than we had reckoned.  After a great deal of talk on one side and on the other, we agreed to arrange matters thus:  we were to do our fifteen geographical miles, or twenty-eight kilometres, and then have a sleep of six hours, turn out again and do fifteen miles more, and so on.  In this way we should accomplish a very good average distance on our day’s march.  We kept to this arrangement for the rest of the journey, and thus saved a good many days.

Our progress down the Heiberg Glacier did not encounter any obstructions; only at the transition from the glacier to the Barrier were there a few crevasses that had to be circumvented.  At 7 a.m. on January 6 we halted at the angle of land that forms the entrance to the Heiberg Glacier, and thence extends northward.  We had not yet recognized any of the land we lay under, but that was quite natural, as we now saw it from the opposite side.  We knew, though, that we were not far away from our main depot in 85deg. 5’ S. On the afternoon of the same day we were off again.

From a little ridge we crossed immediately after starting, Bjaaland thought he could see the depot down on the Barrier, and it was not very long before we came in sight of Mount Betty and our way up.  And now we could make sure with the glasses that it really was our depot that we saw —­ the same that Bjaaland thought he had seen before.  We therefore set our course straight for it, and in a few minutes we were once more on the Barrier —­ January 6, 11 p.m. —­ after a stay of fifty-one days on land.  It was on November 17 that we had begun the ascent.

We reached the depot, and found everything in order.  The heat here must have been very powerful; our lofty, solid depot was melted by the sun into a rather low mound of snow.  The pemmican rations that had been exposed to the direct action of the sun’s rays had assumed the strangest forms, and, of course, they had become rancid.  We got the sledges ready at once, taking all the provisions out of the depot and loading them.  We left behind some of the old clothes we had been wearing all the way from here to the Pole and back.  When we had completed all this repacking and had everything ready, two of us went over to Mount Betty, and collected as many different specimens of rock as we could lay our hands on.  At the same time we built a great cairn, and left there a can of 17 litres of paraffin, two packets of matches —­ containing twenty boxes —­ and an account of our expedition.  Possibly someone may find a use for these things in the future.

We had to kill Frithjof, one of Bjaaland’s dogs, at this camp.  He had latterly been showing marked signs of shortness of breath, and finally this became so painful to the animal that we decided to put an end to him.  Thus brave Frithjof ended his career.  On cutting him open it appeared that his lungs were quite shrivelled up; nevertheless, the remains disappeared pretty quickly into his companions’ stomachs.