ed for my London
Address. [66] This course touched about 87 1/2 deg. north latitude. I
have no right to expect a more northerly drift than parallel to this,
and have no right to be anything but happy if I get as far. Our aim,
as I have so often tried to make clear, is not so much to reach the
point in which the earth's axis terminates, as to traverse and explore
the unknown Polar Sea; and yet I should like to get to the Pole, too,
and hope that it will be possible to do so, if only we can reach 84 deg.
or 85 deg. by March. And why should we not?

"Thursday, September 27th. Have determined that, beginning from
to-morrow, every man is to go out snow-shoeing two hours daily, from
11 to 1, so long as the daylight lasts. It is necessary. If anything
happened that obliged us to make our way home over the ice, I am afraid
some of the company would be a terrible hinderance to us, unpractised
as they are now. Several of them are first-rate snow-shoers, but
five or six of them would soon be feeling the pleasures of learning;
if they had to go out on a long course, and without snow-shoes,
it would be all over with us.

"After this we used to go out regularly in a body. Besides being good
exercise, it was also a great pleasure; every one seemed to thrive on
it, and they all became accustomed to the use of the shoes on this
ground, even though they often got them broken in the unevennesses
of the pressure-ridges; we just patched and riveted them together to
break them again.

"Monday, October 1st. We tried a hand-sledge to-day with a load of
250 pounds. It went along easily, and yet was hard to draw, because
the snow-shoes were apt to slip to the side on the sort of surface we
had. I almost believe that Indian snow-shoes would be better on this
ground, where there are so many knobs and smooth hillocks to draw the
sledges over. When Amundsen first began to pull the sledge he thought
it was nothing at all; but when he had gone on for a time he fell into
a fit of deep and evidently sad thought, and went silently home. When
he got on board he confided to the others that if a man had to draw a
load like that he might just as well lie down at once--it would come
to the same thing in the end. That is how practice is apt to go. In
the afternoon I yoked three dogs to the same little sledge with the
250-pound load, and they drew it along as if it were nothing at all.

"Tuesday October 2d. Beautiful weather, but coldish; 49 deg. Fahr. of