drive more than 30 kilometers a day, but it appeared that this was too little for our strong, willing animals. At 80 degrees south we began to build snow cairns of a man's height, in order to have marks on our return trip. On the 31st we reached the depot at 81 degrees, and stopped there one day, and fed the dogs on as much pemmican as they wanted.

We reached the depot at 82 degrees on the 5th of November, where the dogs for the last time got all they wanted to eat. On the

8th, southward again, with a daily march of 50 kilometers.

In order to lighten our heavy sledges we established depots at each degree of south latitude.

LIKE A PLEASURE TRIP

The trip from 82. degrees to 83 degrees became a pleasure trip-excellent ground, fine sledging, and an even temperature. Everything went like a dance.

On the 9th we sighted South Victoria

Land and the continuation of the mountain range which Sir Ernest Shackleton mentioned in his chart as running toward the southeast from the Beardmore Glacier, and on the same day we reached 83 degrees and established here Depot No. 4. On the 11th we made the interesting discovery that the Ross Barrier terminated in a bight toward the southeast at 86 degrees south latitude and 163 degrees west longitude, formed between the southeast mountain range running from South Victoria Land and a range on the opposite side running in a southwesterly direction-probably a continuation of King Edward VII Land.

On the 13th we reached 84 degrees, where we established a depot; on the 16th we were at 85 degrees, where also we made a depot.

From our winter quarters, "Framheim,' 78 degrees 38 minutes south latitude, we had been marching due south. On November 17, at 85 degrees, we arrived at a place where the land and Barrier were connected. This was done without any great difficulty. The Barrier here rises in undulations to about 300 feet. Some few big crevices indicated the limited boundary.

Here we made our head depot, taking provisions for sixty days on sledges, and leaving thirty days' provisions on the spot.

A DIFFICULT CLIMB

The land under which we lay and which we now had to attack looked quite imposing. The nearest summits along the Barrier had a height from 2,000 to 10,000 feet, but several others farther south were 15,000 feet or more.

The next day we began the climb. The first part of it was an easy task-light slopes and well-filled mountain sides. It did not take a long time, for our willing dogs worked their way up. Farther up, we met with some small but very steep glaciers. Here we had to harness twenty dogs to each sledge and take the four sledges in two turns. In some places it was so steep that it was difficult enough to use our skis.

Some big crevices forced us from time to time to make detours. The first day we climbed 2,000 feet, the next day mostly up some small glaciers, camping at a height of 4,500 feet. The third day we were obliged to go down on a mighty glacier, "Axel Heiberg's Glacier," which divided the coast mountains and the mountains farther south.

The next day began the longest part of

our climb. Many detours had to be made in order to avoid broad cracks and open crevices. These were apparently mostly filled up, as the glaciers in all probability had long ago stopped moving, but we had to be very careful, never knowing for certain how thick was the layer that covered them.

Our camp that night lay in very picturesque surroundings at a height of 5,000 feet. The glacier here was narrowed in between the two 15,000 feet high mountains, the "Fridtjof Nansen" and the "Don Pedro Christophersen." From the bottom of the glacier rose Mount "Ole Englstad "-a big snow cone 13,500 feet high.

DOGS' SPLENDID WORK

The glacier was very much broken in this comparatively narrow pass. The mighty crevices seemed to stop us from going further, but it was not so serious as it appeared. Our dogs, which up to this time had covered a distance of about 700 kilometers, the last days very hard work, ran this day 35 kilometers, the ascent being 5,600 feet, an almost incredible record.

It took us only four days from the Barrier to get up on the vast inland plateau. We camped that night at a height of 10,600 feet. Here we had to kill thirty-four of our brave companions and keep eighteensix for each of our three sledges.

We stopped here four days on account of bad weather. Tired of this, we set out on the 25th of November. On the 26th, in a furious blizzard and in a dense snowdrift, absolutely nothing was to be seen, but we felt that, contrary to expectations, we were going fast down hill. The hypsometer gave

us that day a descent of 600 feet.

We continued our march the next day in a gale, and a dense snowdrift got our faces badly frozen. We could see nothing. We reached that day 86 degrees, dead reckoning. The hypsometer indicated a fall of 800 feet.

The next day was similar. The weather cleared a little at dinner time and exposed to our view a mighty mountain range to the east and not far off-only for a momentand then it disappeared in the dense snowdrift.

On the 29th it calmed down and the sun shone, though it was not the only pleasant surprise he gave. In our course stretched a big glacier running toward the south. At its eastern end was the mountain range going

A FINE MOUNTAIN VIEW

On November 30 we began to climb the glacier. The lower part of it was very much broken and dangerous. Moreover, the snow bridges very often burst. From our camp that night we had a splendid view over the mountain to the east: There was "Helmer Hansen's Summit," the most remarkable of them all. It was 12,000 feet high, and covered with such broken glaciers that in all probability no foothold was to be found. "Oscar Wisting's,' ""Sverre Hassel's," and "Olav Hjanland's " Mountains also lay here, beautifully illuminated in the rays of the bright sun.

In the distance, and only occasionally to be viewed in the fog, "Mount Nielsen,” with its summits and peaks about 15,000 feet high. We only saw the nearest surroundings.

It took us three days to surmount the Devil's Glacier, always in misty weather.

On the 1st of December we left this broken glacier, with holes and crevices without number, with its height of 9,100 feet. Before us, looking, in the mist and snowdrift, like a frozen sea, appeared a light, sloping ice plateau filled with small hummocks.

The walk over this frozen sea was not pleasant. The ground under us was quite hollow, and it sounded as though we were walking on the bottoms of empty barrels. As it was, a man fell through, then a couple of dogs. We could not use our skis on this polished ice. Sledges had the best of it.

The place got the name the "Devil's Dancing Room." This part of our march was the most unpleasant. On December 6 we got our greatest height, according to the hypsometer and aneroid, 10,750 feet, at 87 degrees 40 minutes south.

In the afternoon we passed 88 degrees 23 minutes (Shackleton's farthest south was 88. degrees 25 minutes). We camped and established our last depot, Depot No. 10. From 88 degrees 25 minutes the plateau began to slope down very gently and smoothly toward the other side.

On the 9th of December we reached 88 degrees 39 minutes; on December 10, 88 degrees 56 minutes; December 11, 89 degrees 15 minutes; December 12, 89 degrees 30 minutes; December 13, 89 degrees 45 minutes.

Up to this time the observations and dead reckoning agreed remarkably well, and we made out that we ought to be at the Pole on December 14 in the afternoon.

THE POLE ATTAINED

That day was a beautiful one-a light breeze from southeast, the temperature minus 23 Celsius (9.4 degrees below zero Fahrenheit), and the ground and sledging were perfect. The day went along as usual, and at 3 P.M. we made a halt.

According to our reckoning we had reached our destination. All of us gathered around the colors a beautiful silk flag-all hands taking hold of it and planting it.

The vast plateau on which the Pole is standing got the name of the "King Haakon VII Plateau." It is a vast plain, alike in all directions; mile after mile during the night we circled around the camp.

In the fine weather we spent the following day taking a series of observations from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M. The result gave us 89 degrees 55 minutes.

In order to observe the Pole as close as possible, we traveled, as near south as possible, the remaining 9 kilometers.

It

On December 16 there we camped. was an excellent opportunity. There was a brilliant sun. Four of us took observations every hour of the day's twenty-four hours. The exact result will be the matter of a professional private report.

This much is certain that we observed the Pole as close as it is in human power to do it with the instruments we had-a sextant and an artificial horizon.

On December 17 everything was in order on the spot. We fastened to the ground a little tent we had brought along, a Norwegian flag, and the Fram pennant on the top of it.

The Norwegian home at the South Pole was called "Polheim."

W

HEN I was a little girl (I always think that these words, in just this juxtaposition, are six of the most charming in the language)—when I was a little girl, I lived, between the ages of six and sixteen, in a small village in Maine. My sister and I had few playmates, but I cannot remember that we were ever dull; for dullness in a child, as in a grown person, means lack of dreams and visions, and those we had a-plenty. We were fortunate, too, in that our house was on the brink of one of the loveliest rivers in the world. When we clambered down the steep bank to the little cove that was just beneath our bedroom windows, we found ourselves facing a sheet of crystal water as quiet as a lake, a lake from the shores of which we could set any sort of adventure afloat; yet scarcely three hundred feet away was a roaring waterfall-a baby Niagara-which, after dashing over the dam in a magnificent tawny torrent, spent itself in a wild, foaming stream that forced itself between rocky cliffs until it reached the sea, eight miles away. No child could be lonely who lived on the brink of such a river; and then we had, besides our studies and our country sports, our books, which were the dearest of all our friends. It is a long time ago, but I can see very clearly a certain set of black walnut book-shelves, hanging on the wall of the family sitting-room. There were other cases here and there through the house, but I read and re-read the particular volumes in this one from year to year, and a strange, motley collection they were, to be sure! On the top shelf were George Sand's "Teverino," "Typee,' Undine,' Longfellow's Poems and Byron's, "The Arabian Nights," Bailey's "Festus," "The Lamplighter," "Scottish Chiefs," Thackeray's "Book of Snobs," "Ivanhoe," and the "Life of P. T. Barnum." This last volume, I may say, did not represent the literary inclinations of my parents, but had been given me on my birthday by a grateful

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neighbor for saving the life of a valuable Jersey calf tethered on the too-steep slopes of our river-bank. The "Life of Barnum was the last book on the heterogeneous top shelf, and on the one next below were most of the novels of Charles Dickens, more eagerly devoured than all the rest, although no book in the case had escaped a second reading save Bailey's "Festus," a little of which went a very long way with It seems to me that no child nowadays has time to love an author as the children and young people of that generation loved Dickens, nor do I think that any living author of to-day provokes love in exactly the same fashion. From the yellow dog, Pip, to the cat, the canary, the lamb, the cow, down to all the hens and cocks, almost every living thing was named, sooner or later, after one of Dickens's characters while my favorite sled, painted in brown, with the title in brilliant red letters, was "The Artful Dodger." Why did we do it? We little creatures couldn't have suspected that "the democratic movement in literature had come to town" (Richard Whiteing's phrase); nevertheless we responded to it vigorously, ardently, and swelled the hero's public.

For periodical literature we had in our household" Harper's Magazine" and "Littell's Living Age," but we never read newspapers, so that there was a moment of thrilling excitement when my mother, looking up from the Portland "Press," told us that Mr. Dickens was coming to America, and that he was even then sailing from England. I remember distinctly that I prayed for him fervently several times during the next week

-that the voyage might be a safe one, and that even the pangs of seasickness might be spared so precious a personage. In due time we heard that he had arrived in New York and had begun the series of readings from his books; then he came to Boston, which was still nearer; and then-day of unspeakable excitement-we learned that he had been prevailed upon to give one reading in