTIALS THAT BROUGHT SUCCESS

Something has already been said regarding the fact that our journey to
the North Pole was no haphazard, hit or miss "dash." It was not really a
"dash" at all. Perhaps it may properly be described as a "drive"--in the
sense that when the