I will not attempt to express the intensity of the mingled emotions which overcame me as I realised the complete success of the most stupendous adventure ever proposed or even dreamed by man.

I don't think that any personal vanity, unworthy of the highest lessons I had received, had much share in my passionate exultation.

The conception was not original; the means were furnished by others; the execution depended less on a daring and skill, in which any courageous traveller or man of science knowing what I knew might well have excelled me, than on the direct and manifest favour of Providence.

But this enterprise, the greatest that man had ever attempted, had in itself a charm, a sanctity in my eyes that made its accomplishment an unspeakable satisfaction.

I would have laid down life a dozen times not only to achieve it myself, but even to know that it had been achieved by others.