But he might
easily have failed and perished in the attempt; and the combination of
reasoning and daring that nerved him to make it can hardly be overrated.
All these things helped him. Yet any rather conservative whaling captain
might have refused to make Scott's experiment with motor transport,
ponies and man-hauling, and stuck to the dogs; and to the use of ski in
running those dogs; and it was this quite commonplace choice that sent
Amundsen so gaily to the Pole and back: with no abnormal strain on men or
dogs, and no great hardship either. He never pulled a mile from start to
finish.
The very ease of the exploit makes it impossible to infer from it that
Amundsen's expedition was more highly endowed in personal qualities than
ours. We did not suffer from too little brains or daring: we may have
suffered from too much. We were primarily a great scientific expedition,
with the Pole as our bait for public support, though it was not more
important than any other acre of the plateau. We followed in the steps of
a polar expedition which brought back more results than any of its
forerunners: Scott's Discovery voyage. We had the largest and most
efficient scientific staff that ever left England. We were discursive. We
were full of intellectual interests and curiosities of all kinds. We took
on the work of two or three expeditions.
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