ard,
president of the Peary Arctic Club. When the boxes which had served as a
bed platform in the Eskimo quarters of the _Roosevelt's_ forward deck
were removed, the place was swept and scrubbed; then a bed platform was
built of boards, divided into sections for the various families and
screened in front by curtains. Under the bed platform was an open space,
where the Eskimos could keep their cooking utensils and other personal
belongings. The fastidious reader who is shocked at the idea of keeping
frying-pans under the bed should see an Eskimo family in one of their
native houses of stone and earth, eight feet across, where meat and
drink, men, women, and children are crowded indiscriminately for month
upon month in winter.

We next landed about eighty tons of coal, so that, in case we should
have to live in the box houses, there would be plenty of fuel. At that
time of the year it was not very cold. On the 8th of September the
thermometer stood at 12 above zero, the next day at 4.

The heavier cases, containing the tins of bacon, pemmican (the condensed
meat food used in the Arctic), flour, et cetera, were utilized ashore
like so many blocks of granite in constructing three houses, about
fifteen feet by thirty. All the supplies were especially packed for this
purpose, in boxes of specified dimensions--one of the innumerable
details which made for the success of the expedition. In building the
houses the tops of the boxes were placed inside, the covers removed, and
the contents taken out as needed, as from a shelf, the whole house being
one large grocery.

The roofs were made of sails thrown over boat booms or spars, and later
the walls and roof were banked in solidly with snow. Stoves were set up,
so that, if everything went well, the houses could be used as workshops
during the winter.

So here we were, safely bestowed at Cape Sheridan, and the prize seemed
already in our grasp. The contingencies which had blocked our way in
1906 were all provided for on this last expedition. We knew just what we
had to do, and just how to do it. Only a few months of waiting, the fall
hunting, and the long, dark winter were all that lay between me and the
final start. I had the dogs, the men, the experience, a fixed
determination (the same impulse which drove the ships of Columbus across
the trackless western sea)--and the end lay with that Destiny which
favors the man who follows his faith and his dream to the last breath.