When an expedition starts for distant and mysterious regions for an uncertain length of time, and particularly when its objective point is the frozen heart of the Arctic Circle, it is natural that those who know and are interested in its objects and plans should turn with interest to its personnel and its surroundings and environment while en route to the scene of action. The opening scenes of an Arctic voyage are comparatively familiar to those conversant with Arctic literature. The main features of the play are much the same: A crowded and littered ship, regrets at leaving, confusion, and, if the weather be decent, an effort to get into shape, or, if the weather be bad, a surrender by most of the party to abject misery in cramped quarters. In the present instance, some of these features were entirely absent, and others appeared only in a mild form. Experience and a roomy ship almost completely obviated the lumbering of the decks, beyond the inevitable and inseparable feature of the coal, a portion of which must at first always be carried on deck. Such few things as were dumped on deck at the last moment, were quickly and readily disposed of; and quarters specially arranged for the party and on deck, insured fair room for each member of the expedition. As to regrets, no pronounced symptoms were noticeable in the others, and I had made the voyage too often to consider it more than a trip to Europe. Under these favourable circumstances let us look at the personnel of the party whose home for an uncertain length of time, in the ice of the Polar Sea, was to be the good ship _Roosevelt_. First the captain, Robert A. Bartlett, sailing master and ice navigator, who was 30 years of age, 5 feet 10½ inches tall, and weighed 174 pounds. Bartlett is one of the new generation of Bartletts, a hardy family of Newfoundland sailors and navigators, almost all of whom have been associated with Arctic work. A great uncle was master of the _Tigress_ when that ship picked up the drifting floe party of the _Polaris_ expedition; two uncles, Samuel and John, were respectively master and mate of the _Panther_ in which Hayes and Bradford visited Melville Bay; recently Captain Sam was master of the Canadian Government steamer _Neptune_, which wintered in Hudson Bay; and both of these, as well as Harry, a younger uncle, had been masters of my ships during one or the other of my several voyages north. Robert was mate in the _Windward_ in the expedition of ’98 to ’99. Blonde, smooth-shaven and close-cropped, stockily built and clear-eyed, he had already been farther north in these regions than any of the other Newfoundland ice masters, and his youth, ambition, and the Bartlett blood all counted in his favour.