program was carried out without a hitch, and the
farthest of each division was even better than I had hoped. At this camp
the supplies, equipment, and personal gear of Borup and his Eskimos were
left for them to pick up on their way home, thus avoiding the
transportation of some two hundred and fifty pounds out and back over
the next march.

The 19th was a brilliant day of yellow sunlight. The season was now so
far advanced that the sun, circling as always in this latitude around
and around the heavens, was above the horizon nearly half the time, and
during the other half there was almost no darkness--only a gray
twilight.

The temperature this day was in the minus fifties, as evidenced by the
frozen brandy and the steam-enshrouded dogs; but bubbles in all my
spirit thermometers prevented a definite temperature reading. These
bubbles were caused by the separation of the column, owing to the
jolting of the thermometer with our constant stumbling over the rough
ice of the polar sea. The bubbles might be removed at night in camp, but
this required some time, and the accurate noting of temperatures during
our six or seven weeks' march to the Pole and back did not seem
sufficiently vital to our enterprise to make me rectify the thermometer
every night. When I was not too tired, I got the bubbles out.

Again Marvin, who was still pioneering the trail, gave us a fair march
of fifteen miles or more, at first over heavy and much-raftered ice,
then over floes of greater size and more level surface. But the reader
must understand that what we regard as a level surface on the polar ice
might be considered decidedly rough going anywhere else.

The end of this march put us between 85 deg. 7' and 85 deg. 30', or about the
latitude of our "Storm Camp" of three years before; but we were
twenty-three days ahead of that date, and in the matter of equipment,
supplies, and general condition of men and dogs there was no comparison.
Bartlett's estimate of our position at this camp was 85 deg. 30', Marvin's
85 deg. 25', and my own 85 deg. 20'. The actual position, as figured back later
from the point where we were first able, by reason of the increasing
altitude of the sun, to take an observation for latitude, was 85 deg. 23'.

In the morning Bartlett again took charge of the pioneer division,
starting early with two Eskimos, sixteen dogs, and two sledges. Borup, a
little later, with three Eskimos, sixteen dogs, and one sledge, started
on