The third proposition, a complete systematic study of the entire periphery of the antarctic continent and its adjacent waters by a party of scientific experts in a special ship during a succession of seasons, would appeal most strongly to the scientists and museums of the country.
It would be an American Challenger expedition, with all the improvements and widened horizon of investigation that forty-four years of scientific progress represent. Such an expedition with good fortune could complete the circuit of the Antarctic continent in three or four seasons, coming north to pass each winter at some convenient port as Punta Arenas in the Straits of Magellan; Wellington, N. Z.; Hobart, Tasmania and Cape Town.
Each year the observations and collections could be sent home, and any necessary changes be made in the personnel.
The materialization of this program will give our museums a large amount of valuable material from a region which at present is most meagerly represented in their collections, and will furnish our scientists with material and observations to keep them occupied for years.
The financing of the work could be met by a group of American museums. Or it presents an opportunity for some man of means to place himself permanently in the scientific record of the nation by furnishing the funds for its realization.
CHAPTER II
SELECTING MEN
In my polar parties the matter of personnel has been different from that of other expeditions because of my extensive utilization of the Eskimos. From the beginning of my interest in polar matters my conception of an ideal polar party was one in which the rank and file should be composed of Eskimos, with one or more white men in command.
But I was not able to realize this ideal at the start of my polar work, and in my first expedition the entire work was done by the six members of my party. In my second expedition the Eskimos assisted for a short distance on the ice-cap. In the work and journeys of my long expedition of 1898–1902 (four years, three months, and seventeen days), my plans crystallized into actual shape, and all parties were made up of Eskimos and a white man or two, sometimes one member of my party commanding fifteen or sixteen Eskimos. In my last two expeditions of 1905–06 and 1908–09 the system was still further perfected.
Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History