ROALD AMUNSDEN

Evening Star, Issue 19328, 14 August 1926, Page 10

ROALD AMUNSDEN

HOW I WE HiS ACQUAINTANCE

[By llenhy Ette, Voslnmnhavn, Faroe Islands, First Pioneer of Spitzhergeu’s Northca&tlnnd, 1902-03.]

It is just twenty-five years ago since I first made the acquaintance of Roald Amundsen—then young and unknown —in Tromso, Norway, and the cause of our meeting was an hotel.

It wiis in the June of 1902. I was slaying at the biggest hotel at 70deg, N.L., the Grand Hotel, but it would have been better for mo if I hadn’t.

It was built, of course, of wood—great logs, which, in the course of time, had separated, so that there were cracks and crevices all over, and the windows could not bo shut without the help of gaskets and “ man of war double.” At uight the eternal north-east storm, with snow—because it snows just ns briskly in Juno at 70dcg, N.L., as in New York at Christmas-timc—whistled and howled through the logs, making a noise like tho sound of the tempest through the rigging of a full rigger. Sleep was not to bo thought of. One passed the time lying holding on to the blankets in case they flow away. Venetian or any- other kind of blinds were unknown. I had to undress both morning and evening in a room on the ground floor, while the inhabitants of Tromso, mostly fishermen, seal, walrus, and bear hunters, in astonishment surveyed my now French pants through the window.

At 6 o’clock in the morning my bedroom door, without any knocking or warning, was burst open, and the chama little, fat thing, with a head too big for the size of her body, stood in the doorway. Without as much as ‘‘ Good morning,” my boots were flung in the direction of the head of my bed —it’s a miracle they never hit me. Then she began to light a lire in the fireplace with bark. First she set fire to the bark, and as soon as the tiniest spark appeared she tumbled the whole pail of coke on the bark, and, of course, was successful in absolutely quenching tho fire. After that she dashed out of the room, banging the door behind her, with a bang that made my neighbors jump out of their beds in fright. Of course, all the bells were out of order, too. If you rang tho bell in one room, all the Haps in tho apparatus out in the hall fell down on all the numbers at once, the consequence being a slamming and banging of all the doors in iho hotel until the right one was found.

If I were sitting in my room with a visitor, and ordered (ringing and banging of half a dozen doors) a couple of drinks, the dunder-licad brought a couple of coifcc cups, and tho whole hotel was roused before the drinks at last were served. The head waiter was a young man who had just left school, and whose face was so wrinkled and pimply that I was obliged to keep from looking at him while I was eating. The porter got a dollar out of me at once just for showing me my room, and fho landlord pounced in on mo and did me out of 30s. On Whitmonday one of the rooms in tho hotel was let out to the dissipated men of tho town, who amused themselves with cards and singing and dancing with the fast young women of the town. Through a crack in the door I could see that my neighbor had company, so I went to his door, and asked if I might join them. I was very well received, and so I stood a bottle 'of port (slamming and banging of six to eight doors), my neighbor stood cigars and cigarettes (slamming and banging of eight to ten doors), then I stood coffee and cognac (endless slamming and banging of all tho doors). There' was no sleep to be got at the hotel that night. Tho next day I asked my skipper, the Arctic explorer, Ole Nsos, if there were any other hotel. “Yes, and just now a young man, Roald Amundsen, is staying there. Ho is going to tho North Polo to find the magnetic polo Wc can go together.” In a few minutes I was standing in a nice, rather old-fashioned, but comfortable, room, in front of a dark young man with full beard and rather long, black hair, who sat on tho traditional sofa behind tho round table. I noticed at once his big nose. “ You belong to the big-nosed, my friend, thorcloro you’ll become famous,” I thought, _ as Skipper Nres introduced me to him and explained that I had been a seal hunter in two six-mouth voyages with the famous old Arctic barque-rigged steamer Viking of Arendal, tho largest belonging to Norway, and that on both trips I had occupied Nansen’s berth—the cabin Nansen had used on bis first Arctic exxiodition in 188”. Now, I was to go on a long hunting expedition to East Greenland, with my own whaler. (This was before the Danish Government had given away to Norway tho whole of Greenland.) Amundsen, who was just back from Gorlache’s expedition io tho South Pole witlr_ Belgica, in company with another North Polo explorer, who, later on, became just as famous as himself—namely, Cook (what a fine trio wo three would have made sitting together in that hotel room) —was an interested listener, while he stopped working for the moment on the papers lying in front of him. ‘‘Bills, debts,” I thought to myself, and I was right. Amundsen' has himself related what a torture it was for him to go begging from the rich Norwegians to get funds for his Goa expedition, and without Nansen’s help he would probably never have succeeded.

He asked if I would take a glass of port, but not wishing to add to his hotel bill, 1 said “ No, thank you.’’ He then showed meou a map the-route ho intended taking along the north coast of America, and when 1 remembered the history of the north-west passage, Erebus and Terror, and the disappearance of hundreds of men, and Hudson's tragic fate, I wondered if I should ever sec him again. I did, however, four years later, and then ho was decorated with the Grand Cross and the Orders of Danncbrog and Kt. Olav, but bis board was still as big. It was at a Spartan dinner, at the Students’ Club in Copenhagen, that I again saw him and spoko to him. It was after this Roald Amundsen became clean-shaven.

My skipper left us after a quarter of an hour, and I, after having received an invitation to visit him on board the Goa before he sailed from Tromso, the long way across the Atlantic Ocean round Capo Farewell, left Roald Amundsen and went homo to my hotel. Just outside my room I fell over two cats, the largest I have ever seen, and Norway, as is well known, is well supplied with big cats. After that I rang the bell (banging of half a dozen doors), and asked to be allowed to speak to the landlord, who came at once, hoping to get his bill paid. “ I can put up with your fat, big-headed chambermaid and with her fireplace manoeuvres—although she is absolutely no use in an hotel; I can also put up with your cheeky, freckled, pimplefaced head waiter—if I can keep my eyes off him while eating; I can also put up with the incessant banging of all the doors and tho night orgies—although I’ve almost become a bundle of nerves; and I can also, if need be, put up with treading on the tail of a lion should I all unawares step out of my tent in East Africa, but when you trot out cats, especially at night, outside my room door, and, to crown all, immediately after I have said ‘No’ to gg innocent glass of port

wine with the world’s futr est North and South Pole exi. ,jen we two have nothing more .j say to one another.” The next morning I left for East Greenland; and the same day Amundsen loft for Behring Strait.