AMUNDSEN’S EQUIPMENT, NOW IN A MUSEUM
The men put on light summer clothes. The dogs kept under the shelter built for them, but still they suffered from the heat.
The Fram went on farther south, but the weather began to grow cooler and cooler. The farther the boat went from the place where the sun was almost directly over head at noon, the cooler the weather was. The men put on warmer clothing and the dogs left their shelters.
By New Year’s Day the Fram was in the icy waters of the Antarctic. The men saw huge pieces of ice floating in the water. The boat had to make its way through the ice. In about two weeks more, they reached a wall of ice about one hundred feet high. Amundsen was expecting that wall of ice, which was the edge of the great field of ice called The Great Ice Barrier.
The Fram could go no farther. The men unloaded the supplies on the ice. Not far from that spot, they dug into the ice and made a cellar where they stored their supplies. Over it they set up the house they had brought from Norway. They called their new home Framheim, which means Fram home.
In January the weather in the Antarctic is much like June weather in the far north. Day after day the men watched the sun go in a circle around their home on the ice. The sun there moved much the same as they had seen it move in the Arctic where Hammerfest lies. At Hammerfest, that town which is farther north than any other town, the sun is in the east in the early morning, in the south at noon, in the west in the late afternoon, and in the north at midnight. But in the Antarctic the men saw the sun in the east in the early morning, in the north at noon, in the west in the late afternoon, and in the south at midnight.
The men knew that after April twenty-second the sun would not be seen in this land at the bottom of the earth for four months. They would not have time to reach the South Pole before that long night came. They must wait for another summer.
During the long night the men lived comfortably in their house on the ice. They looked over every sledge, every piece of harness, their clothes, and their skis to make sure that everything was in shape for the trip over the ice to the South Pole.
The sun appeared in the sky for only a few minutes on August twenty-fourth. Each day after that it crept a little higher and stayed a little longer until at last the long day came when the sun was in the sky for weeks and weeks without setting.
For weeks after the sun appeared, the weather was bitter cold. The men watched for signs of warmer weather. Late in September they saw a seal crawl out of the water. They then knew that they soon would have warmer days, so they began to prepare for the journey to the pole.