With this sad exception, the history of the expedition is flawless.

We returned as we went, in our own ship, battered but unharmed, in excellent health and with a record of complete success.
There is a lesson in all this--a lesson so obvious that it is perhaps superfluous to point it out.

The plan, so carefully made and executed with such faithfulness to detail, was composed of a number of elements, the absence of any one of which might have been fatal to success.

We could scarcely have succeeded without the help of our faithful Eskimos; nor even with them, had it not been for our knowledge of their capacities for work and endurance, and for the confidence which years of acquaintance had taught them to repose in me.

We could certainly not have succeeded without the Eskimo dogs which furnished the traction power for our sledges, and so enabled us to carry our supplies where no other power on earth could have moved them with the requisite speed and certainty.