But it was not only these journeys over ice-sheets and mountain-ranges that were carried out in masterly fashion.  Our gratitude is also due to Captain Nilsen and his men.  They brought the Fram backwards and forwards, twice each way, through those ice-filled southern waters that many experts even held to be so dangerous that the Fram would not be able to come through them, and on both trips this was done with the speed and punctuality of a ship on her regular route.  The Fram’s builder, the excellent Colin Archer, has reason to be proud of the way in which his “child” has performed her latest task —­ this vessel that has been farthest north and farthest south on our globe.  But Captain Nilsen and the crew of the Fram have done more than this; they have carried out a work of research which in scientific value may be compared with what their comrades have accomplished in the unknown world of ice, although most people will not be able to recognize this.  While Amundsen and his companions were passing the winter in the South, Captain Nilsen, in the Fram, investigated the ocean between South America and Africa.  At no fewer than sixty stations they took a number of temperatures, samples of water, and specimens of the plankton in this little-known region, to a depth of 2,000 fathoms and more.  They thus made the first two sections that have ever been taken of the South Atlantic, and added new regions of the unknown ocean depths to human knowledge.  The Fram’s sections are the longest and most complete that are known in any part of the ocean.

Would it be unreasonable if those who have endured and achieved so much had now come home to rest?  But Amundsen points onward.  So much for that; now for the real object.  Next year his course will be through Behring Strait into the ice and frost and darkness of the North, to drift right across the North Polar Sea —­ five years, at least.  It seems almost superhuman; but he is the man for that, too.  Fram is his ship, “forward” is his motto, and he will come through.[1] He will carry out his main expedition, the one that is now before him, as surely and steadily as that he has just come from.

But while we are waiting, let us rejoice over what has already been achieved.  Let us follow the narrow sledge-tracks that the little black dots of dogs and men have drawn across the endless white surface down there in the South —­ like a railroad of exploration into the heart of the unknown.  The wind in its everlasting flight sweeps over these tracks in the desert of snow.  Soon all will be blotted out.

But the rails of science are laid; our knowledge is richer than before.

And the light of the achievement shines for all time.

Fridtjof Nansen.

Lysaker,

May 3, 1912.

FIGURE 1

The Opening of Roald Amundsen’s Manuscript.

To face page I, Vol.  I.

CHAPTER I