On October twentieth, Amundsen and four other men with four sledges and fifty-two dogs set out from Framheim. The sledges were loaded with provisions enough to last four months. As they journeyed south, they stopped at different places and built up piles of snow blocks. The heaps of snow would help them find their way back. Under the blocks of snow they put supplies which they would need as they came back.
The dogs made good time over the ice of the Antarctic. They traveled about seventeen miles a day. The men on their skis easily kept up with the dogs. But by the middle of November they came to snow-covered mountains. Some of them are two miles high. Travel was then harder. The party traveled up about one mile. They then rested. Travel was easier for a few days as they had reached a high level stretch of land which we call a plateau (pla tō). They then began to climb mountains again. Early in December they were up two miles high. From that time on they traveled on another plateau. Travel was easy on this level stretch of land. The men knew that the South Pole was on this plateau. The end of their journey seemed near.
On the night of December thirteenth, they had that strange feeling that something was going to happen. And at three o’clock the next day they were on the spot which they reckoned to be the South Pole. The happy men seized each other’s hands. How glad they were! They then did the most important act of the journey—they planted the flag of Norway on that spot.
The hands of all five men held the flag as it was set into place. Amundsen would have it that way. He said later, “It was not for one man to do this; it was for all who staked their lives in the struggle, and held together through thick and thin.”
As the men put the flag in place, they said, “Thus we plant thee, Beloved Flag, at the South Pole, and give the plateau on which it lies the name King Haakon VII’s Plateau.”
So while the Stars and Stripes floated at the top of the earth, the red, white, and blue flag of Norway floated at its bottom.
In about six weeks the happy men were back in Framheim. About a week later the Fram set sail for the long return trip to Norway. But early in March the Fram reached land from which messages could be sent and the whole world soon knew that the flag of Norway had been planted at the South Pole. And the whole world did honor to the brave men from the north who planted it there.