h
snow-travelling that could be beaten by no collection of men in the
world.

"There remains the Beardmore Glacier. Can their dogs face it, and if so,
who will get there first. One thing I feel and that is that our Southern
Party will go far before they permit themselves to be beaten by any one,
and I think that two parties are very likely to reach the Pole next year,
but God only knows which will get there first.

"A few of the things we learnt about the Norwegians are as follows:

"The engines of the Fram occupy only half the size of our wardroom, the
petrol tanks have not needed replenishment since they left Norway, and
their propeller can be lifted by three men. They kept fresh potatoes from
Norway to the Barrier. (Some of them must surely be renegade Irishmen.)
They have each a separate cabin 'tween-decks in the Fram, and are very
comfortable. They are using for transporting their stores to the hut,
eight teams of five dogs each, working every alternate day.

"They intend to use for the Polar Journey teams of ten dogs, each team
working one day out of two. Their dogs stop at a whistle, and if they
make a break they can be stopped by overturning the sledge, empty or full
as the case may be. They are nine in the shore party and ten in the ship.
Their ship is going back to Buenos Ayres with Nilsen in charge and during
the winter is to encircle the world, sounding all the way.

"They are not starting on the dash South this year and do not yet know
whether they will lay depots this year. They have 116 dogs and ten of
these are bitches, so that they can rear pups, and have done so very
successfully on the way out. The Fram acts like a cork in the sea; she
rolls tremendously but does not ship water, and during the voyage they
have had the dogs running loose about the decks. There is a lot more
miscellaneous information, but I may remember it more coherently a little
later when the main impressions of the rencontre are a little more
faint."[119]

It will be seen that Priestley missed three points. First, he was left
with a conventional but very erroneous impression of Amundsen as a blunt
Norwegian sailor, not in the least an intellectual. Second, he thought
Amundsen had camped on the ice and not on terra firma. Third, he thought
Amundsen was going to the Pole by the old route over the Beardmore. The
truth was that Amundsen was an explorer of the markedly intellectual
type, rather Jewish than Scandinavian, who had pro