at least as well
fed as myself.

A part of the scientific work of the expedition was a series of deep-sea
soundings from Cape Columbia to the Pole. The sounding apparatus of the
expedition on leaving Cape Columbia comprised two wooden reels of a
length equal to the width of the sledge, a detachable wooden crank to go
on each end of the reel, to each reel a thousand fathoms (six thousand
feet) of specially made steel piano wire of a diameter .028 inches, and
one fourteen-pound lead having at its lower end a small bronze
clam-shell device, self-tripping when it reached the bottom, for the
purpose of bringing up samples of the ocean bed. The weights of this
outfit were as follows: each thousand fathoms of wire 12.42 pounds, each
wooden reel 18 pounds, each lead 14 pounds. A complete thousand-fathom
outfit weighed 44.42 pounds. The two outfits, therefore, weighed 89
pounds, and a third extra lead brought this total up to 103 pounds.

Both the sounding leads and the wire were made especially for the
expedition, and so far as I know they were the lightest, for their
capacity, that have ever been used.

[Illustration: TYPICAL CAMP ON THE ICE]

One sounding apparatus was carried by the main division and the other by
the pioneer party, in the early stages of our progress. When there was a
lead we sounded from the edge of it; when there was no open water we
made a hole in the ice if we could find any that was thin enough for the
purpose.

Two men could readily make these deep-sea soundings by reason of the
lightness of the equipment.

The distance which we traveled day by day was at first determined by
dead reckoning, to be verified later by observations for latitude. Dead
reckoning was simply the compass course for direction, and for distance
the mean estimate of Bartlett, Marvin, and myself as to the length of
the day's march. On board ship dead reckoning is the compass course for
direction and the reading of the log for distance. On the inland ice of
Greenland my dead reckoning was the compass course, and the reading of
my odometer, a wheel with a cyclometer registering apparatus. This could
not possibly be used on the ice of the polar sea, as it would be smashed
to pieces in the rough going. One might say in general that dead
reckoning on the polar ice is the personal estimate of approximate
distance, always checked and corrected from time to time by astronomical
observations.

Three members of the expedition had had