twelve dogs left. We now had forty-two dogs. Our plan was to take
all the forty-two up to the plateau; there twenty-four of them were
to be slaughtered, and the journey continued with three sledges and
eighteen dogs. Of these last eighteen, it would be necessary, in our
opinion, to slaughter six in order to bring the other twelve back to
this point. As the number of dogs grew less, the sledges would become
lighter and lighter, and when the time came for reducing their number
to twelve, we should only have two sledges left. This time again our
calculations came out approximately right; it was only in reckoning
the number of days that we made a little mistake -- we took eight
days less than the time allowed. The number of dogs agreed exactly;
we reached this point again with twelve.

After the question had been well discussed and each had given his
opinion, we went out to get the repacking done. It was lucky the
weather was so fine, otherwise this taking stock of provisions might
have been a bitter piece of work. All our supplies were in such a
form that we could count them instead of weighing them. Our pemmican
was in rations of 2 kilogram (1 pound 12 ounces). The chocolate was
divided into small pieces, as chocolate always is, so that we knew what
each piece weighed. Our milk-powder was put up in bags of 102 ounces
just enough for a meal. Our biscuits possessed the same property --
they could be counted, but this was a tedious business, as they were
rather small. On this occasion we had to count 6,000 biscuits. Our
provisions consisted only of these four kinds, and the combination
turned out right enough. We did not suffer from a craving either for
fat or sugar, though the want of these substances is very commonly
felt on such journeys as ours. In our biscuits we had an excellent
product, consisting of oatmeal, sugar, and dried milk. Sweetmeats,
jam, fruit, cheese, etc., we had left behind at Framheim.