feature
of the plan from which essential deviation was made was in returning to
Cape Columbia on the coast of Grant Land instead of further eastward to
the northern coast of Greenland as I had done in 1906. This change was
made for excellent reasons, which will be made clear in their proper
place. Upon this record there is only one shadow--a tragic one indeed. I
refer, of course, to the lamentable death of Prof. Ross G. Marvin, who
was drowned on April 10, four days after the Pole had been reached,
forty-five miles north of Cape Columbia, while returning from 86 deg. 38'
north, in command of one of the supporting parties. With this sad
exception, the history of the expedition is flawless. We returned as we
went, in our own ship, battered but unharmed, in excellent health and
with a record of complete success.

There is a lesson in all this--a lesson so obvious that it is perhaps
superfluous to point it out. The plan, so carefully made and executed
with such faithfulness to detail, was composed of a number of elements,
the absence of any one of which might have been fatal to success. We
could scarcely have succeeded without the help of our faithful Eskimos;
nor even with them, had it not been for our knowledge of their
capacities for work and endurance, and for the confidence which years of
acquaintance had taught them to repose in me. We could certainly not
have succeeded without the Eskimo dogs which furnished the traction
power for our sledges, and so enabled us to carry our supplies where no
other power on earth could have moved them with the requisite speed and
certainty. It may be that we could not have succeeded without the
improved form of sledge which I was able to construct and which,
combining in its construction, strength, lightness, and ease of
traction, made the heavy task of the dogs far easier than it would
otherwise have been. It may even be that we should have failed had it
not been for so simple a thing as an improved form of water boiler which
I was fortunate enough to have hit upon. By its aid we were able to melt
ice and make tea in ten minutes. On our previous journeys this process
had taken an hour. Tea is an imperative necessity on such a driving
journey, and this little invention saved one and one-half hours in each
day while we were struggling toward the Pole on that journey when time
was the very essence of success.

Success crowned the work, it is true, but, for all that, it is a genuine
p