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Cornell University Library
The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library.
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THE NORTH POLE
COPY-RIGHT, 1910, BY FREDERICK A STOKES COMP>*r.r
THE FIVE FLAGS AT THE POLE
LEFT TO BIGHT
1. Navy League — Ooqueah 3. Polar Flag Carried 15 Years— Henson
2. D. K. K. FrMtemity — Ootah 4. D. A. R. Peace Flag— Egingwah
5. Red Cross Flag— Seegloo
THE NORTH POLE
ITS DISCOVERY IN 1909 UNDER THE
AUSPICES OF THE PEARY
ARCTIC CLUB
BY
ROBERT E. PEARY
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
AND A FOREWORD BY
GILBERT H. GROSVENOR
DIRECTOR AND EDITOR, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
WITH EIGHT FVLI^PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS REPRODUCING PHOTOGRAPHIC
ENLARGEMENTS COLORED BY HAND; ONE HUNDRED
ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE, FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS; AND WITH A MAP IN
COLORS BY GILBERT H.
GROSVENOR
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
1910
T
e
t>70
Copyright, 1909, 1910, by Robert E. Peart
Copyright, 1910, by Fbedebick a. Stokes Compakt
ENTERED AT STATIONERS HALL
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian
September, 1910
THE ■ PLIUPTON ■ PRESS
[W ■ D • O] HOBWOOD ■ MASS ■ u - s . A
TO
MY WIFE
INTEODUCTION
SOME years ago I met at a dinner in Washington the famous Norwegian arctic explorer, Hansen, himself one of the heroes of polar adventure; and he remarked to me, "Peary is your best man; in fact I think he is on the whole the best of the men now trying to reach the Pole, and there is a good chance that he will be the one to succeed." I cannot give the exact words; but they were to the above effect; and they made a strong impression on me. I thought of them when in the summer of 1908 I, as President of the United States, went aboard Peary's ship to bid him Godspeed on the eve of what proved to be his final effort to reach the Pole. A year later, when I was camped on the northern foothills of Mt. Kenia, directly under the equator, I received by a native runner the news that he had succeeded, and that thanks to him the discovery of the North Pole was to go on the honor roll of those feats in which we take a peculiar pride because they have been performed by our fellow countrymen.
Probably few outsiders realize the well-nigh incredible • toil and hardship entailed in such an achievement as Peary's; and fewer still understand how many years of careful training and preparation there must be before the feat can be even attempted with any chance of success. A "dash for the pole" can be successful only if there have been many preliminary years of painstaking, patient toil. Great physical hardihood and endurance, an iron will and unflinching courage, the power of command, the thirst
viii INTRODUCTION
for adventure, and a keen and farsighted intelligence — all these must go to the make-up of the successful arctic explorer; and these, and more than these, have gone to the make-up of the chief of successful arctic explorers, of the man who succeeded where hitherto even the best and the bravest had failed.
Commander Peary has made all dwellers in the civi- lized world his debtors; but, above all, we, his fellow Ameri- cans, are his debtors. He has performed one of the great feats of our time; he has won high honor for himself and for his country; and we welcome his own story of the triumph which he won in the immense solitudes of the wintry North.
Theodore Roosevelt.
The White Nile, March 12, 1910.
OUPVRIGHT, t9IO, Bf FHCOERICK A, STUKtS OOMt-^nr
PORTRAIT OF ROBERT E. PEARY> IN HIS ACTUAL NORTH POLE COSTUME
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction vii
Foreword xv
I The Plan 1
II Preparations . . 11
III The Start . . 25
IV Up to Cape York 34
V Welcome from the Eskimos 42
VI An Arctic Oasis 53
VII Odd Customs of an Odd People ... 63
VIII Getting Recruits 72
IX A Walrus Hunt . .79
X Knocking at the Gateway to the Pole . 88
XI Close Quarters with the Ice 97
XII The Ice Fight Goes On 106
XIII Cape Sheridan at Last ... ... 117
XIV In Winter Quarters .... 126 XV The Autumn Work 134
XVI The Biggest Game in the Arctic . . 143
XVII Musk-oxen at Last . .... 151
XVIII The Long Night 162
XIX The Roosevelt's Narrow Escape . • . . 172
XX Christmas on the Roosevelt 182
XXI Arctic Ice Sledging as it Really Is . . 193
XXII Essentials that Brought Success. . . 201
XXIII Off Across the Frozen Sea . . 213
XXIV The First Open Water . .... 221 XXV Some op My Eskimos Lose their Nerve . 230
XXVI BoRUp's Farthest North 240
XXVII Good By to Marvin 248
XXVIII We Break all Records 255
ix
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIX Babtlett Reaches 87° 47' 264
XXX The Final Spurt Begun 272
XXXI Only One Day from the Pole . . . 280
XXXII We Reach the Pole 287
XXXIII Good By to the Pole 302
XXXIV Back to Land Again 314
XXXV Last Days at Cape Sheridan 325
Appendix I 337
Appendix II 350
Appendix III 363
ILLUSTRATIONS
FULI^PAGE PLATES REPRODUCING PHOTOGRAPHIC MENTS COLORED BY HAND
ENLARGE-
THE nvE FLAGS AT THE POLE Frontispiece.
Facing Page
POETHAIT OF ROBERT E. PEART IN HIS ACTUAL NORTH POLE COSTUME viii
STELLAR PROJECTION, SHOWING THE RELATION OF THE POLAR SEA TO THE
VARIOUS CONTINENTS AND THE ROUTE OF THE EXPEDITION .... xxxii
ESKIMO DOGS OF THE EXPEDITION (246 IN ALl) ON SMALL ISLAND. ETAH PJOBD 74
CAPTAIN BARTLETT AND HIS PARTY (a TYPICAL UNIT DIVISION OF THE EXPEDI- TION) ... .... ... 140
ILLUMINATION OP THE Roosevdt IN WINTER QUARTERS ON A MOONLIGHT
NIGHT . ". . . 162
A TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF THE DIFFICULTIES OF WORKING SLEDGES OVER A
PRESSURE RIDGE . . . . 240
CROSSING A LEAD ON AN ICE CAKE AS A FERRY-BOAT . . 306
BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
george a. wardwell, chief engineer banks scott, second engineer robert a. bartlett, master . thomas gushue, mate charles percy, steward ....
professor ross g. marvin, assistant
george borup, assistant
donald b. macmillan, assistant
dr. j. w. goodsell, surgeon
snowy owl, cape sheridan . . . . . .
brant goose
Sabine's gull ... . .
red-throated diver, male and female king eider, drake
ESKIMOS COMING OFF TO THE Roosevelt IN KAYAKS .
THE MIDNIGHT SUN AS SEEN IN THE WHALE SOUND REGION
ESKIMO IN KAYAK
THE ICE-CLIFFS OP HUBBARD GLACIER
PEART DISTRIBUTING UTENSILS TO WIVES OP HIS HUNTERS AT ETAH
DECK SCENE ON THE Roosevelt
ESKIMO MOTHER AND CHILD
ESKIMO CHILDREN
KUDLAH, ALIAS "MISFORTUNE," WITH PUPPIES
Fadng Page
16 16 16 16 16 17 17 17 17 36 37 37 37 37 42 42 43 52 S3 53 60 61 61
xii ILLUSTRATIONS
Facing Page
70
71
71 71 86
87 104 105
KING ESKIMO DOG .... • ■ • •
THE DOG MARKET AT CAPE TOBK
THE WHALE-BOAT KETUBNINQ TO THE SHIP FROM THE WALRUS HUNT . .
THE CAPE JE3UP GRENADIERS • •
HOISTING A WALRUS TO THE DECK OP THE RoOSevdt .
A NARWHAL KILLED OFF CAPE UNION, JULY, 1909. THE MOST NORTHERLY SPEC- IMEN EVER CAPTURED .... . ... . .
CAPTAIN BARTLETT IN THE CBOW's NEST . . .
TABULAR ICEBERG AND FLOE-ICE . .
THE Roosevelt drying out her sails at cape SHERIDAN, SEPTEMBER, 1908 . 122
THE Roosevelt on September 12, 1908, marie ahnighito peary's birthday 123
"pEABY" SLEDGES ON BOARD THE RoOSevelt . ... 123
VIEW BETWEEN THE Roosevelt AND CAPE COLUMBIA . . . . . 136 ESKIMO TYPE OF SLEDGE USED ON JOURNEY . . . . . .137
"PEARy" type OP SLEDGE ... 137
POLAR BEAR, ARRANGED BY "FROZEN TAXIDERMy" AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY
FLASHLIGHT . . 144
FAMILY GROUP OF PEARY CARIBOU (Rangifer Pearyi), arranged by "frozen
taxidermy" and photographed by FLASHLIGHT . . . . 145
HEAD OF BULL MUSK-OX KILLED ON PARBY PENINSULA . . 152
HI^D OP MUSK-OXEN BOUNDED UP . . 153
WEESHAKUPSI AND MUSK-OX CALF . . ... 156
BEAR KILLED IN CLEMENTS MABKHAM INLET .... . . . 156
MUSK-OX HEADS IN THE RIGGING OF THE RoOsevdt . . . 157
CARIBOU HEADS IN THE RIGGING OF THE RoOSeVelt 157
CRANE CITY, CAPE COLUMBIA, AT THE TIME OF DEPARTURE MARCH 1, 1909 . 192
FACE OF THE LAND ICE, " GLACIAL FRINGE," OFF CAPE COLUMBIA . . 193
PINNACLE NEAR THE SHORE . . 193
TYPICAL TRAIL IN SOFT SNOW (LOOKING BACKWARD) .... 208
TYPICAL VIEW OF THE ICE OP THE ARCTIC OCEAN NORTH OF GRANT LAND . 209
TYPICAL CAMP ON THE ICE . . 209
WORKING THROUGH AN EXPANSE OF ROUGH ICE .216
PASSING THROUGH A DEFILE IN ROUGH ICE 217
APPROACHING A LEAD THROUGH BOUGH ICE 224
STOPPED BY OPEN WATER 225
ATHLETIC SPOBTS AT THE LEUD CAMP ... . . 232
PICKAXING A ROAD THEOUQH ZONE OF HOUGH ICE 232
A CHARACTERISTIC VIEW OP THE EXPEDITION ON THE MARCH IN PINE WEATHER . 233
REPAIRING SLEDGES IN CAMP . . 248
MARVIN TAKING AN OBSERVATION IN A SNOW SHELTER. ... . 249
CROSSING A LARGE LAKE OP YOUNG ICE, NORTH OF 87° . . . 264
CAMP AT 85° 48' NORTH, MARCH 22, 1909 . 265
A MOMENTARY HALT IN THE LBB OP A BIG HTOHMOCK NORTH OF 88° 265 BARTLETT AND HIS PARTY READY TO START BACK FROM 87° 47' NORTH, APRIL 1,
1909 270
CUTTING BLOCKS OF SNOW FOB IGLOOS AT NEXT TO LAST CAMP, 89° 26' NORTH 271 THE HALT FOR LUNCH IN LAST FORCED MARCH, 89° 25' TO 89° 57', SHOWING
ALCOHOL STOVES IN SNOW SHELTER .... . 284
CAMP MORRIS K. JE8UP, 89° 57', APRIL 6 AND 7, 1909 . . . 286
THE RECONNOITEBING PABTY AT THE POLE ... ... 288
THE DOUBLE TEAM OP DOGS USED WITH THE RECONNOITERING SLEDGE AT THE
POLE, SHOWING THEIR ALERTNESS AND GOOD CONDITION . . . 289 PEART WITH CHRONOMETER, SEXTANT, AND ABTIFICIAL HORIZON AT THE POLE 290 PEABY TAKING AN OBSERVATION AT THE POLE, WITH ARTIFICIAL HOBIZON, IN
A 8NOW SSELTBR ... 290
ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
Fadng Page
peary's igloo at camp moreis k. jEstrp, APRIL 6, 1909; the most northerly
HDMAN habitation IN THE WORLD. . 291
MEMBERS OP THE PARTY CHEERING THE STABS AND STRIPES AT THE POLE,
APRIL 7, 1909 ... .294
RETURNING TO CAMP WITH THE FLAGS, APRIL 7, 1909 . . . 294
THE FOUR NORTH POLE ESKIMOS .... . . . 295
E6INGWAH SEARCHING THE HORIZON FOB LAND. ... . . 298
PEARY SEARCHING THE HORIZON FOB LAND . 298
LOOKING TOWARD CAPE CHELYDSKIN 299
LOOKING TOWARD SPITZBEEGEN 299
LOOKING TOWARD CAPE COLUMBIA ... 299
LOOKING TOWARD BERING STRAIT .... 299
ATTEMPTED SOUNDING, APRIL 7, 1909 302
ACTUAL SOUNDING, FIVE MILES SOUTH OF THE POLE, APRIL 7, 1909, 1500
TATHOMS (9000 ft.) NO BOTTOM . . .... . . 303
swinging an ice cake across a lead to form an impromptu bridge . . 308
passing over the bridge . . 309
sounding . . 312
breaking camp. pushing the sledges up to the tired dogs. . 312
last camp on the ice on the return . . 313
back on the " glacial fringe" ... 313
approaching the peaks of cape columbia over the surface of the
"glacial fringe" . . .... . . 318
crane city at cape columbia, on the return . . . 318
egingwah before starting on the sledge trip. . . . 319
bgingwah after the return from the trip. ... . . 319
ootah before starting on the sledge trip . . ... . 319
ootah after the return prom the sledge trip ... 319
permanent monument erected at cape columbia to mark point of
departure and eiltuen of north pole sledge party. . 324 peary cairn at cape morris k. jesup as photographed by macmillan
and borup 325
memorial erected to the memory of professor ross g. marvin at
cape sheridan ... 325
the special great gold medal of the national geographic society op
washington .... 364 the special great gold medal of the royal geographical society of
LONDON ... . 365
Note. — The general plan of illustration is based on an unusually close adherence to the negatives, as giving more interesting and valuable results. Many of the most important pictures are from photo- graphs not retouched in the least, e.g., those facing pages 270, 284, 290, etc. In others the sliy-line has been indicated, e.g., those facing pages 208, 271, 299 (top), etc.; but change of no other sort has been made except to remove specks and other similar mechanical defects not vridely extended. The color-plates are, of course, exceptions requiring special treatment. The PuBUSHEsa
FOREWORD
THE struggle for the North Pole began nearly one hundred years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, being in- augurated (1527) by that king of many distinctions, Henry VIII of England.
In 1588 John Davis rounded Cape Farewell, the southern end of Greenland, and followed the coast for eight hundred miles to Sanderson Hope. He discov- ered the strait which bears his name, and gained for Great Britain what was then the record for the far- thest north, 72° 12', a point 1128 miles from the geo- graphical North Pole. Scores of hardy navigators, British, French, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, and Russian, followed Davis, all seeking to hew across the Pole the much-coveted short route to China and the Indies. The rivalry was keen and costly in lives, ships, and treasure, but from the time of Henry VIII for three and one-half centuries, or until 1882 (with the exception of 1594-1606, when, through Wm. Bar- ents, the Dutch held the record). Great Britain's flag was always waving nearest the top of the globe.
The same year that Jamestown was founded, Henry Hudson (1607), also seeking the route to the Indies, discovered Jan May en, circumnavigated Spitzbergen, and advanced the eye of man to 80° 23'. Most valu-
XVI
FOREWORD
able of all, Hudson brought back accounts of great multitudes of whales and walruses, with the result that for the succeeding years these new waters were thronged with fleets of whaling ships from every mari- time nation. The Dutch specially profited by Hud- son's discovery. During the 17th and 18th centuries they sent no less than 300 ships and 15,000 men each summer to these arctic fisheries and established on Spitzbergen, within the Arctic Circle, one of the most remarkable summer towns the world has ever known, where stores and warehouses and reducing stations and cooperages and many kindred industries flourished during the fishing season. With the approach of winter all buildings were shut up and the population, numbering several thousand, all returned home.
Hudson's record remained unequaled for 165 years, or until 1773, when J. C. Phipps surpassed his farthest north by twenty-five miles. To-day the most inter- esting fact connected with the Phipps expedition is that Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar and of the Battle of the Nile, then a lad of fifteen, was a member of the party. Thus the boldest and strongest spirits of the most adventurous and hardy profession of those days sought employment in the contest against the frozen wilderness of the north.
The first half of the 19th century witnessed many brave ships and gallant men sent to the arctic regions. While most of these expeditions were not directed against the Pole so much as sent in an endeavor to find a route to the Indies round North America — the Northwest Passage — and around Asia — the Northeast Passage — many of them are intimately
FOREWORD xvii
interwoven with the conquest of the Pole, and were a necessary part of its ultimate discovery. England hurled expedition after expedition, manned by the best talent and energy of her navy, against the ice which seemingly blocked every channel to her ambi- tions for an arctic route to the Orient.
In 1819 Parry penetrated many intricate passages and overcame one-half of the distance between Green- land and Bering Sea, winning a prize of £5000, offered by Parliament to the first navigator to pass the 110th meridian west of Greenwich. He was also the first navigator to pass directly north of the magnetic North Pole, which he located approximately, and thus the first to report the strange experience of seeing the com- pass needle pointing due south.
So great was Parry's success that the British government sent him out in command of two other expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage. In explorations and discoveries the results of these two later expeditions were not so rich, but the experience in ice work so obtained gave Parry conclusions which revolutionized all methods in arctic navigation.
Hitherto all attempts to approach the Pole had been in ships. In 1827 Parry suggested the plan of a dash to the Pole on foot, from a base on land. He obtained the assistance of the government, which for the fourth time sent him to the Arctic provided with well-equipped ships and able oflBcers and men. He carried a number of reindeer with him to his base in Spitzbergen, purposing to use these animals to drag his sledges. The scheme proved impracticable, how- ever, and he was compelled to depend on the muscles
xviii FOREWORD
of his men to haul his two heavy sledges, which were in reality boats on steel runners. Leaving Spitzber- gen on June 23 with twenty-eight men, he pushed northward. But the summer sun had broken up the ice floes, and the party repeatedly found it necessary to take the runners off their boats in order to ferry across the stretches of open water. After thirty days' incessant toil Parry had reached 82° 45', about 150 miles north of his base and 435 geographical miles from the Pole. Here he found that, while his party rested, the drift of the ice was carrying him daily back, almost as much as they were able to make in the day's work. Retreat was therefore begun.
Parry's accomplishments, marking a new era in polar explorations, created a tremendous sensation. Knighthood was immediately bestowed upon him by the King, while the British people heaped upon him all the honors and applause with which they have invariably crowned every explorer returning from the north with even a measure of success. In originality of plan and equipment Parry has been equaled and surpassed only by Nansen and Peary.
In those early days, few men being rich enough to pay for expeditions to the north out of their own pockets, practically every explorer was financed by the government under whose orders he acted. In 1829, however, Felix Booth, sheriff of London, gave Captain John Ross, an English naval officer, who had achieved only moderate success in a previous expedi- tion, a small paddle-wheel steamer, the Victory, and entered him in the race for the Northwest Passage. Ross was assisted, as mate, by his nephew, James
FOREWORD xix
Clark Ross, who was young and energetic, and who was later to win laurels at the opposite end of the globe. This first attempt to use steam for ice navigation failed, owing to a poor engine or incompetent engi- neers, but in all other respects the Rosses achieved gloriously. During their five years' absence, 1829- 1834, they made important discoveries around Boothia Felix, but most valuable was their definite location of the magnetic North Pole and the remarkable series of magnetic and meteorological observations which they brought back with them.
No band of men ever set out for the unknown with brighter hopes or more just anticipation of success than Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845. The frightful tragedy which overwhelmed them, together with the mystery of their disappearance, which baffled the world for years and is not yet entirely explained, forms the most terrible narrative in arctic history. Franklin had been knighted in 1827, at the same time as Parry, for the valuable and very extensive explora- tions which he had conducted by snowshoes and canoe on the North American coast between the Coppermine and Great Fish rivers, during the same years that Parry had been gaining fame in the north. In the interval Franklin had served as Governor of Tasmania for seven years. His splendid reputation and ability as an organizer made him, though now fifty-nine years of age, the unanimous choice of the government for the most elaborate arctic expedition it had prepared in many years. Franklin's fame and experience, and that of Crozier and his other lieutenants, who had seen much service in the north, his able ships, the Terror and the
XX FOREWORD
Erebus, which had just returned from a voyage of unusual success to the Antarctic, and his magnificent equipment, aroused the enthusiasm of the British to the highest pitch and justified them in their hopes for bringing the wearying struggle for the Northwest Passage to an immediate conclusion.
For more than a year everything prospered with the party. By September, 1846, Franklin had navi- gated the vessels almost within sight of the coast which he had explored twenty years previously, and beyond which the route to Bering Sea was well known. The prize was nearly won when the ships became impris- oned by the ice for the winter, a few miles north of King William Land. The following June Franklin died; the ice continued impenetrable, and did not loosen its grip all that year. In July, 1848, Crozier, who had succeeded to the command, was compelled to abandon the ships, and, with the 105 survivors who were all enfeebled by the three successive winters in the Arctic, started on foot for Back River. How far they got we shall probably never know.
Meanwhile, when Franklin failed to return in 1848 — he was provisioned for only three years — England became alarmed and despatched relief expeditions by sea from the Bering Sea and the Atlantic and by land north from Canada, but all efforts failed to gather news of Franklin till 1854, when Rae fell in with some Eskimo hunters near King William Land, who told him of two ships that were beset some years previous, and of the death of all the party from starvation.
In 1857 Lady Franklin, not content with this bare and indirect report of her husband's fate, sacrificed
FOREWORD xxi
a fortune to equip a searching party to be commanded by Leopold MeClintock, one of the ablest and tough- est travelers over the ice the world has ever known. In 1859 McClintoct verijSed the Eskimos' sad story by the discovery on King William Land of a record dated April, 1848, which told of Franklin's death and of the abandonment of the ships. He also found among the Eskimos silver plate and other relics of the party; elsewhere he saw one of Franklin's boats on a sledge, with two skeletons inside and clothing and chocolate; in another place he found tents and flags; and elsewhere he made the yet more ghastly discov- ery of a bleached human skeleton prone on its face, as though attesting the truthfulness of an Eskimo woman who, claiming to have seen forty of the survivors late in 1848, said "they fell down and died as they walked."
The distinction of being the first to make the Northwest Passage, which Franklin so narrowly missed, fell to Robert McClure (1850-53) and Richard CoUin- son (1850-55), who commanded the two ships sent north through Bering Strait to search for Franklin. McClure accomplished the passage on foot after losing his ship in the ice in Barrow Strait, but CoUinson brought his vessel safely through to England. The Northwest Passage was not again made until Roald Amundsen navigated the tiny Gjoa, a sailing sloop with gasoline engine, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1903-06.
Yankee whalers each year had been venturing further north in Davis Strait and BaflSn Bay and Ber- ing Sea, but America had taken no active part in polar exploration until the sympathy aroused by the tragic
xxii FOREWORD
disappearance of Franklin induced Henry Grinnell and George Peabody to send out the Advance in charge of Elisha Kent Kane to search for Franklin north of Smith Sound. In spite of inexperience, which re- sulted in scurvy, fatal accidents, privations, and the loss of his ship, Kane's achievements (1853-55) were very brilliant. He discovered and entered Kane Basin, which forms the beginning of the passage to the polar ocean, explored both shores of the new sea, and out- lined what has since been called the American route to the Pole.
Sixteen years later (1871) another American, Charles Francis Hall, who had gained much arctic experience by a successful search for additional traces and relics of Franklin (1862-69), sailed the Polaris through Kane Basin and Kennedy Channel, also through Hall Basin and Robeson Channel, which he discovered, into the polar ocean itself, thus completing the exploration of the outlet which Kane had begun. He took his vessel to the then unprecedented (for a ship) latitude of 82° 11'. But Hall's explorations, begun so auspiciously, were suddenly terminated by his tragic death in November from over-exertion caused by a long sledge journey.
When the ice began to move the ensuing year, his party sought to return, but the Polaris was caught in the deadly grip of an impassable ice pack. After two months of drifting, part of the crew, with some Es- kimo men and women, alarmed by the groaning and crashing of the ice during a furious autumn storm, camped on an ice floe which shortly afterwards sep- arated from the ship. For five months, December to April, they lived on this cold and desolate raft, which
FOREWORD xxiii
carried them safely 1300 miles to Labrador, where they were picked up by the Tigress. During the win- ter one of the Eskimo women presented the party with a baby, so that their number had increased dur- ing the arduous experience. Meanwhile the Polaris had been beached on the Greenland shore, and those, remaining on the ship were eventually also rescued.
In 1875 Great Britain began an elaborate attack on the Pole via what was now known as the American route, two ships most lavishly equipped being des- patched under command of George Nares. He suc- ceeded in navigating the Alert fourteen miles further north than the Polaris had penetrated four years pre- vious. Before the winter set in, Aldrich on land reached 82° 48', which was three miles nearer the Pole than Parry's mark made forty-eight years before, and the following spring Markham gained 83° 20' on the polar ocean. Other parties explored several hundred miles of coast line. But Nares was unable to cope with the scurvy, which disabled thirty-six of his men, or with the severe frosts, which cost the life of one man and seriously injured others.
The next expedition to this region was that sent out under the auspices of the United States govern- ment and commanded by Lieutenant — now Major- General — A. W. Greely, U. S. A., to establish at Lady Frankhn Bay the American circumpolar sta- tion (1881). Greely during the two years at Fort Conger carried on extensive explorations of EUesmere Land and the Greenland coast, and by the assistance of his two lieutenants, Lockwood and Brainard, wrested from Great Britain the record which she had
xxiv FOREWORD
held for 300 years. Greely's mark was 83° 24', which bettered the British by four miles. As the rehef ship, promised for 1883, failed to reach him or to land supplies at the prearranged point south of Fort Conger, the winter of 1883-84 was passed in great misery and horror. When help finally came to the camp at Cape Sabine, seven men only were alive.
While these important events were occurring in the vicinity of Greenland, interesting developments were also taking place in that half of the polar area north of Siberia. When in 1867 an American whaler, Thomas Long, reported new land, Wrangell Land, about 500 miles northwest of Bering Strait, many hailed the discovery as that of the edge of a supposed continent extending from Asia across the Pole to Greenland, for the natives around Bering Strait had long excited explorers by their traditions of an icebound big land beyond the horizon. Such extravagant claims were made for the new land that Commander De Long, U. S. N., determined to explore it and use it as a base for gaining the Pole. But his ship, the Jeannette, was caught in the ice (September, 1879) and carried right through the place where the new continent was sup- posed to be. For nearly two years De Long's party remained helpless prisoners until in June, 1881, the ship was crushed and sank, forcing the men to take refuge on the ice floes in mid ocean, 150 miles from the New Siberian Islands. They saved several boats and sledges and a small supply of provisions and water. After incredible hardships and sufiFering, G. W. Mel- ville, the chief engineer, who was in charge of one of the boats, with nine men, reached, on September
FOREWORD XXV
26, a Russian village on the Lena. All the others perished, some being lost at sea, by the foundering of the boats, while others, including De Long, had starved to death after reaching the desolate Siberian coast.
Three years later some Eskimos found washed ashore on the southeast coast of Greenland several broken biscuit boxes and lists of stores, which are said to be in De Long's handwriting. The startling circumstance that these relics in their long drift from where the ship sank had necessarily passed across or very near to the Pole aroused great speculation as to the probable currents in the polar area. Nansen, who had already made the first crossing of Greenland's ice cap, argued that the same current which had guided the relics on their long journey would similarly con- duct a ship. He therefore constructed a unique craft, the Fram, so designed that when hugged by the ice pack she would not be crushed, but would be lifted up and rest on the ice; he provisioned the vessel for five years and allowed her to be frozen in the ice near where the Jeannette had sunk, 78° 50' N., 134° E. (Sep- tember 25, 1893). When at the end of eighteen months the ship had approached 314 miles nearer to the Pole, Nansen and one companion, Johansen, with kayaks, dogs, sledges, and three months' provisions, deliberately left the ship and plunged northward toward the Pole, March 14, 1895. In twenty-three days the two men had overcome one-third of the distance to the Pole, reaching 86° 12'. To continue onward would have meant certain death, so they turned back. When their watches ran down Providence guided them, and the marvelous physique of both sustained them through
xxvi FOREWORD
fog and storm and threatened starvation until they reached Franz Josef Land, late in August. There they built a hut of stones and killed bears for meat for the winter. In May, 1896, they resumed their south- ward journey, when fortunately they met the English- man Jackson, who was exploring the Archipelago.
Meanwhile the Fram, after Nansen left her, con- tinued her tortuous drifting across the upper world. Once she approached as near as 85° 57' to the Pole — only fifteen miles less than Nansen's farthest. At last, in August, 1896, with the help of dynamite, she was freed from the grip of the ice and hurried home, arriving in time to participate in the welcome of Nan- sen, who had landed a few days earlier.
Franz Josef Land, where Nansen was rescued by Jackson, has served as the base of many dashes for the Pole. It was from its northernmost point that the illustrious young member of the royal family of Italy, the Duke of the Abruzzi, launched the party captained by Cagni that won from Nansen for the Latin race the honor of the farthest north, 86° 34', in 1901. From Franz Josef Land also Andree, with two com- panions, sailed in his balloon toward the Pole, in July, 1897, never to be heard from again, except for three message buoys dropped in the sea a few miles from the starting-point.
This land, which consists of numerous islands, had been named after the Emperor of Austria-Hungary by Weyprecht and Payer, leaders of the Austrian- Hungarian polar expedition of 1872-74, who discov- ered and first explored the Archipelago.
The Northeast Passage was first achieved in 1878-
FOREWORD xxvii
1879 by Adolp Erik Nordenskjold. Step by step ener- getic explorers, principally Russian, had been mapping the arctic coasts of Europe and Siberia until practi- cally all the headlands and islands were well defined.
Nordenskjold, whose name was already renowned for important researches in Greenland, Nova Zembla, and northern Asia, in less than two months guided the steam whaler Vega from Tromsoe, Norway, to the most easterly peninsula of Asia. But when barely more than 100 miles from Bering Strait, intervening ice blocked his hopes of passing from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a single season and held him fast for ten months.
No resume of polar exploration is complete without mention of Wm. Barents (1594-96) who, for the Dutch of Amsterdam, made three attempts to accomplish the Northeast Passage around Nova Zembla; Wm. Baffin, who discovered Baffin Bay and Smith Sound (1616); Wm. Scoresby, Sr., who reached by ship 81° 30' N., 19' E. (1806), a record till Parry eclipsed it; Wm. Scoresby, Jr., who changed all ideas of East Greenland (1822) and made valuable scientific obser- vations, and the German North Polar expedition of 1869-70. One of the ships of the latter was crushed in the ice and sank. The crew escaped to an ice floe on which they drifted in the darkness of an arctic winter for 1300 miles along the coast of Greenland to Fred- eriksthaal.
The preceding brief summary gives only an inade- quate conception of the immense treasures of money and lives expended by the nations to explore the north- ern ice world and to attain the apex of the earth.
xxviii FOREWOKD
All efforts to reach the Pole had failed, notwithstand- ing the unlimited sacrifice of gold and energy and blood which had been poured out without stint for nearly four centuries. But the sacrifice had not been with- out compensation. Those who had ventured their lives in the contest had not been actuated solely by the ambition to win a race — to breast the tape first — but to contribute, in Sir John Franklin's words, "to the extension of the bounds of science." The scores of expeditions, in addition to new geographical discov- eries, had brought back a wealth of information about the animals and vegetable life, the winds and currents, deep sea temperatures, soundings, the magnetism of the earth, fossils and rock specimens, tidal data, etc., which have enriched many branches of science and greatly increased the sum of human knowledge.
A brief summer excursion to Greenland in 1886 aroused Robert E. Peary, a civil engineer in the United States Navy, to an interest in the polar problem. Peary a few years previously had been graduated from Bowdoin College second in his class, a position which means unusual mental vigor in an institution which is noted for the fine scholarship and intellect of its alumni. He realized at once that the goal which had eluded so many hundreds of ambitious and daunt- less men could be won only by a new method of attack.
The first arctic problem with which Peary grappled was considered at that time in importance second only to the conquest of the Pole; namely, to determine the insularity of Greenland and the extent of its projec- tion northward. At the very beginning of his first expedition to Greenland, in 1891, he suffered an acci-
FOREWORD xxix
dent which sorely taxed his patience as well as his body, and which is mentioned here as it illustrates the grit and stamina of his moral and physical make-up. As his ship, the Kite, was working its way through the ice fields ofJ the Greenland shore, a cake of ice became wedged in the rudder, causing the wheel to reverse. One of the spokes jammed Peary's leg against the casement, making it impossible to extricate himself until both bones of the leg were broken. The party urged him to return to the United States for the win- ter and to resume his exploration the following year. But Peary insisted on being landed as originally planned at McCormick Bay, stating that the money of his friends had been invested in the project and that he must "make good" to them. The assiduous nursing of Mrs. Peary, aided by the bracing air, so speedily restored his strength that at the ensuing Christmas festivities which he arranged for the Eskimos, he out- raced on snowshoes all the natives and his own men !
In the following May, with one companion, Astrup, he ascended to the summit of the great ice cap which covers the interior of Greenland, 5000 to 8000 feet in elevation, and pushed northward for 500 miles over a region where the foot of man had never trod before, in temperatures ranging from 10° to 50° below zero, to Independence Bay, which he discovered and named, July 4, 1892. Imagine his surprise on descending from the tableland to enter a little valley radiant with gorgeous flowers and alive with murmuring bees, where musk oxen were lazily browsing.
This sledding journey, which he duplicated by an- other equally remarkable crossing of the ice cap three
XXX FOREWORD
years later, defined the northern extension of Greenland and conclusively proved that it is an island instead of a continent extending to the Pole. In boldness of con- ception and brilliancy of results these two crossings of Greenland are unsurpassed in arctic history. The mag- nitude of Peary's feat is better appreciated when it is recalled that Nansen's historic crossing of the island was below the Arctic Circle, 1000 miles south of Peary's latitude, where Greenland is some 250 miles wide.
Peary now turned his attention to the Pole, which lay 396 geographical miles farther north than any man had penetrated on the western hemisphere. To get there by the American route he must break a virgin trail every mile north from Greely's 83° 24'. No one had pioneered so great a distance northward. Markham and others had attained enduring fame by advancing the flag considerably less than 100 miles. Parry had pioneered 150 miles, and Nansen 128 from his ship.
His experiences in Greenland had convinced Peary, if possible more firmly than before, that the only way of surmounting this last and most formidable barrier was to adopt the manner of life, the food, the snowhouses, and the clothing of the Eskimos, who by centuries of experience had learned the most effect- ive method of combating the rigors of arctic weather; to utilize the game of the northland, the arctic reindeer, musk ox, etc., which his explorations had proved comparatively abundant, thus with fresh meat keeping his men fit and good-tempered through the depress- ing winter night; and lastly to train the Eskimo to become his sledging crew.
In his first north polar expedition, which lasted for
FOREWORD xxxi
four years, 1898-1902, Peary failed to get nearer than 343 miles to tlie Pole. Each successive year dense packs of ice blocked the passage to the polar ocean, compelling him to make his base approximately 700 miles from the Pole, or 200 miles south of the head- quarters of Nares, too great a distance from the Pole to be overcome in one short season. During this trying period, by sledging feats which in distance and physical obstacles overcome exceeded the extraordinary records made in Greenland, he explored and mapped hundreds of miles of coast line of Greenland and of the islands west and north of Greenland.
On the next attempt, Peary insured reaching the polar ocean by designing and constructing the Roose- velt, whose resistless frame crushed its way to the desired haven on the shores of the polar sea. From here he made that wonderful march of 1906 to 87° 6', a new world's record. Winds of unusual fury, by open- ing big leads, robbed him of the Pole and nearly of his life.
The story of the last Peary expedition, which resulted in the discovery of the Pole and of the deep ocean surrounding it, is told in the present volume by Commander Peary. The 396 miles from Greely's farthest had been vanquished as follows: 1900, 30 miles; 1902, 23 miles; 1906, 169 miles; 1909, 174 miles.
No better proof of the minute care with which every campaign was prearranged can be given than the fact that, though Peary has taken hundreds of men north with him on his various expeditions, he has brought them all back, and in good health, with the exception of two, who lost their lives in accidents
xxxii FOREWORD
for which the leader was in no wise responsible. What a contrast this record is to the long list of fatalities from disease, frost, shipwreck, and starvation which in the popular mind has made the word arctic synony- mous with tragedy and death.
Thus Robert E. Peary has crowned a life devoted to the exploration of the icy north and to the advance- ment of science by the hard- won discovery of the North Pole. The prize of four centuries of striving yielded at last to the most persistent and scientific attack ever waged against it. Peary's success was made possible by long experience, which gave him a thorough knowl- edge of the difficulties to be overcome, and by an unusual combination of mental and physical power — a resourcefulness which enabled him to find a way to surmount all obstacles, a tenacity and courage which knew no defeat, and a physical endowment such as nature gives to few men.
It has been well said that the glory of Peary's achievement belongs to the world and is shared by all mankind. But we, his fellow-countrymen, who have known how he has struggled these many years against discouragement and scoffing and how he has persevered under financial burdens that would have crushed less stalwart shoulders, specially rejoice that he has "made good at last," and that an American has become the peer of Hudson, Magellan, and Columbus.
Gilbert H. Grosvenor. National Geographic Society, Washington, D. C, U, S. A. August 30, 1910.
STELLAR PROJECTION, SHOWING THE RELATION OF THE POLAR SEA TO THE
VARIOUS CONTINENTS
THE NORTH POLE
CHAPTER I
THE PLAN
IT may not be inapt to liken the attainment of the North Pole to the winning of a game of chess, in which all the various moves leading to a favorable conclusion had been planned in advance, long before the actual game began. It was an old game for me — a game which I had been playing for twenty-three years, with varying fortunes. Always, it is true, I had been beaten, but with every defeat came fresh knowledge of the game, its intricacies, its difficulties, its subtleties, and with every fresh attempt success came a trifle nearer; what had before appeared either impossible, or, at the best, extremely dubious, began to take on an aspect of possibility, and, at last, even of probability. Every defeat was analyzed as to its causes in all their bearings, until it became pos- sible to believe that those causes could in future be guarded against and that, with a fair amount of good fortune, the losing game of nearly a quarter of a century could be turned into one final, complete success.
It is true that with this conclusion many well in- formed and intelligent persons saw fit to diflPer. But many others shared my views and gave without stint their sympathy and their help, and now, in the end,
1
2 THE NORTH POLE
one of my greatest unalloyed pleasures is to know that their confidence, subjected as it was to many trials, was not misplaced, that their trust, their belief in me and in the mission to which the best years of my life have been given, have been abundantly jus- tified.
But while it is true that so far as plan and method are concerned the discovery of the North Pole may fairly be likened to a game of chess, there is, of course, this obvious diflference: in chess, brains are matched against brains. In the quest of the Pole it was a struggle of human brains and persistence against the blind, brute forces of the elements of primeval matter, acting often under laws and impulses almost unknown or but little understood by us, and thus many times seemingly capricious, freaky, not ta be foretold with any degree of certainty. For this reason, while it was possible to plan, before the hour of sailing from New York, the principal moves of the attack upon the frozen North, it was not possible to antici- pate all of the moves of the adversary. Had this been possible, my expedition of 1905-1906, which estab- lished the then "farthest north" record of 87° 6'. would have reached the Pole. But everybody familiar with the records of that expedition knows that its complete success was frustrated by one of those unfore- seetn moves of our great adversary — in that a season of unusually violent and continued winds disrupted the polar pack, separating me from my supporting parties, with insufiicient supplies, so that, when almost within striking distance of the goal, it was necessary to turn., back because of the imminent peril of starvation.
THE PLAN 3
When victory seemed at last almost within reach, I was blocked by a move which could not possibly have been foreseen, and which, when I encountered it, I was helpless to meet. And, as is well known, I and those with me were not only checkmated but very nearly lost our lives as well.
But all that is now as a tale that is told. This time it is a different and perhaps a more inspiring story, though the records of gallant defeat are not without their inspiration. And the point which it seems fit to make in the beginning is that success crowned the efforts of years because strength came from repeated defeats, wisdom from earlier error, experience from inexperience, and determination from them all.
Perhaps, in view of the striking manner in which the final event bore out the prophecies that I had made, it may be of interest to compare in some detail the plan of campaign that was announced, over two months before the Roosevelt sailed from New York on her final voyage to the North, with the manner in which that campaign was actually executed.
Early in May, 1908, in a published statement I sketched the following plan:
"I shall use the same ship, the Roosevelt; shall leave New York early in July; shall follow the same route north, via Sydney, C. B., Strait of Belle Isle, Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, and Smith Sound; shall use the same methods, equipments, and supplies; shall have a minimum party of white men, supplemented with Eskimos; shall take on these Eskimos and dogs in the Whale Sound region as before, and shall endeavor to force my ship to the same or similar winter quar-
4 THE NORTH POLE
ters on the north shore of Grant Land as in the winter of 1905-1906.
"The sledge march will begin as before in Febru- ary, but my route will be modified as follows: First, I shall follow the north coast of Grant Land as far west as Cape Columbia, and possibly beyond, instead of leaving this land at Point Moss as I did before.
"Second, leaving the land, my course will be more west of north than before, in order to counteract or allow for the easterly set of the ice between the north coast of Grant Land and the Pole, discovered on my last expedition. Another essential modification will be a more rigid massing of my sledge divisions en route, in order to prevent the possibility of a portion of the party being separated from the rest by the movement of the ice, with insufficient supplies for a protracted advance, as happened on the last expedition.
"There is no doubt in my mind that this 'big lead' (a lane of open water), encountered in both my upward and return marches in my last expedition, is an essentially permanent feature of this part of the Arctic Ocean. I have little doubt of my ability to make this 'lead,' instead of the north coast of Grant Land, my point of departure with fully loaded sledges. If this is done it will shorten the route to the Pole by nearly one hundred miles and distinctly simplify the proposition.
"On the return march in the next expedition I shall probably do voluntarily what I did involuntarily last time; that is, retreat upon the north coast of Green- land (a course diagonally loith the set of the ice) instead of attempting to come back to the north coast of Grant
THE PLAN 5
Land (diagonally against the set of the ice). An adjunct of this program will probably be the estab- lishment of a depot well up the north coast of Green- land by the first of the supporting parties returning to the ship."
The main features of this program I summarized as follows:
"First, the utilization of the Smith Sound or 'Amer- ican' route. This must be accepted to-day as the best of all possible routes for a determined, aggressive attack upon the Pole. Its advantages are a land base one hundred miles nearer the Pole than is to be found at any other point of the entire periphery of the Arctic Ocean, a long stretch of coast line upon which to return, and a safe and (to me) well-known line of retreat independent of assistance, in the event of any mishap to the ship.
"Second, the selection of a winter base which com- mands a wider range of the central polar sea and its surrounding coasts than any other possible base in the Arctic regions. Cape Sheridan is practically equi- distant from Crocker Land, from the remaining unknown portion of the northeast coast of Greenland, and from my 'Nearest the Pole' of 1906.
"Third, the use of sledges and Eskimo dogs. Man and the Eskimo dog are the only two machines capa- ble of such adjustment as to meet the wide demands and contingencies of Arctic travel. Airships, motor cars, trained polar bears, etc., are all premature, except as a means of attracting public attention.
"Fourth, the use of the hyperborean aborigine (the Whale Sound Eskimo) for the rank and file of the sledge
6 THE NORTH POLE
party. It seems unnecessary to enlarge upon the fact that the men whose heritage is life and work in that very region must present the best obtainable material for the personnel of a serious Arctic party. This is my program. The object of the work is the clear- ing up, or at least the fixing in their general propor- tions, of the remaining large problems in the American segment of the polar regions and the securing for the United States of that great world trophy which has been the object of effort and emulation among practi- cally all the civilized nations of the world for the last three centuries."
The details of this plan have been here set forth so explicitly because the faithfulness with which they were carried out constitutes a record which is perhaps unique in the annals of Arctic exploration. Compare this scheme, if you please, with the manner of its execution. As had been planned, the expedi- tion sailed from New York early in July, 1908, July 6, to be exact. It sailed from Sydney July 17, from Etah August 18, and arrived at Cape Sheridan, the winter quarters of the Roosevelt, on September 5, within a quarter of an hour of the same time it had arrived at the same spot three years before. The winter was occupied in hunting, in various side journeys, in making our sledging equipment, and in moving sup- plies from the Roosevelt along the northern shore of Grant Land to Cape Columbia, which was to be our point of departure from the land on our drive for the Pole itself.
The sledge divisions left the Roosevelt from February 15 to 22, 1909, rendezvoused at Cape Columbia, and
THE PLAN 7
on March 1 the expedition left Cape Columbia, head- ing across the Polar Ocean for the Pole. The 84th parallel was crossed on March 18, the 86th on March 23, the Italian record was passed the next day, the 88th parallel on April 2, the 89th on April 4, and the North Pole was reached on April 6 at ten o'clock in the morning. I spent thirty hours at the Pole with Matt Henson, Ootah, the faithful Eskimo who had gone with me in 1906 to 87° 6', the then "farthest north," and three other Eskimos who had also been with me on previous expeditions. The six of us left the much desired "ninety north" on April 7 on the return journey and reached land at Cape Columbia again on April 23.
It will be noted that while the journey from Cape Columbia to the Pole consumed thirty-seven days, (though only twenty-seven marches) we returned from the Pole to Cape Columbia in only sixteen days. The extraordinary speed of the return journey is to be accounted for by the fact that we merely had to retrace our old trail instead of making a new one, and because we were fortunate in encountering no delays. Excel- lent conditions of ice and weather also contributed, not to mention the fact that the exhilaration of suc- cess lent wings to our sorely battered feet. But Ootah, the Eskimo, had his own explanation. Said he: "The devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife, or we should never have come back so easily."
It will be noted in this comparison, that practically the only feature of the plan from which essential deviation was made was in returning to Cape Columbia on the coast of Grant Land instead of further east-
8 THE NORTH POLE
ward to the northern coast of Greenland as I had done in 1906. This change was made for excellent reasons, which will be made clear in their proper place. Upon this record there is only one shadow — a tragic one indeed. I refer, of course, to the lamentable death of Prof. Ross G. Marvin, who was drowned on April 10, four days after the Pole had been reached, forty- five miles north of Cape Columbia, while returning from 86° 38' north, in command of one of the support- ing parties. 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 faith- fulness 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 with- out 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 confi- dence which years of acquaintance had taught them to repose in me. We could certainly not have suc- ceeded 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. It may be that we could not have suc- ceeded without the improved form of sledge which I was able to construct and which, combining in its
THE PLAN 9
construction, strength, lightness, and ease of trac- tion, made the heavy task of the dogs far easier than it would otherwise have been. It may even be that we should have failed had it not been for so simple a thing as an improved form of water boiler which I was fortunate enough to have hit upon. By its aid we were able to melt ice and make tea in ten minutes. On our previous journeys this process had taken an hour. Tea is an imperative necessity on such a driv- ing journey, and this little invention saved one and one-half hours in each day while we were struggling toward the Pole on that journey when time was the very essence of success.
Success crowned the work, it is true, but, for all that, it is a genuine pleasure to reflect that even had we failed, I should have had nothing to reproach myself with in the way of neglect. Every possible contingency that years of experience had taught me to expect was provided for, every weak spot guarded, every precaution taken. I had spent a quarter of a century playing the Arctic game. I was fifty-three years old, an age beyond which, perhaps, with the one exception of Sir John Franklin, no man had ever attempted to prosecute work in the Arctic regions. I was a little past the zenith of my strength, a little lacking, perhaps, in the exuberant elasticity and elan of more youthful years, a little past the time when most men begin to leave the strenuous things to the younger generation; but these drawbacks were fully balanced perhaps by a trained and hardened endurance, a per- fect knowledge of myself, and of how to conserve my strength. I knew it was my last game upon the great
10 THENORTHPOLE
Arctic chess-board. It was win this time or be for- ever defeated.
The lure of the North ! It is a strange and a power- ful thing. More than once I have come back from the great frozen spaces, battered and worn and baffled, sometimes maimed, telling myself that I had made my last journey thither, eager for the society of my kind, the comforts of civilization and the peace and serenity of home. But somehow, it was never many months before the old restless feeling came over me. Civili- zation began to lose its zest for me. I began to long for the great white desolation, the battles with the ice and the gales, the long, long arctic night, the long, long arctic day, the handful of odd but faithful Eskimos who had been my friends for years, the silence and the vastness of the great, white lonely North. And back I went accordingly, time after time, until, at last, my dream of years came true.
CHAPTER II
PEEPAEATIONS
A GREAT many persons have asked when I first conceived the idea of trying to reach the North Pole. That question is hard to answer. It is impossible to point to any day or month and to say, "Then the idea first came to me." The North Pole dream was a gradual and almost invol- untary evolution from earlier work in which it had no part. My interest in arctic work dates back to 1885, when as a young man my imagination was stirred by reading accounts of explorations by Nordenskjold in the interior of Greenland. These studies took full possession of my mind and led to my undertaking, entirely alone, a summer trip to Greenland in the following year. Somewhere in my subconscious self, even so long ago as that, there may have been gradu- ally dawning a hope that I might some day reach the Pole itself. Certain it is, the lure of the North, the "arctic fever," as it has been called, entered my veins then, and I came to have a feeling of fatality, a feeling that the reason and intent of my existence was the solution of the mystery of the frozen fast- nesses of the Arctic.
But the actual naming of the Pole as the object of an expedition did not materialize until 1898, when the first expedition of the Peary Arctic Club went north
11
12 THENORTHPOLE
with the avowed intention of reaching ninety north — if it were possible. Since then I have made six dif- ferent attempts, in six different years, to reach the coveted point. The sledging season, when such a "dash" is possible, extends from about the middle of February until the middle of June. Before the middle of February there is not sufficient light, and after the mid- dle of June there is likely to be too much open water.
During these six former attempts made by me to win the prize, the successive latitudes of 83° 52', 84° 17', and 87° 6' were attained, the last giving back to the United States the record of "farthest north," which had for a time been wrested from it by Nansen, and from him in turn by the Duke of the Abruzzi.
In writing the story of this last and successful expedition, it is necessary to go back to my return from the former expedition of 1905-6. Before the Roosevelt entered port, and before I reached New York, I was planning for another journey into the North, which, if I could obtain the essential funds — and retained my health — I intended to get under way as soon as possible. It is a principle in physics that a ponderable body moves along the line of least resistance; but that principle does not seem to apply to the will of man. Every obstacle which has ever been placed in my way, whether physical or mental, whether an open "lead" or the opposition of human circumstances, has ultimately acted as a spur to the determination to accomplish the fixed purpose of my life — if I lived long enough.
On my return in 1906, great encouragement was received from Mr. Jesup, the president of the Peary
PREPARATIONS 13
Arctic Club, who had contributed so generously to my former expeditions, and in whose honor I had named the northernmost point of land in the world, lati- tude 83° 39', Cape Morris K. Jesup. He said, in so many words, that he would "see me through" on another journey north. His promise meant that I should not have to beg all the money in small sums from a more or less reluctant world.
The winter of 1906-7 and the spring of 1907 were devoted to presenting to the world the results of the previous undertaking, and to the work of interesting friends as far as possible in another expedition. We had the ship, which had cost about $100,000 in 1905; but $75,000 more was needed for new boilers and other changes, for equipment and for operating ex- penses. While the bulk of the necessary funds was furnished by the members and friends of the Peary Arctic Club, a very considerable amount came from all parts of the country in contributions ranging from $100 to $5 and even $1. These donations were not less appreciated than the big ones, because they showed the friendliness and the interest of the givers, and demonstrated to me the general recognition of the fact that while the expedition was financed by private individuals, it was in spirit a national affair.
At last the funds, actual and promised, were in such amount as to authorize our contracting for new boilers for the Roosevelt, and ordering certain modi- fications in her structure which would fit her more effectively for another voyage: such as enlarging the quarters forward for the crew, adding a lug sail to
14 THENORTHPOLE
the foremast, and changing the interior arrangements somewhat. The general features of the ship had al- ready proved themselves so well adapted for the pur- pose for which she was intended that no alteration in them was required.
Experience had taught me how to figure on delays in the North; but the exasperating delays of ship contractors at home had not yet entered into my scheme of reckoning. Contracts for this work on the Roosevelt were signed in the winter, and called for the completion of the ship by July 1, 1907. Re- peated oral promises were added to contractual agree- ments that the work should certainly be done on that date; but, as a matter of fact, the new boilers were not completed and installed until September, thus absolutely negativing any possibility of going north in the summer of 1907.
The failure of the contractors to live up to their word, with the consequent delay of a year, was a serious blow to me. It meant that I must attack the problem one year older; it placed the initiation of the expe- dition further in the future, with all the possible con- tingencies that might occur within a year; and it meant the bitterness of hope deferred.
On the day when it became lamentably clear that I positively could not sail north that year, I felt much as I had felt when I had been obliged to turn back from 87° 6', with only the empty bauble "farthest north," instead of the great prize which I had almost strained my life out to achieve. Fortunately I did not know that Fate was even then clenching her fist for yet another and more crushing blow.
PREPARATIONS 15
While trying to possess my soul in patience despite the unjustified delay, there came the heaviest calamity encountered in all my arctic work — the death of my friend, Morris K. Jesup. Without his promised help the future expedition seemed impossible. It may be said with perfect truth that to him, more than to any other one man, had been due the inception and the continuance of the Peary Arctic Club, and the success of the work thus far. In him we lost not only a man who was financially a tower of strength in the work, but I lost an intimate personal friend in whom I had absolute trust. For a time it seemed as if this were the end of everything; that all the effort and money put into the project had been wasted. Mr. Jesup's death, added to the delay caused by the default of the contractors, seemed at first an absolutely para- lyzing defeat.
Nor was it much help that there was no lack of well-meaning persons who were willing to assure me that the year's delay and Mr. Jesup's death were warnings indicating that I should never find the Pole.
Yet, when I gathered myself together and faced the situation squarely, I realized that the project was something too big to die; that it never, in the great scheme of things, would be allowed to fall through. This feeling carried me past many a dead center of fatigue and utter ignorance as to where the rest of the money for the expedition was to be obtained. The end of the winter and the beginning of the spring of 1908 were marked by more than one blue day for every- body concerned in the success of the expedition.
16 THENORTHPOLE
Repairs and changes in the Roosevelt had exhausted all the funds in the Club's treasury. We still needed the money for purchase of supplies and equipment, pay of crew, and running expenses. Mr. Jesup was gone; the country had not recovered from the finan- cial crash of the previous fall; every one was poor.
Then from this lowest ebb the tide turned. Mrs, Jesup, in the midst of her distracting grief, sent a munificent check which enabled us to order essential items of special supplies and equipment which re- quired time for preparation.
General Thomas H. Hubbard accepted the presi- dency of the Club, and added a second large check to his already generous contribution. Henry Parish, Anton A. Raven, Herbert L. Bridgman — the "Old Guard" of the Club — who had stood shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Jesup from the inception of the organization, stood firm now to keep the organization of the Club intact; other men came forward, and the crisis was past. But the money still came hard. It was the subject of my every waking thought; and even in sleep it would not let me rest, but followed with mocking and elusive dreams. It was a dogged, dull, desperate time, with the hopes of my whole life rising and falling day by day.
Then came an unexpected rift in the clouds, the receipt of a very friendly letter from Mr. Zenas Crane, the great paper manufacturer, of Massachusetts, who had contributed to a previous expedition, but whom I had never met. Mr. Crane wrote that he was deeply interested; that the project was one which should have the support of every one who cared for big things and
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PROFEHSOH KOSH G. 1IAH\1N ASSISTANT
GEORGE HORUl', ASSISTANT
DOXALD l;. MACMILLAN ASSISTANT
DR. J. \V. GOUDSELL, SURGEON
PREPARATIONS 17
for the prestige of the country, and he asked me to come to see him, if I could make it convenient. I could. I did. He gave a check for $10,000 and promised to give more if it should be required. The promise was kept, and a little later he accepted the vice-presidency of the Club. What this $10,000 meant to me at that time would need the pen of Shakespere to make entirely clear.
From this time on the funds came in slowly but steadily, to an amount that, combined with rigid economy and thorough knowledge of what was and what was not needed, permitted the purchase of the necessary supplies and equipment.
During all this time of waiting, a small flood of "crank" letters poured in from all over the country. There was an incredibly large number of persons who were simply oozing with inventions and schemes, the adoption of which would absolutely insure the discovery of the Pole. Naturally, in view of the contemporaneous drift of inventive thought, flying machines occupied a high place on the list. Motor cars, guaranteed to run over any kind of ice, came next. One man had a submarine boat that he was sure would do the trick, though he did not explain how we were to get up through the ice after we had traveled to the Pole beneath it.
Still another chap wanted to sell us a portable sawmill. It was his enterprising idea that this should be set up on the shore of the central polar sea and that I was to use it for shaping lumber with which to build a wooden tunnel over the ice of the polar sea all the way to the Pole. Another chap proposed that a central soup station be installed where the other man would
18 THENORTHPOLE
have set up his sawmill, and that a series of hose lines be run thence over the ice so that the outlying parties struggling over the ice to the Pole could be warmed and invigorated with hot soup from the central station.
Perhaps the gem of the whole collection was fur- nished by an inventor who desired me to play the part of the "human cannon-ball." He would not disclose the details of his invention, apparently lest I should steal it, but it amounted to this: If I could get the machine up there, and could get it pointed in exactly the right direction, and could hold on long enough, it would shoot me to the Pole without fail. This was surely a man of one idea. He was so intent on getting me shot to the Pole that he seemed to be utterly care- less of what happened to me in the process of landing there or of how I should get back.
Many friends of the expedition who could not send cash sent useful articles of equipment, for the comfort or amusement of the men. Among such articles were a billiard table, various games, and innumerable books. A member of the expedition having said to a newspaper man, a short time before the Roosevelt sailed, that we had not much reading matter, the ship was deluged with books, magazines, and newspapers, which came literally in wagon loads. They were strewn in every cabin, in every locker, on the mess tables, on the deck, — everywhere. But the generosity of the public was very gratifying, and there was much good reading among the books and magazines.
When the time came for the Roosevelt to sail, we had everything which we absolutely needed in the way of
PREPARATIONS 19
equipment, including boxes of Christmas candy, one for every man on board, a gift from Mrs. Peary.
It is a great satisfaction to me that this whole expedition, together with the ship, was American from start to finish. We did not purchase a Newfoundland or Norwegian sealer and fix it over for our purposes, as in the case of other expeditions. The Roosevelt was built of American timber in an American shipyard, engined by an American firm with American metal, and constructed on American designs. Even the most trivial items of supplies were of American manufacture. As regards personnel almost the same can be said. Though Captain Bartlett and the crew were Newfound- landers, the Newfoundlanders are our next-door neigh- bors and essentially our first cousins. This expedition went north in an American-built ship, by the Ameri- can route, in command of an American, to secure if possible an American trophy. The Roosevelt was built with a knowledge of the requirements of arctic navigation, gained by the experience of an American on six former voyages into the Arctic.
I was extremely fortunate in the personnel of this last and successful expedition, for in choosing the men I had the membership of the previous expedition to draw from. A season in the Arctic is a great test of character. One may know a man better after six months with him beyond the Arctic circle than after a lifetime of acquaintance in cities. There is a something — I know not what to call it — in those frozen spaces, that brings a man face to face with himself and with his companions; if he is a man, the man comes out; and, -if he is a cur, the cur shows as quickly.
20 THENORTHPOLE
First and most valuable of all was Bartlett, master of the Roosevelt, whose ability had been proved on the expedition of 1905-6^ Robert A. Bartlett, "Captain Bob," as we affectionately call him, comes from a family of hardy Newfoundland navigators, long asso- ciated with arctic work. He was thirty-three when we last sailed north. Blue-eyed, brown-haired, stocky, and steel-muscled Bartlett, whether at the wheel of the Roosevelt hammering a passage through the floes, or tramping and stumbling over the ice pack, with the sledges, or smoothing away the troubles of the crew, was always the same — tireless, faithful, enthusi- astic, true as the compass.
Matthew A. Henson, my negro assistant, has been with me in one capacity or another since my second trip to Nicaragua, in 1887. I have taken him with me on each and all of my northern expeditions, except the first, in 188^, and almost without exception on each of my "farthest" sledge trips. This position I have given him, primarily because of his adaptability and fitness for the work; secondly on account of his loyalty. He has shared all the physical hardships of my arctic work. He is now about forty years old, and can handle a sledge better, and is probably a better dog-driver, than any other man hving, except some of the best of the Eskimo hunters themselves.
Ross G. Marvin, my secretary and assistant, who lost his life on the expedition; George A. Wardwell, chief engineer; Percy, the steward; and Murphy, the boatswain, had all been with me before. Dr. Wolf, who was the surgeon of the expedition of 1905-6, had made professional arrangements which prevented him
PKEPARATIONS 21
from going north again, and his place was taken by Dr. J. W. Goodsell, of New Kensington, Pa.
Dr. Goodsell is a descendant of an old English family that has had representatives in America for two hundred and fifty years. His great grandfather was a soldier in Washington's army when Cornwallis surrendered, and his father, George H. Goodsell, spent many adventurous years at sea and fought through the Civil War in the Union army. Dr. Goodsell was born near Leechburg, Pa., in 1873. He received his medical degree from Pulte Medical College, Cincin- nati, 0., and has since practised medicine at New Kensington, Pa., specializing in clinical microscopy. He is a member of the Homeopathic Medical Society of Pennsylvania and of the American Medical Associa- tion. At the time of his departure on the expedition he was president of the Alleghany Valley Medical Society. His publications include "Direct Microscopic Examination as Applied to Preventive Medicine and the Newer Therapy" and "Tuberculosis and Its Diagnosis."
As the scope of this expedition was wider than that of the previous ones, contemplating more extensive tidal observations for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and, if conditions permitted, lateral sledge trips east to Cape Morris K. Jesup and west to Cape Thomas Hubbard, I enlarged my field party, as it may be called, and added to the expedition Mr. Donald B. MacMillan, of Worcester Academy, and Mr. George Borup, of New York City.
MacMillan is the son of a sea captain and was born at Provincetown, Mass., in 1874. His father's ship
22 THENORTHPOLE
sailed from Boston nearly thirty years ago and was never heard from again. His mother died the next year, leaving the son with four other young children. When MacMillan was fifteen years old he went to live with his sister at Freeport, Me., where he was prepared in the local high school to enter Bowdoin College, being graduated from my alma mater in 1898. Like Borup, MacMillan excelled in undergraduate athletics, played half-back on the Bowdoin 'varsity eleven and won a place on the track team. From 1898 to 1900 he was principal of the Levi Hall School at North Gorham, Me., going thence to become head master of the Latin Department at Swarthmore Preparatory School of Swarthmore, Pa. Here he remained until 1903 when he became instructor in Mathematics and Physical Training at Worcester Academy, Mass., where he remained until he went north with the expe- dition. He holds the Humane Society's certificate for saving a number of lives some years ago, an exploit which it is difficult to induce him to talk about.
George Borup was born at Sing Sing, N. Y., Sept. 2, 1885. He prepared for Yale at Groton School, where he spent the years from 1889 to 1903, and was grad- uated from Yale in 1907. At college he was prominent in athletics, was a member of the Yale track and golf teams, and made a reputation as a wrestler. After his graduation he spent a year as a special apprentice in the machine shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad Com- pany at Altoona, Pa.
To Captain Bartlett I left the selection of his officers and men, with the single exception of the chief engineer.
PREPARATIONS 23
The personnel of the expedition, as finally com- pleted when the Roosevelt left Sydney on the 17th of July, 1908, included twenty -two men, as follows: Robert E. Peary, commanding expedition; Robert A. Bartlett, master of the Roosevelt; George A. Ward- well, chief engineer; Dr. J. W. Goodsell, surgeon; Prof. Ross G. Marvin, assistant; Donald B. MacMillan, assistant; George Borup, assistant; Matthew A. Henson, assistant; Thomas Gushue, mate; John Murphy, boat- swain; Banks Scott, second engineer; Charles Percy, steward; William Pritchard, cabin boy; John Connors, John Coady, John Barnes, Denis Murphy, George Percy, seamen; James Bently, Patrick Joyce, Patrick Skeans, John Wiseman, firemen.
The supplies for the expedition were abundant in quantity, but not numerous in variety. Years of ex- perience had given me the knowledge of exactly what I wanted and how much of it. The absolutely essential supplies for a serious arctic expedition are few, but they should be of the best quality. Luxuries have no place in arctic work.
Supplies for an arctic expedition naturally divide themselves into two classes: those for the sledge work in the field; those for the ship, going and returning, and in winter quarters. The supplies for sledge work are of a special character, and have to be prepared and packed in such a way as to secure the maximum of nourishment with the minimum of weight, of bulk, and of tare (that is, the weight of the packing). The essentials, and the only essentials, needed in a serious arctic sledge journey, no matter what the season, the temperature, or the duration of the journey
24 THENORTHPOLE
— whether one month or six — are four: pemmican, tea, ship's biscuit, condensed milk. Pemmican is a prepared and condensed food, made from beef, fat and dried fruits. It may be regarded as the most concentrated and satisfying of all meat foods, and is absolutely indispensable in protracted arctic sledge journeys.
The food for use on shipboard and in winter quarters comprises standard commercial supplies. My expedi- tions have been perhaps peculiar in omitting one item
— and that is meat. For this important addition to arctic food I have always depended on the country itself. Meat is the object of the hunting expeditions of the winter months — not sport, as some have fancied.
Here are a few of the items and figures on our list of supplies for the last expedition: Flour, 16,000 pounds; coffee, 1,000 pounds; tea, 800 pounds; sugar, 10,000 pounds; kerosene, 3,500 gallons; bacon, 7,000 pounds; biscuit, 10,000 pounds; condensed milk, 100 cases; pemmican, 30,000 pounds; dried fish, 3,000 pounds; smoking tobacco, 1,000 pounds.
CHAPTER III
THE STAHT
FROM her berth beside the recreation pier at the foot of East Twenty-fourth Street, New York, the Roosevelt steamed north on the last expe- dition, about one o'clock in the afternoon of July 6, 1908. As the ship backed out into the river, a cheer that echoed over Blackwell's Island went up from the thousands who had gathered on the piers to see us off; while the yacht fleet, the tugboats and the ferry- boats tooted their good wishes. It was an interesting coincidence that the day on which we started for the coldest spot on earth was about the hottest which New York had known for years. There were thirteen deaths from heat and seventy-two heat prostrations recorded in Greater New York for that day, while we were bound for a region where sixty below zero is not an excep- tional temperature.
We started with about one hundred guests of the Peary Arctic Club on board the Roosevelt, and several members of the Club, including the president, General Thomas H. Hubbard; the vice-president, Zenas Crane; and the secretary and treasurer, Herbert L. Bridg- man.
As we steamed up the river the din grew louder and louder, the whistles of the power-houses and the factories adding their salutations to the tooting of
25
26 THENORTHPOLE
the river craft. At Blackwell's Island many of the inmates were out in force to wave us their good-bys, and their farewells were not the less appreciated because given by men whom society had placed under restraint for society's good. Anyhow, they wished us well. I hope they are all enjoying liberty now, and, what is better, deserving it. Near Fort Totten we passed President Roosevelt's naval yacht, the Mayflower, and her small gun roared out a parting salute, while the officers and men waved and cheered. Surely no ship ever started for the end of the earth with more heart-stirring farewells than those which followed the Roosevelt.
Just before we reached the Stepping Stone Light, Mrs. Peary, the members and guests of the Peary Arctic Club, and myself were transferred to the tug Narkeeta and returned to New York. The ship went on to Oyster Bay, Long Island, the summer home of President Roosevelt, where Mrs. Peary and I were to lunch with the President and Mrs. Roosevelt the fol- lowing day.
Theodore Roosevelt is to me the most intensely vital man, and the biggest man, America has ever produced. He has that vibrant energy and enthu- siasm which is the basis of all real power and accomplishment. When it came to christening the ship by whose aid it was hoped to fight our way toward the most inaccessible spot on earth, the name of Roosevelt seemed to be the one and inevitable choice. It held up as ideals before the expedition those very qualities of strength, insistence, persistence, and triumph over obstacles, which have made tte
THESTART 27
twenty-sixth President of the United States so great.
In the course of that last luncheon at Sagamore Hill, President Roosevelt reiterated what he had said to me so many times before, that he was earnestly and profoundly interested in my work, and that he believed I would succeed if success were possible.
After luncheon the President and Mrs. Roosevelt, with their three sons, came on board the ship with Mrs. Peary and me. Mr. Bridgman was on deck, to welcome them in the name of the Peary Arctic Club. The Roosevelt party remained on board about an hour; the President inspected every part of the ship, shook hands with every member of the expedition present, including the crew, and even made the acquaintance of my Eskimo dogs, North Star and the others, which had been brought down from one of my islands in Casco Bay, on the coast of Maine. As he was going over the rail, I said to him: "Mr. President, I shall put into this effort everything there is in me — physical, mental, and moral." And he replied, "I believe in you, Peary, and I believe in your success — if it is within the possibility of man."
The Roosevelt stopped at New Bedford for the whale-boats, and also made a short stop at Eagle Island, our summer home on the coast of Maine, to take aboard the massive, steel-bound spare rudder, which we carried as a precaution against disaster in the coming battle royal with the ice. On the former expedition, when we had no extra rudder, we could have used two. But, as things turned out this time, when we had the extra rudder we had no occasion to use it.
28 THENORTHPOLE
Our departure from Eagle Island was timed so that Mrs. Peary and I should arrive by train at Sydney, Cape Breton, the same day as the ship. I have a very tender feeling for the picturesque little town of Syd- ney. Eight times have I headed north from there on my arctic quest. My recollections of the town date back to 1886, when I went there with Captain Jackman in the whaler Eagle, and lay at the coal wharves for a day or two filling the ship with coal for my very first northern voyage, the summer cruise to Greenland, during which journey the "arctic fever" got a grip upon me from which I have never recovered.
Since that time the town has grown from a little settlement of one decent hotel and a few houses, to a prosperous city with seventeen thousand inhabitants, many industries, and one of the largest steel plants in the western hemisphere. My reason for choosing Sydney as a starting point was because of the coal mines there. It is the place nearest to the arctic regions where a ship can fill with coal.
My feelings, on leaving Sydney this last time, though difficult to describe, were different from those at the start of any previous expedition. I felt no uneasiness once the lines were cast off, for I knew that everything had been done which could be done to insure success, and that every essential item of supplies was on board. On former journeys I had sometimes felt anxiety, but through the whole of this last expedi- tion I allowed nothing to worry me. Perhaps this feeling of surety was because every possible contin- gency had been discounted, perhaps because the set-
THESTART 29
backs and knock-out blows received in the past had dulled my sense of danger.
The Roosevelt having coaled at Sydney, we crossed the bay to North Sydney to take on some last items of supplies. When we started to leave the wharf over there we discovered that we were aground, and had to wait an hour or so for the tide to rise. In our efforts to move the ship, one of the whale-boats was crushed between the davits and the side of the pier; but after eight arctic campaigns one does not regard a little accident like that as a bad omen.
We got away from North Sydney about half past three in the afternoon of July 17, in glittering golden sunshine. As we passed the signal station," they sig- naled us, "Good-by and a prosperous voyage"; we replied, "Thank you," and dipped our colors.
A little tug, which we had chartered to take our guests back to Sydney, followed the Roosevelt as far as Low Point Light, outside the harbor; there she ran alongside, and Mrs. Peary and the children, and Colo- nel Borup, with two or three other friends, transferred to her. As my five-year-old son, Robert, kissed me good-by, he said, "Come back soon, dad." With reluctant eyes I watched the little tug grow smaller and smaller in the blue distance. Another farewell — and there had been so many ! Brave, noble little woman! You have borne with me the brunt of all my arctic work. But, somehow, this parting was less sad than any which had gone before. I think that we both felt it was the last.
By the time the stars came out, the last items of supplies taken on at North Sydney were stowed, and
30 THENORTHPOLE
the decks at least were unusually free for an arctic ship just starting northward — all but the quarter- deck, which was piled high with bags of coal.
Inside the cabins, however, all was litter and con- fusion. My room was filled so full of things — instru- ments, books, furniture, presents from friends, sup- plies, et cetera — that there was no space for me. Since my return some one has asked me if I played on the pianola in my cabin that first day at sea. I did not, for the excellent reason that I could not get near it. The thrilling experiences of those first few hours were mainly connected with excavating a space some six feet long by two feet broad in the region of my bunkjwhere I could lay myself down to sleep when the time came.
I have a special affection for my little cabin on the Roosevelt. Its size and the comfort of the bath- room adjoining were the only luxuries which I allowed myself. The cabin is plain, of matched yellow pine, painted white. Its conveniences are the evolution of long experience in the arctic regions. It has a wide built-in bunk, an ordinary writing desk, several book units, a wicker chair, an ofiice chair, and a chest of drawers, these latter items of furniture being Mrs. Peary's contributions to my comfort. Hanging over the pianola was a photograph of Mr. Jesup, and on the side wall was one of President Roosevelt, auto- graphed. Then there were the flags, the silk one made by Mrs. Peary, which I had carried for years, the flag of my college fraternity. Delta Kappa Epsilon, the flag of the Navy League, and the peace flag of the Daughters of the American Revolution. There
THESTART 31
was also a photograph of our home on Eagle Island, and a fragrant pillow made by my daughter Marie from the pine needles of that island.
The pianola, a gift from my friend H. H. Benedict, had been my pleasant companion on my previous voyage, and again on this it proved one of our great- est sources of pleasure. There were at least two hun- dred pieces of music in my collection, but the strains of "Faust" rolled out over the Arctic Ocean more often than any other. Marches and songs were also pop- ular, with the "Blue Danube" waltz; and sometimes, when the spirits of my party were at rather a low ebb, we had ragtime pieces, which they especially enjoyed.
There was also in my cabin a fairly complete, arctic library — absolutely complete in regard to all the later voyages. These books, with a large assort- ment of novels and magazines, could be depended upon to relieve the tedium of the long arctic night, and very useful they were found for that purpose. Sitting up late at night means something when the night is some months long.
On the second day out the carpenter began the repairs on the crushed whale-boat, using lumber which we carried for such purposes. The sea was rough, and the waist of the ship was awash nearly all day. My companions were gradually getting settled in their cabins; and if any man had qualms of homesick- ness, he kept them to himself.
Our living quarters were in the after deckhouse, which extends the full width of the Roosevelt from a little aft of the mainmast to the mizzenmast. In the center is the engine-room, with the skylight and the
32 THENORTHPOLE
uptake from the boilers, and on either side are the cabins and the messrooms. My own cabin occupied the starboard corner aft; forward from this was Hen- son's room, the starboard messroom, and in the for- ward starboard corner Surgeon Goodsell's room. On the port side aft was Captain Bartlett's room, occupied by himself and Marvin, and forward from this in suc- cession the cabin of the chief engineer and his assist- ant, the cabin of Percy, the steward, and the cabin of MacMillan and Borup; then the mate and the boat- swain were in the forward port corner of the deckhouse, next the port messroom of the junior officers. The starboard mess comprised Bartlett, Dr. Goodsell, Marvin, MacMillan, Borup, and myself.
I shall not dwell at great length upon the first stage of the journey from Sydney to Cape York, Greenland, for the reason that is only a pleasant sum- mer cruise at that season of the year, such as any fair- sized yacht may undertake without peril or adventure; and there are more interesting and unusual things to write about. In passing through the Straits of Belle Isle, "the graveyard of ships," where there is always danger of encountering icebergs in the fog, or being swung upon the shore by the strong and capri- cious currents, I remained up all night, as any man would who had care for his ship. But I could not help contrasting that easy summer passage with our return in November, 1906, when the Roosevelt was standing on end half the time, and the rest of the time was rolling the rail under water, losing two rudders, being smashed by the sea, creeping along the Labrador coast in the berg season, through dense fog, and pick-
THESTART 33
ing up Point Amour Light only when within a stone's throw of the shore, guided only by the sirens at Point Amour and Bald Head, and the whistles of the big steamships lying at the entrance of the strait, afraid to attempt the passage.
CHAPTER IV
UP TO CAPE YORK
ON Sunday, July 19, we sent a boat ashore at Point Amour Light with telegrams back home — the last. I wondered what my first despatch would be the following year.
At Cape St. Charles we dropped anchor in front of the whaling station. Two whales had been cap- tured there the day before, and I immediately bought one of them as food for the dogs. This meat was stowed on the quarter-deck of the Roosevelt. There are several of these "whale factories" on the Labrador coast. They send out a fast steel steamer, with a har- poon gun at the bow. When a whale is sighted they give chase, and when near enough discharge into the monster a harpoon with an explosive bomb attached. The explosion kills him. Then he is lashed alongside, towed into the station, hauled out on the timberways, and there cut up, every part of the enormous carcass being utilized for some commercial purpose.
We stopped again at Hawks Harbor, where the Erik, our auxiliary supply steamer, was awaiting us with some twenty -five tons of whale meat on board; and an hour or two later, a beautiful white yacht followed us in. I recognized her as Harkness's Wakiva of the New York Yacht Club. Twice during the winter she had lain close to the Roosevelt in New York,
84
UPTOCAPEYORK 35
at the East Twenty -fourth Street pier, coaling between her voyages; and now, by a strange chance, the two vessels lay side by side again in this little out-of-the- way harbor on the Labrador coast. No two ships could be more unlike than these two: one white as snow, her brasswork glittering in the sun, speedy, light as an arrow; the other black, slow, heavy, almost as solid as a rock — each built for a special purpose and adapted to that purpose.
Mr. Harkness and a party of friends, including several ladies, came on board the Roosevelt, and the dainty dresses of our feminine guests further accentu- ated the blackness, the strength, and the not over cleanly condition of our ship.
We stopped once more at Turnavik Island, a fishing station belonging to Captain Bartlett's father, and took on a consignment of Labrador skin boots, for which we should have use in the North. Just before reaching the Island we encountered a furious thunderstorm. It was the most northerly thunder- storm which I remember having experienced.
I recall, however, that on our upward voyage in 1905 we ran into very heavy thunderstorms with elec- trical displays quite as sharp as any encountered in Gulf storms on voyages in southern waters, though the storms of 1905 were met in the neighborhood of Cabot Strait, far south of those of 1908.
Our voyage to Cape York was a peaceful one, lacking even the small excitement of the same journey three years before, when, not far from Cape St. George, all hands were startled by an alarm of fire which started in one of the main deck beams from the uptake of
36 THENORTHPOLE
the boilers. Nor were we so plagued with fog in the early stages of our journey as we were in 1905. In fact, every omen was auspicious from the very start, so auspicious indeed that perhaps the more superstitious of the sailors thought our luck was too good to last, while one member of our expedition was continually "knocking on wood," just as a precaution, as he expressed it. It would be rash to say that his forethought had much to do with our success, but it eased his mind, at all events.
As we steamed steadily northward the nights grew shorter and shorter, and lighter and lighter, so that when we crossed the Arctic Circle, soon after midnight on July 26, we were in perpetual daylight. I have crossed the Circle some twenty times, going and com- ing, so the fine edge of that experience has been some- what dulled for me; but the arctic "tenderfeet" among my party. Dr. Goodsell, MacMillan, and Borup, were appropriately impressed. They felt as one feels in crossing the equator the first time — that it is an event.
The Roosevelt, steaming ever northward, was now well on her way to one of the most interesting of all arctic localities. It is the little oasis amid a .wilder- ness of ice and snow along the west coast of northern Greenland midway between Kane Basin on the north and Melville Bay on the south. Here, in striking contrast to the surrounding country, is animal and vegetable life in plenty, and in the course of the last hundred years some half dozen arctic expeditions have wintered here. Here, too, is the home of a little tribe of Eskimos.
SNOWY OWL, CAPE SHERIDAN
BRANT-GOOSE
SABINE S GULL
RIOD-THKOATEK IJI\ I.R, MALE A.\U FE-MALE
KING lOIOEK, DRAKE
UPTOCAPEYORK 37
This little refuge is about a 3,000 mile sail from New York and about 2,000 miles as the bird flies. It is about 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle and about half way from that great latitudinal mark to the Pole itself. Here the great arctic night averages one hundred and ten days in winter, during which time no ray of light falls upon the sight, save that of the moon and the stars, while in summer the sun is visible every moment for an equal number of days. Within the limits of this little country is found the favorite haunt of the reindeer, which find sufficient pasturage. But we are interested for the present in this unique spot only in passing and for the reason that here we picked up the little denizens of the frigid zone who were to help us in our struggle farther north.
Before we reached this odd little oasis, but several hundred miles beyond the Arctic Circle, we came to a most significant point in our upward journey, mark- ing as it did the grimness of the task before us. No civilized man can die in this savage Northland without his grave having a deep meaning for those who come afterwards; and constantly, as we sailed on, these voiceless reminders of heroic bones told their silent but powerful story.
At the southern limit of Melville Bay we passed the Duck Islands, where is the little graveyard of the Scotch whalers who were the pioneers in forcing the passage of Melville Bay and who died there, waiting for the ice to open. These graves date back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. From this point on, the arctic highway is marked by the graves of those who have fallen in the terrible fight with cold
38 THENORTHPOLE
and hunger. These rude rock piles bring home to any thoughtful person the meaning of arctic explora- tion. The men who lie there were not less courageous, not less intelligent, than the members of my own party; they were simply less fortunate.
Let us look along that highway for a moment and consider these memorials. At North Star Bay are one or two graves of men from the British ship North Star, which wintered there in 1850. Out on the Gary Islands is the nameless grave of one of the ill-fated Kalstenius Expedition. Still farther north, at Etah, is the grave of Sonntag, the astronomer of Hayes's Expedition; and a little above it, that of Ohlsen of Kane's party. On the opposite side are the unmarked places where sixteen of Greely's ill-fated party died. Still farther north, on the eastern or Greenland side, is the grave of Hall, the American commander of the Polaris Expedition. On the western, or Grant Land side, are the graves of two or three sailors of the British Arctic Expedition of 1876. And right on the shore of the central Polar Sea, near Cape Sheri- dan, is the grave of the Dane, Petersen, the interpreter of the British Arctic Expedition of 1876. These graves stand as mute records of former efforts to win the prize, and they give a slight indication of the number of brave but less fortunate men who have given the last possession of mortal life in their pursuit of the arctic goal.
The first time I saw the graves of the whalers on Duck Islands I sat there, in the arctic sunlight, looking at those headboards, sobered with a realization of what they meant. When I first saw Sonntag's grave,
UPTOCAPEYORK 39
at Etah, I carefully replaced the stones around it, as a tribute to a brave man. At Cape Sabine, where Greely's party died, I was the first man to step into the ruins of the stone hut after the seven survivors were taken away years before — the first man, and I stepped into those ruins in a blinding snowstorm late in August, and saw there the mementos of those unfortunates.
Passing the Duck Islands on the upward voyage, approaching Cape York in 1908, and thinking of the graves there, I little dreamed that a loved member of my own party, Professor Ross G. Marvin, who ate at my table and acted as my secretary, was fated to add his name to this long list of arctic victims, and that his grave, in uncounted fathoms of black water, was to be the most northerly grave on this earth.
We reached Cape York on the first day of August. Cape York is the bold, bluflF headland which marks the southern point of the stretch of arctic coast inhab- ited by my Eskimos, the most northerly human beings in the world. It is the headland whose snowy cap I have seen so many times rising in the distance above the horizon line of Melville Bay as my ships have steamed north. At the base of the headland nestles the most southerly of all the Eskimo villages, and it has marked the point of meeting, year after year, between the members of this tribe and myself.
At Cape York we were on the threshold of the actual work. I had on board the ship when I arrived there all the equipment and assistance which the civilized world could yield. Beginning there, I was to take on the tools, the material, the personnel, that the arctic
40 THE NORTH POLE
regions themselves were to furnish for their own con- quest. Cape York, or Melville Bay, is the dividing line between the civilized world on the one side and the arctic world on the other — the arctic world with its equipment of Eskimos, dogs, walrus, seal, fur clothing, and aboriginal experience.
Behind me lay the civilized world, which was now absolutely useless, and which could give me nothing more. Ahead of me lay that trackless waste through which I must literally cut my way to the goal. Even the ship's journey from Cape York to winter quarters on the north coast of Grant Land is not "plain sail- ing"; in fact, it is not sailing at all during the later stages; it is jamming and butting and dodging and hammering the ice, with always the possibility that the antagonist will hit back a body blow. It is like the work of a skilled heavy-weight pugilist, or the work of an old Roman fighter with the cestus.
Beyond Melville Bay the world, or what we know as the world, is left behind. On leaving Cape York, we had exchanged the multifarious purposes of civi- lization for the two purposes for which there is room in those wide wastes: food for man and dog, and the covering of miles of distance.
Behind me now lay everything that was mine, everything that a man personally loves, family, friends, home, and all those human associations which linked me with my kind. Ahead of me lay — my dream, the goal of that irresistible impulse which had driven me for twenty-three years to measure myself, time after time, against the frigid No of the Great North.
UPTOCAPEYORK 41
Should I succeed? Should I return? Success in the attainment of 90° North would not inevitably carry with it the safe return. We had learned that on recrossing the "big lead" in 1906. In the Arctic the chances are always against the explorer. The inscrutable guardians of the secret appear to have a well-nigh inexhaustible reserve of trump cards to play against the intruder who insists upon dropping into the game. The life is a dog's life, but the work is a man's work.
As we steamed northward from Cape York, on the first day of August, 1908, I felt that I was now in truth face to face with the final struggle. Everything in my life appeared to have led up to this day. All my years of work and all my former expeditions were merely preparations for this last and supreme effort. It has been said that well-directed labor toward a given end is an excellent kind of prayer for its attain- ment. If that be so, then prayer has been my portion for many years. Through all the seasons of disappoint- ment and defeat I had never ceased to believe that the great white mystery of the North must eventually succumb to the insistence of human experience and will, and, standing there with my back to the world and my face toward that mystery, I believed that I should win in spite of all the powers of darkness and of desolation.
CHAPTER V
WELCOME FROM THE ESKIMOS
AS we approached Cape York, which is farther from the Pole in actual distance than New York is from Tampa, Florida, it was with a peculiar feeling of satisfaction that I saw the foremost of our Eskimo friends putting out to meet us in their tiny kayaks, or skin canoes. Here is the southernmost of the Eskimo villages, by which a permanent settle- ment is not meant, for these barbarians are nomads. One year there may be two families there; another year ten; and still another season none at all, for the Eskimos seldom live more than a year or two in one place.
As we neared the Cape, the headland was encircled and guarded by an enormous squadron of floating ice- bergs which made it difficult for the Roosevelt to get near shore; but long before we reached these bergs the hunters of the settlement were seen putting out tc greet us. The sight of them skimming the water sc easily in their frail kayaks was the most welcome spectacle I had seen since we sailed from Sydney.
It seems fitting to give a good deal of attention a1 this point to the consideration of this interesting little race, the most northerly people in all the world, foi their help is one of the elements without which it ii possible that the North Pole might never have beei
42
ESKIMOS COMING OFF TO THE ROOSEVELT IN KAYAKS
THE MIDNIGHT SUN AS SEEN IN THE WHALE SOUND REGION
WELCOME FROM ESKIMOS 43
reached. Some years ago, in fact, I had occasion to write of these people a few sentences that, as it has turned out, were so prophetic that it seems appro- priate to reproduce them here. Those sentences were:
"I have often been asked: Of what use are Eskimos to the world? They are too far removed to be of value for commercial enterprises and, furthermore, they lack ambition. They have no literature nor, properly speak- ing, any art. They value life only as does a fox, or a bear, purely by instinct. But let us not forget that these people, trustworthy and hardy, will yet prove their value to mankind. With their help, the world shall discover the Pole."
The hope that had been expressed in this language so long before was in my mind as I saw my old friends coming out to meet us in their tiny kayaks, for I realized that I was once more in contact with these faithful dwellers of the North, who had been my con- stant companions for so many years, through all the varying circumstances and fortunes of my arctic work, and from whom I was again to select the pick and flower of the hunters of the whole tribe, extending from Cape York to Etah, to assist in this last effort to win the prize.
Since 1891 I had been living and working with these people, gaining their absolute confidence, making them my debtors for things given them, earning their grati- tude by saving, time after time, the lives of their wives and children by supplying them with food when they were on the verge of starvation. For eighteen years I had been training them in my methods; or, to put it
44 THENORTHPOLE
another way, teaching them how to modify and con- centrate their wonderful ice technic and endurance, so as to make them useful for my purposes. I had studied their individual characters, as any man studies the human tools with which he expects to accomplish results, until I knew just which ones to select for a quick, courageous dash, and just which dogged, un- swerving ones would, if necessary, walk straight through hell for the object I had placed before them.
I know every man, woman, and child in the tribe, from Cape York to Etah. Prior to 1891 they had never been farther north than their own habitat. Eighteen years ago I went to these people, and my first work was from their country as a base.
Much nonsense has been told by travelers in remote lands about the aborigines' regarding as gods the white men who come to them, but I have never placed much credence in these stories. My own experience has been that the average aborigine is just as content with his own way as we are with ours, just as convinced of his own superior knowledge, and that he adjusts himself with his knowledge in regard to things in the same way that we do. The Eskimos are not brutes; they are just as human as Caucasians. They know that I am their friend, and they have abundantly proved them- selves my friends.
When I went ashore at Cape York I found there four or five families, living in their summer tupiks, or skin tents, From them I learned what had happened in the tribe in the last two years; who had died, in what families children had been born, where this family and that family were then living — that is, the distribution
WELCOME FROM ESKIMOS 45
of the tribe for that particular summer. I thus learned where to find the other men I wanted.
It was about seven o'clock in the morning when we arrived at Cape York. I selected the few men needed from that place, told them that when the sun reached a certain point in the heavens that evening the ship would sail, and that they and their families and pos- sessions must be aboard the ship. As hunting is the only industry in these Eskimo villages, and as their goods are of an easily portable character, consisting mainly of tents, dogs and sledges, a few skins, pots and pans, they were able to transport themselves to the Roosevelt in our boats without much loss of time. As soon as they were on board we started north again.
There was no question of their willingness to follow me; they were only too glad to go. These men knew from past experience that, once enrolled as members of my expedition, there was no danger that their wives or children would suffer from hunger; and they knew also that at the end of the journey, when we brought them back to their homes, I would turn over to them the remaining supplies and equipment of the expedi- tion, which would ensure living for another year in absolute plenty, that, in comparison with the other members of their tribe, they would indeed be multi- millionaires.
An intense and restless curiosity is one of the peculiar characteristics of these people. As an illus- tration, one winter, years ago, when Mrs. Peary was in Greenland with me, an old woman of the tribe walked a hundred miles from her village to our winter quar- ters in order that she might see a white woman.
46 THENORTHPOLE
It may perhaps be fairly said that it has been my fortune to utilize the Eskimos for the purpose of dis- covery to a degree equaled by no other explorer, and for that reason it may not seem amiss to suspend the general narrative long enough to give a little information regarding their characteristics, the more so as without some knowledge of these peculiar people it would be im- possible for any one really to understand the workings of my expedition to the North Pole. It has been a fundamental principle of all my arctic work to utilize the Eskimos for the rank and file of my sledge parties. Without the skilful handiwork of the women we should lack the warm fur clothing which is absolutely essential to protect us from the winter cold, while the Eskimo dog is the only tractive force suitable for serious arctic sledge work.
The members of this little tribe or family, inhabit- ing the western coast of Greenland from Cape York to Etah,are in many ways quite different from the Eskimos of Danish Greenland, or those of any other arctic territory. There are now between two hundred and twenty and two hundred and thirty in the tribe. They are savages, but they are not savage; they are without government, but they are not lawless; they are utterly uneducated according to our standard, yet they exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence. In temperament like children, with all a child's delight in little things, they are nevertheless enduring as the most mature of civilized men and women, and the best of them are faithful unto death. Without religion and having no idea of God, they will share their last meal with any one who is hungry, while the aged and the helpless among
WELCOME FROM ESKIMOS 47
them are taken care of as a matter of course. They are healthy and pure-blooded; they have no vices, no in- toxicants, and no bad habits — not even gambling. Altogether, they are a people unique upon the face of the earth. A friend of mine well calls them the philo- sophic anarchists of the North.
I have been studying the Eskimos for eighteen years and no more effective instruments for arctic work could be imagined than these plump, bronze-skinned, keen- eyed and black-maned children of nature. Their very limitations are their most valuable endowments for the purposes of arctic work. I have a sincere interest in these people, aside from their usefulness to me; and my plan from the beginning has been to give them such aid and instruction as would fit them more effectively to cope with their own austere environment, and to refrain from teaching them anything which would tend to weaken their self-confidence or to make them discontented with their lot.
The suggestions of some well-meaning persons that they be transported to a more hospitable region would, if carried out, cause their extermination in two or three generations. Our variable climate they could not endure, as they are keenly susceptible to pulmonary and bronchial affections. Our civilization, too, would only soften and corrupt them, as their racial inheritance is one of physical hardship; while to our complex en- vironment they could not adjust themselves without losing the very childlike qualities which constitute their chief virtues. To Christianize them would be quite impossible; but the cardinal graces of faith, hope, and charity they seem to have already, for without them
48 THENORTHPOLE
they could never survive the six-months' night and the many rigors of their home.
Their feeling for me is a blending of gratitude and confidence. To understand what my gifts have meant to them, imagine a philanthropic millionaire descend- ing upon an American country town and offering every man there a brownstone mansion and an unlimited bank account. But even this comparison falls short of the reality, for in the United States even the poorest boy knows that there is a possibility of his attaining for himself those things on which he sets his heart, if he will labor and endure, while to the Eskimos the things which I have given them are absolutely out of their world, as far beyond their own unaided efforts as the moon and Mars are beyond the dwellers on this planet.
My various expeditions into that region have had the effect of raising the Eskimos from the most abject destitution, lacking every appliance and accessory of civilized life, to a position of relative affluence, with the best material for their weapons, their harpoons and lances, the best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, and saws for their work, and the cooking utensils of civilization. Formerly they were dependent upon the most primitive hunting weapons; now they have repeating rifles, breech-loading shotguns, and an abundance of ammunition. There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first went there. As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood, and blub- ber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the food-producing capacity of every hunter, and relieved the whole tribe from the formerly ever-
WELCOME FROM ESKIMOS 49
present danger of starvation for a family, or even an entire village.
There is a theory, first advanced by Sir Clements Markham, ex-president of the Royal Geographical So- ciety of London, that the Eskimos are the remnants of an ancient Siberian tribe, the Onkilon ; that the last mem- bers of this tribe were driven out on the Arctic Ocean by the fierce waves of Tartar invasion in the Middle Ages, and that they found their way to the New Sibe- rian Islands, thence eastward over lands yet undis- covered to Grinnell Land and Greenland. I am inclined to believe in the truth of this theory for the following reasons:
Some of the Eskimos are of a distinctly Mongolian type, and they display many Oriental characteristics, such as mimicry, ingenuity, and patience in mechanical duplication. There is a strong resemblance between their stone houses and the ruins of the houses found in Siberia. The Eskimo girl brought home by Mrs. Peary, in 1894, was mistaken by Chinamen for one of their own people. It has also been suggested that their invocation of the spirits of their dead may be a survival of Asian ancestor worship.
As a general rule the Eskimos are short in stature, as are the Chinese and Japanese, though I could name several men who stand about five feet ten inches. The women are short and plump. They all have powerful torsos, but their legs are rather slender. The muscular development of the men is astonishing, though their fatty roundness hides the differentiation of the muscles.
These people have no written speech, and their language is agglutinative, with complicated prefixes and
50 THENORTHPOLE
suflBxes, by which they extend a word to a considerable length from the original stem. The language is rela- tively easy to acquire, and during my first summer in Greenland I gained a fair knowledge of it. In addition to their ordinary speech, they have an esoteric language known only to the adults of the tribe. I cannot say wherein it differs from the other, having made no attempt to learn it, and I doubt if any white man has been fully taught this secret speech, as the knowledge is carefully guarded by its possessors.
The Eskimos of this region have not, as a rule, applied themselves to the study of English, for they were clever enough to see that we could learn their language more easily than they could learn ours. Occasionally, however, an Eskimo will startle all hands by rolling out an English phrase or sentence, and, like a parrot, he seems to have a special aptitude in picking up from the sailors phrases of slang or profanity.
On the whole, these people are much like children, and should be treated as such. They are easily elated, easily discouraged. They delight in playing tricks on each other and on the sailors, are usually good-natured, and when they are sulky there is no profit in being vexed with them. The methods which children char- acterize as "jollying" are best for such emergencies. Their mercurial temperament is Nature's provision for carrying them through the long dark night, for if they were morose like the North American Indians, the whole tribe would long ago have lain down and died of discouragement, so rigorous is their lot.
In managing the Eskimos it is necessary to make a psychological study of them, and to consider their
WELCOME FROM ESKIMOS 51
peculiar temperament. They are keenly appreciative of kindness, but, like children, they will impose upon a weak or vacillating person. A blending of gentleness and firmness is the only effective method. The funda- mental point in all my dealings with them has been always to mean just what I say and to have things done exactly as ordered. For instance, if I tell an Eskimo that if he does a certain thing properly he will get a certain reward, he always gets the reward if he obeys. On the other hand, if I tell him that a certain unde- sirable thing will happen if he follows a course I have forbidden, that thing invariably happens.
I have made it to their interest to do what I want done. For example, the best all-round man on a long sledge journey got more than the others. A record was always kept of the game secured by each Eskimo, and the best hunter got a special prize. Thus I kept them interested in their work. The man who killed the musk ox with the finest set of horns and the man who killed the deer with the most magnificent antlers were specially rewarded. I have made it a point to be firm with them, but to rule them by love and gratitude rather than by fear and threats. An Eskimo, like an Indian, never forgets a broken promise — nor a ful- filled one.
It would be misleading to infer that almost any man who went to the Eskimos with gifts could obtain from them the kind of service they have given me; for it must be remembered that they have known me personally for nearly twenty years. I have saved whole villages from starvation, and the children are taught by their parents that if they grow up and
52 THENORTHPOLE
become good hunters or good seamstresses, as the case may be, " Peary aksoah " will reward them sometime in the not too distant future. Old Ikwah, for example, who is the father of the girl for whose possession hot- hearted young Ooqueah of my North Pole party fought his way with me to the goal, was the first Eskimo I had, away back in 1891.
This young knight of the Northland is an illustra- tion of the fact that sometimes an Eskimo man or woman may be as intense in his or her affairs of the heart as we are. As a rule, however, they are more like children in their affections, faithful to their mates from a sort of domestic habit, but easily consoled for the loss of them by death or otherwise.
THE ICK CLIFFS OF HUBBAKD GLACIEK
'M\^. t
I'EARY DISTRIBUTING UTKXSILS TO WIVES OF HIS HUNTKHS AT ETAH
DECK SCENE ON THE ROOSEVELT
CHAPTER VI
AN ARCTIC OASIS
IN a little arctic oasis lives the meager and scat- tered handful of the Eskimo population — a little oasis along the frowning western coast of Northern Greenland between Melville Bay and Kane Basin. This region is three thousand miles north of New York City, as a steamer goes; it lies about half way be- tween the Arctic Circle and the Pole, within the confines of the great night. Here, taking the mean latitude, for one hundred and ten days in summer the sun never sets; for one hundred and ten days in winter the sun never rises, and no ray of light save from the icy stars and the dead moon falls on the frozen landscape.
There is a savage grandeur in this coast, carved by eternal conflict with storms and glaciers, bergs and grinding ice-fields; but behind the frowning outer mask nestle in summer many grass-carpeted, flower- sprinkled, sun-kissed nooks. Millions of little auks breed along this shore. Between the towering cliffs are glaciers which launch at intervals their fleets of bergs upon the sea; before these cliffs lies the blue water dotted with masses of glistening ice of all shapes and sizes; behind the cliffs is the great Greenland ice cap, silent, eternal, immeasurable — the abode, say the Eskimos, of evil spirits and the souls of the unhappy dead.
B3
54 THENORTHPOLE
In some places on this coast in summer, the grass is as thick and long as on a New England farm. Here bloom poppies, with dandelions, buttercups, and saxi- frage, though to the best of my knowledge the flowers are all devoid of perfume. I have seen bumblebees even north of Whale Sound; there are flies and mos- quitoes, and even a few spiders. Among the fauna of this country are the reindeer (the Greenland car- ibou), the fox — both blue and white — the arctic hare, the Polar bear, and perhaps once in a generation a stray wolf.
But in the long sunless winter this whole region — cliffs, ocean, glaciers — is covered with a pall of snow that shows a ghastly gray in the wan starlight. When the stars are hidden, all is black, void, and soundless. When the wind is blowing, if a man ven- tures out he seems to be pushed backward by the hands of an invisible enemy, while a vague, unnamable menace lurks before and behind him. It is small wonder the Eskimos believe that evil spirits walk upon the wind.
During the winter these patient and cheerful children of the North live in igloos, or huts, built of stones and earth. It is only when they are trav- eling, as sometimes during the moonlit period of the month, that they live in the snow igloos, which three good Eskimos can build in an hour or two, and which we built at the end of every day's march on our sledge journey to the Pole. In summer they live in the tupiks, or skin tents. The stone houses are permanent, and a good one will last perhaps a hundred years, with a little repairing of the roof in summer. Igloos are
AN ARCTIC OASIS 55
found in groups, or villages, at intervals along the coast from Cape York Bay to Anoratok. As the people are nomadic, these permanent dwellings belong to the tribe, and not to individuals, constituting thus a crude sort of arctic socialism. One year all the houses in a settlement may be occupied; the next year none, or only one or two.
These houses are about six feet high by eight to ten feet wide by ten to twelve feet long, and one may be constructed in a month. An excavation is made in the earth, which forms the floor of the house; then the walls are built up solidly with stones chinked with moss; long, flat stones are laid across the top of the walls; this roof is covered with earth, and the whole house is banked in with snow. The construction of the arched roof is on the plan which engineers know as the cantilever, and not that of the Roman arch. The long, flat stones which form the roof are weighted and counter-weighted at the outer ends, and in all my arctic experience I have never known the stone roof of an igloo to fall upon the inmates. There are never any complaints made to the Building Depart- ment. There is no door in the side, but a hole in the floor at the entrance leads to a tunnel, sometimes ten, sometimes fifteen, or even twenty-five, feet in length, through which the tenants crawl into their home. There is always a small window in the front of the igloo. The window space is not glazed, of course, but is covered with the thin, intestinal membrane of seals, skilfully seamed together. To a traveler across the dark and snowy winter waste, the yellow light from the interior lamp is visible, sometimes, a long distance away.
56 THENORTHPOLE
At the farther end of the igloo is the bed platform, raised about a foot and a half above the earthen floor. Usually this platform is not built, but is the natural level of the earth, the standing space being dug before it. In some houses, however, the bed plat- form is made of long, flat stones raised upon stone supports. When the Eskimos are ready to move into the stone houses in the fall, they cover the bed platform first with grass, which they bring in by the sledge- load; the grass is then covered with sealskins; above these are spread deerskins, or musk-ox skins, — which form the mattress. Deerskins are used for blankets. Pajamas are not in fashion with the Eskimos. They simply remove all their clothes and crawl in between the deerskins.
The lamp, which stands on a large stone at the front of the bed platform on one side, is kept burning all the time, whether the family is asleep or awake. An imaginative person might liken this lamp to an ever-burning sacred flame upon the stone altar of the Eskimo home. It serves also as a stove for heating and cooking, and makes the igloo so warm that the inhabitants wear little clothing when indoors. They sleep with their heads toward the lamp, so the woman may reach out and tend it.
On the other side of the house food is generally stored. When two families occupy one igloo, there may be a second lamp on the other side; and in that case the food must be stored under the bed. The temperature of these houses varies from eighty or ninety degrees Fahrenheit, on the bed platform and near the roof, to something below freezing point at the floor
AN ARCTIC OASIS 57
level. There is a little air-hole in the center of the roof, but in the happy home of an Eskimo family, in winter, the atmosphere could almost be handled with a shovel.
Often, in winter traveling, I have been obliged to sleep in one of these hospitable igloos. On such occasions I have made the best of things, as a man would if compelled to sleep in a tenth-rate railroad hotel or a slum lodging-house, but I have tried to for- get the experience as soon as possible. It is not well for an arctic explorer to be too fastidious. A night in one of these igloos, with the family at home, is an offense to every civilized sense, especially that of smell; but there are times when a man, after a long sledge journey in the terrible cold and wind, hungry and footsore, will welcome the dim light shining through the translucent window of an igloo as one welcomes the light of home. It means warmth and comfort, supper, and blessed sleep.
There is no blinking the fact that my Eskimo friends are very dirty. When I have them on the ship with me they make heroic efforts to wash them- selves occasionally; but in their own homes they practically never do, and in winter they have no water except from melted snow. On rare occasions, when the dirt gets too thick for comfort, they may remove the outer layer with a little oil. I shall never forget the amazement with which they made acquaint- ance with the white man's use of the tooth-brush.
With the coming of the summer, the stone and earth houses become damp, dark holes, and the roofs are taken off to dry and ventilate the interior. The
58 THENORTHPOLE
family then moves outside and sets up the tupik, or skin tent, which is their home from about the first of June till some time in September. The tupik is made of sealskins, with the hair on the inside. Teh or twelve skins, sewed together in one large piece, make a tent. It is stretched on poles, high in front and sloping toward the back, thus offering the least possible resistance to the wind, the edges held down with stones. The earth floor of these tents is six or eight feet wide and eight or ten feet long, according to the size of the family.
In recent years my Eskimos have adopted an im- provement upon the building customs of the west coast natives, and many of them have an entrance extension to their tents made of transparent tanned sealskins, thick enough to keep out the rain but not the light. This adds to the roominess and comfort of their summer dwellings. A usual practice among the better class of Eskimos is to use the old tupik of the previous summer for a rain or weather-guard to the new tent. In heavy winds or heavy summer rains, the old tupik is simply spread over the new one, thus giving a double thickness and protection to the owners.
The bed platform in the tupik is now generally made of lumber, which I have furnished, raised on stones, and in pleasant weather the cooking is done outside. Oil is the only fuel for heat, light, and cook- ing. The Eskimo women trim the lamps so well that there is no smoke from them, unless there is a draft in the tent or igloo. They cut small pieces of blubber, which they lay on moss and ignite, and the
AN ARCTIC OASIS 59
heat from the moss tries out the oil, making a surprisingly hot flame. Until I gave them matches, they had only the primitive means of ignition by flint and steel, which they obtained from a vein of pyrites. When I first went up there, all their lamps and rect- angular pots were made of soapstone, two or three veins of which are found in that country. Their ability to utilize the soapstone and pyrites is an illus- tration of their intelligence and ingenuity.
As a rule little clothing is worn in the tupiks in warm weather, as the normal summer temperature is around fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and in the strong sunlight may go as high as eighty-five or even ninety- five.
The trial marriage is an ineradicable custom among the Eskimos. If a young man and woman are not suited with each other, they try again, and sometimes several times; but when they find mates to whom they are adapted, the arrangement is generally permanent. If two men want to marry the same woman, they settle the question by a trial of strength, and the better man has his way. These struggles are not fights, as the disputants are amiable; they are simply tests of wres- tling, or sometimes of pounding each other on the arm to see which man can stand the pounding the longer.
Their fundamental acceptance of the proposition that might is right in such matters sometimes extends to a man saying to the husband of a woman: "I am the better man. " In such case the husband has either to prove his superiority in strength, or yield the woman to the other. If a man grows tired of his wife, he simply tells her there is not room for her in his igloo.
60 THENORTHPOLE
She may return to her parents, if they are living; she may go to a brother or a sister; or she may send word to some man in the tribe that she is now at liberty and is wiUing to start life again. In these cases of primi- tive divorce, the husband keeps one or all of the chil- dren if he wants them; if not, the woman takes them with her.
The Eskimos do not have many children, two or three being the usual number. The woman does not take her husband's name in any case. Akatingwah, for instance, will remain Akatingwah, whether she has had one husband or several. Children do not address their parents as father and mother, but call them by their names, though sometimes very small children use a diminutive which corresponds to our "mamma."
Among the Eskimos the woman is as much a part of the man's property as his dog or sledge — except in some rare cases. The cause of the suffragettes has as yet made little headway in this region. I remember one instance in which an Eskimo woman had a difference of opinion with her husband, and proved iM her right to independence by blackening the old man's eye; but I am afraid that the more conservative members of the tribe attributed this unfeminine behavior to the corrupting influence of contact with civilization.
As there are more men than women among the Eskimos, the girls marry very young, often about the age of twelve. In many cases the marriages are arranged between the parents when the children are quite young; but the boy and girl are not bound, and
m
ESKIMO MOTHER AND CHILD
AN ARCTIC OASIS 61
when they are old enough they are permitted to decide for themselves. In fact, they can make several such decisions without losing caste. On the last expedition, as on those of former years, I found that a number of matrimonial changes had taken place among my Northern friends since I was last among them.
It would be worse than useless to attempt to en- graft our marriage customs upon these naive children of Nature. Should an arctic explorer consider it his duty to tell a young Eskimo that it was not right for him to exchange wives with his friend, it would be well for the explorer to have his supporting argument well prepared beforehand, for the censured one would probably open wide his eyes and inquire, "Why not?"
These people of the ice-land, like all intelligent savages, are remarkably curious. If confronted, say, with a package containing various supplies unknown to them, they will not rest until they have examined every article of the lot, touched it, turned it over, and even tasted it, chattering all the while like a flock of blackbirds. They exhibit, too, in marked degree, all the Oriental capacity for imitation. Out of wal- rus ivory, in some respects their substitute for steel, — and a surprisingly good substitute it is, — they will construct amazingly good models or copies of various objects, while it does not take them long to master the use of such tools of civilization as may be put into their hands. It will easily be seen how valuable and useful a quality this has proved for the purposes of the arctic explorer. If he could not rely on the Eskimo to do the white man's work with the white
62 THENORTHPOLE
man's tools, the labors of the arctic traveler would be tremendously increased and the size of his expedi- tion would have to be enlarged to limits that might be foimd unwieldy in the extreme.
My own observations of this interesting people have taught me to repose no confidence whatever in the tales of barbaric craft and cruelty which I have heard of them. On the contrary, taking into consider- ation their uncivilized state, they must be ranked as a humane people. Moreover, they have always been quick to grasp the purposes that I have had in view and to bend their energies toward achieving the ends for which my expeditions have been striving.
Their humanity, as has been indicated, takes a form that would delight a socialist. They are generous and hospitable in a crude way, almost without excep- tion. As a general rule, good and bad fortune are shared. The tribe shares in the proceeds of good luck on the part of the hunters and, as their existence depends on hunting, this accounts in large measure for the preservation of the tribe.
CHAPTER VII
ODD CUSTOMS OF AN ODD PEOPLE
HARD as is the life of the Eskimo, his end is usually as rigorous. All his life he is engaged in constant warfare with the inhospitable ele- ments of his country, and Death, when it arrives, usually comes in some violent form. Old age has few terrors for the Eskimo, for he seldom lives to reach it. He dies, as a rule, in harness, drowned by the capsiz- ing of his skin canoe, caught by the overturning of an iceberg, or crushed by a snow-slide or a rock-slide. It is seldom that an Eskimo lives to be more than sixty years of age.
Strictly speaking, the Eskimos have no religion, in the sense in which we use the word. But they believe in the survival of the person after death, and they believe in spirits — especially evil spirits. It may be that their lack of any idea of a beneficent God, and their intense consciousness of evil influences, result from the terrible hardships of their lives. Having no special blessings for which to be grateful to a kind Creator, they have not evolved a conception of Him, while the constantly recurring menaces of the dark, the bitter cold, the savage wind and gnawing hunger, have led them to people the air with invisible enemies. The beneficent spirits are those of their ancestors (another Oriental touch), while they have a whole legion
63
64 THENORTHPOLE
of malevolent spirits, led by Tornarsuk, the great devil himself.
They are constantly trying to propitiate Tornarsuk by incantations; and when they kill game, an offer- ing is made to him. The devil is supposed to have a keen appeciation of these tidbits. On leaving a snow igloo the Eskimos are careful to kick the front out of it, that the evil spirits may not find shelter there, and when they throw away a worn-out garment it is never left intact, but is torn in such a way that the devil may not use it to warm himself. A comfortable devil is presumably more dangerous than a shiver- ing one. Any sudden and unexplained barking or howl- ing among the dogs indicates the invisible presence of Tornarsuk, and the men will run out and crack their whips or fire their rifles to scare away the invader. When, on board the Roosevelt in winter quarters, I was suddenly aroused from sleep by the crack of rifles, I did not think there was a mutiny aboard — only that Tornarsuk had ridden by upon the wind.
When the ice presses hard against the ship, an Eskimo will call on his dead father to push it away; when the wind blows with special violence, ancestors are again appealed to. Passing along a cliff, on a sledge journey, a man will sometimes stop and listen and then say: "Did you hear what the devil said just then?" I have asked the Eskimo to repeat to me the words of Tornarsuk, up there on the cliff, and I would not dream of laughing at my faithful friends at such a time; the messages of Tornarsuk I receive with a respectful gravity.
ODD CUSTOMS 65
There are no chiefs among these people, no men in authority; but there are medicine men who have some influence. The angakok is generally not loved — he knows too many unpleasant things that are going to happen, so he says. The business of the angakok is mainly singing incantations and going into trances, for he has no medicines. If a person is sick, he may prescribe abstinence from certain foods for a certain number of moons; for instance, the patient must not eat seal meat, or deer meat, but only the flesh of the walrus. Monotonous incantations take the place of the white man's drugs. The performance of a self-confident angakok is quite impressive — if one has not witnessed it too many times before. The chanting, or howling, is accompanied by contortions of the body and by sounds from a rude tambourine, made from the throat membrane of a walrus stretched on a bow of ivory or bone. The tapping of the rim with another piece of ivory or bone marks the time. This is the Eskimo's only attempt at music. Some women are supposed to possess the power of the angakok — a combination of the gifts of the fortune teller, the mental healer, and the psalmodist, one might say.
Once, years ago, my little brown people got tired of an angakok, one Kyoahpahdo, who had predicted too many deaths; and they lured him out on a hunting expedition from which he never returned. But these executions for the peace of the community are rare.
Their burial customs are rather interesting. When an Eskimo dies, there is no delay about removing the body. Just as soon as possible it is wrapped, fully clothed, in the skins which formed the bed, and some
66 THENORTHPOLE
extra garments are added to insure the comfort of the spirit. Then a strong line is tied round the body, and it is removed, always head first, from the tent or igloo, and dragged head first over the snow or ground to the nearest place where there are enough loose stones to cover it. The Eskimos do not like to touch a dead body, and it is therefore dragged as a sledge would be. Arrived at the place selected for the grave, they cover the corpse with loose stones, to protect it from the dogs, foxes, and ravens, and the burial is complete.
According to Eskimo ideas, the after-world is a distinctly material place. If the deceased is a hunter, his sledge and kayak, with his weapons and implements, are placed close by, and his favorite dogs, harnessed and attached to the sledge, are strangled so that they may accompany him on his journey into the unseen. If the deceased is a woman, her lamp and the little wooden frame on which she has dried the family boots and mittens are placed beside the grave. A little blub- ber is placed there, too, and a few matches, if they are available, so that the woman may light the lamp and do some cooking in transit; a cup or bowl is also pro- vided, in which she may melt snow for water. Her needle, thimble, and other sewing things are placed with her in the grave.
In former years, if the woman had a small baby in the hood it was strangled to keep her company; but I have, of course, discouraged this practice, and during the last two expeditions I have not heard of any strangled babies. Among the members of my own party I have simply forbidden the practice, and have promised the relatives sufiicient condensed milk and
ODD CUSTOMS 67
other foods to keep the infant ahve. If they have reverted to the old custom during my absence, they have not mentioned the fact to me, knowing of my disapproval.
If a death occurs in a tent, the poles are removed, and the tent is left on the ground to rot or blow away. It is never used again. If the death occurs in an igloo, the structure is vacated and not used again for a long time. The relatives of the dead observe certain for- malities in regard to food and clothing, and the name of the lost one is never mentioned. If any other members of the tribe have the same name, they must take another until an infant is born to which the proscribed name can be given. This appears to remove the ban.
Eskimos are children in their grief, as in their pleasure; they weep for a dead friend a few days, then they forget. Even a mother who has been inconsolable at the death of her baby soon laughs again and thinks of other things.
In a country where the stars are visible for so many weeks at a time it is not strange perhaps that they re- ceive much attention from the natives. The Eskimos are, within barbaric limits, astronomers. The prin- cipal constellations visible in northern latitudes are well known to them and they have given them their own names and descriptions. In the Great Dipper they see a herd of celestial reindeer. The Pleiades are to the Eskimos a team of dogs pursuing a solitary polar bear. Gemini they describe as two stones in the entrance of an igloo. The moon and the sun represent to the Eskimo, as to some of our North American In- dian tribes, a fleeing maiden and her pursuing admirer.
68 THENORTHPOLE
Time is, of course, of small value to the Eskimo, so far as he is himself personally concerned, yet after the Eskimo has been trained to the ways of the white man he seems to absorb an excellent notion of the value of punctuality and will carry out orders with a sur- prising degree of promptness and despatch.
The strength and capacity for enduring hardships exhibited by this people is extraordinary and is not, I believe, exceeded by that shown by any other aborig- inal race now in existence. It is true that the average size of the Eskimo is, judged by our own standards, small; but I could give the names of several of them who stand five feet ten inches and weigh 185 pounds. The popular idea that they are clumsily fashioned is not correct. That notion is merely another case of judg- ing a man by the clothes he wears, and an Eskimo's garments are not precisely what we should call of fashionable cut.
To my mind, the skin canoe of these Northern abo- rigines is, with its hunting implements, one of the most complete and ingenious manifestations of intelligence to be found in any aboriginal tribe. Over a light frame- work, an almost infinite number of small pieces of wood deftly lashed together with sealskin thongs, is stretched the tanned skin of seals, the seams being neatly sewed by the women, and then rendered water- tight by an application of seal oil and soot from the native lamps. The result is a craft of great buoyancy, some grace, and especial fitness and effectiveness for the purposes for which it is intended, that is, to enable the hunter to creep softly and noiselessly upon seal, walrus, or white whale. This canoe, while varying
ODD CUSTOMS 69
somewhat with the size of the owner and maker, will average between twenty and twenty-four inches in width by sixteen or eighteen feet in length. It carries one man only. I may have helped the Eskimos a little in perfecting it, by giving them more suitable material for the framework, but the canoe is original with them.
It will scarcely be considered strange that I have grown to love this childlike, simple people, as well as to value their many admirable and useful qualities. For it must be borne in mind that for nearly a quarter of a century they have been more thoroughly known to me than any other group of human beings in the world. The present generation of able-bodied Eskimos has practically grown up under my personal observation. Every individual member of the tribe — man, woman, and child — is known to me by name and sight as thoroughly as the patients of an old-fashioned family physician are known to him, and perhaps the feeling existing between us is not so very different. And the knowledge of individuals gained in this intimate way has been priceless in the work of reaching the Pole.
Take, for example, the quartet of young Eskimos who formed a portion of the sledge party that finally reached the long-courted "ninety North." The oldest of the four, Ootah, is about 34 years of age. This young man is one of the sturdiest of the tribe. He stands about 5 feet 8 inches and is a fine hunter. When I first saw him he was a young boy. Egingwah, another of the group, is about 26 years old, a big chap weigh- ing about 175 pounds. Seegloo and Ooqueah are about 24 and 20 respectively. All four of them have
70 THENORTHPOLE
been brought up to regard me as the patron, pro- tector, and guide of their people. Their capacities, pecuHarities, and individual characteristics were per- fectly known to me, and they were chosen out of the whole tribe for the final great effort because I knew them to be most perfectly adapted to the work in hand.
Before taking up the story of our advance from Cape York, a word ought to be said about those remarkable creatures, the Eskimo dogs, for without their help success could never have crowned the efforts of the expedition. They are sturdy, magnificent animals. There may be larger dogs than these, there may be handsomer dogs; but I doubt it. Other dogs may work as well or travel as fast and far when fully fed; but there is no dog in the world that can work so long in the lowest temperatures on practically noth- ing to eat. The male dogs average in weight from eighty to one hundred pounds, though I had one which weighed one hundred and twenty-five pounds. The females are somewhat smaller. Their special physical characteristics are a pointed muzzle, great breadth between the eyes, sharp-pointed ears, very heavy coat underlaid with a thick, soft fur, powerful, heavy- muscled legs, and a bushy tail or brush similar to that of the fox. There is only one breed of Eskimo dogs, but they are variously marked and of different colors, black, white, gray, yellow, brown, and mottled. Some scientists believe that they are the direct descendants of the Arctic wolf, yet, as a rule, they are as affectionate and obedient to their masters as our own dogs at home. Their food is meat, and meat only. That they cannot
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THE CAPE JESUP GREXADIERH
ODD CUSTOMS 71
live on any other food I know, for I have made the experiment. For water they eat snow.
The dogs are not housed at any season of the year; but summer and winter they are tied somewhere near the tent or igloo. They are never allowed to roam at large, lest they be lost. Sometimes a special pet, or a female that has young puppies, will be taken into the igloo for a time; but Eskimo puppies only a month old are so hardy that they can stand the severe winter weather.
Enough has been said to give the reader a general idea of these strange people, that have been so valuable to me in my arctic work. But I want to say again, at the risk of being misunderstood, that I hope no efforts will ever be made to civilize them. Such efforts, if successful, would destroy their primi- tive communism, which is necessary to preserve their existence. Once give them an idea of real-estate inter- est and personal-property rights in houses and food, and they might become as selfish as civilized beings; whereas now any game larger than a seal is the com- mon property of the tribe and no man starves while his neighbors are gorging themselves. If a man has two sets of hunting implements, he gives one of them to the man who has none. It is this feeling of good- fellowship which alone preserves the race. I have taught them some of the fundamental principles of sanitation and the care of themselves, the treatment of simple diseases, of wounds, and other accidents; but there I think their civilization should stop. This opinion is not based on theory or prejudice, but on eighteen years of intimate study and experience.
CHAPTER VIII
GETTING RECRUITS
WHEN on August 1 the Roosevelt steamed out from Cape York, she had on board sev- eral Eskimo families which we had picked up there and at Salvo Island. We also had about one hundred dogs, bought from the Eskimos. When I say "bought," I do not mean paid for with money, as these people have no money and no unit of value. All exchange between them is based on the principle of pure barter. For instance, if one Eskimo has a deerskin which he does not need, and another has something else, they exchange. The Eskimos had dogs which we wanted, and we had many things which they wanted, such as lumber, knives and other cut- lery, cooking utensils, ammunition, matches, et cet- era. So, as the Yankees say, we traded.
Steaming in a northwesterly course from Cape York, we passed the "Crimson Cliffs," so named by Sir John Ross, the English explorer, in 1818. This vivid name was applied to the cliffs by reason of the quantities of "red snow" which can be seen from a ship miles out at sea. The color is given to the per- manent snow by the Protococcus nivalis, one of the lowest types of the single, living protoplasmic cell. The nearly transparent gelatinous masses vary from a quarter inch in diameter to the size of a pin-head, and
72
GETTING RECRUITS 73
they draw from the snow and the air the scanty nour- ishment which they require. Seen from a distance, the snow looks hke blood. This red banner of the Arctic has greeted me on all my northern journeys.
Sailing by these cliflFs, which extend for thirty or forty miles, my thoughts were busy with the work before us. First and most necessary of all was the task of gathering our arctic personnel of Eskimos and dogs, already begun before we left Cape York.
Our next stop, after Cape York, was on August 3, at North Star Bay, Oomunnui, as the natives call it, on Wolstenholm Sound. Here I found the Erik, which had become separated from us in Davis Strait several days before during heavy weather. At Oomun- nui we took on two or three families of Eskimos and more dogs. Ooqueah, one of my North Pole party, came aboard at this place; Seegloo had joined us at Cape York.
On the night of August 5, a clear and sunshiny night, between Hakluyt and Northumberland Islands I left the Roosevelt and transferred to the Erik, taking Matt Henson with me, for a reconnaissance of the various Eskimo settlements on Inglefield Gulf and along the coast. This detour was for the purpose of picking up more Eskimos and dogs. The Roosevelt was sent ahead to Etah, to get in shape for her coming battle royal with the ice in Kane Basin and the chan- nels beyond.
There was for me a strange mingling of pleasure and sadness in this gathering together of our brown- skinned helpers, for I felt that it was for the last time. The business consumed several days. I went
74 THENORTHPOLE
first to Karnah, on the Redcliffe Peninsula, thence to Kangerdlooksoah and Nunatoksoah, near the head of the gulf. Returning on our course, we came back to Karnah, then went south to the neighborhood of the Itiblu Glacier, then northwest again by a devious course around the islands and the points to Kookan, in Robertson Bay, then to Nerke, on C. Saumarez, then on to Etah, where we joined the Roosevelt, hav- ing obtained all the Eskimos and dogs we needed, — two hundred and forty-six of the latter, to be exact.
There was no intention of taking to the far North all the Eskimos taken aboard the Erik and the Roose- velt — only the best of them. But if any family wanted transportation from one settlement to another, we were glad to accommodate them. It is to be doubted if anywhere on the waters of the Seven Seas there was ever a more outlandishly picturesque ves- sel than ours at this time — a sort of free tourist steamship for traveling Eskimos, with their chatter- ing children, barking dogs, and other goods and chattels.
Imagine this man-and-dog-bestrewn ship, on a pleasant, windless summer day in Whale Sound. The listless sea and the overarching sky are a vivid blue in the sunlight — more like a scene in the Bay of Naples than one in the Arctic. There is a crystalline clear- ness in the pure atmosphere that gives to all colors a brilliancy seen nowhere else — the glittering white of the icebergs with the blue veins running through them; the deep reds, warm grays, and rich browns of the cliflFs, streaked here and there with the yellows of the sandstone; a little farther away sometimes the
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GETTING RECRUITS 75
soft green grass of this little arctic oasis; and on the distant horizon the steel-blue of the great inland ice. When the little auks fly high against the sunlit sky, they appear like the leaves of a forest when the early frost has touched them and the first gale of autumn carries them away, circling, drifting, eddying through the air. The desert of northern Africa may be as beautiful as Hichens tells us; the jungles of Asia may wear as vivid coloring; but to my eyes there is nothing so beautiful as the glittering Arctic on a sunlit summer day.
On August 11 the Erik reached Etah, where the Roosevelt was awaiting her. The dogs were landed on an island, the Roosevelt was washed, the boilers were blown down and filled with fresh water, the fur- naces cleaned, and the cargo overhauled and re-stowed to put the vessel in fighting trim for her coming encoun- ter with the ice. About three hundred tons of coal were transferred from the Erik to the Roosevelt, and about fifty tons of walrus and whale meat.
Fifty tons of coal were cached at Etah for the Roosevelt's expected return the following year. Two men, boatswain Murphy and Pritchard, the cabin boy, with full provisions for two years, were left in charge. Harry Whitney, a summer passenger on the Erik, who was ambitious to obtain musk-oxen and polar bears, asked permission to remain with my two men at Etah. The permission was granted, and Mr. Whit- ney's belongings were landed.
At Etah, Rudolph Franke, who had come north with Dr. Cook in 1907, came to me and asked permis- sion to go home on the Erik. He showed me a letter
76 THENORTHPOLE
from Dr. Cook directing him to go home this season on a whaler. An examination by Dr. Goodsell, my surgeon, showed that the man suffered from incipient scurvy, and that he was in a serious mental state, so I had no alternative but to give him passage home on the Erik. Boatswain Murphy, whom I was to leave at Etah, was a thoroughly trustworthy man, and I gave him instructions to prevent the Eskimos from looting the supplies and equipment left there by Dr. Cook, and to be prepared to render Dr. Cook any assistance he might require when he returned, as I had no doubt he would as soon as the ice froze over Smith Sound (pre- sumably in January) so as to enable him to cross to Anoratok from EUsmere Land, where I had no doubt he then was.
On the Erik were three other passengers, Mr. C. C. Crafts, who had come north to take a series of magnetic observations for the department of terres- trial magnetism of the Carnegie Institution in Wash- ington, Mr. George S. Norton, of New York, and Mr. Walter A. Earned, the tennis champion. The Roose- velt's carpenter. Bob Bartlett, of Newfoundland (not related to Captain Bob Bartlett), and a sailor named Johnson also went back on the Erik. That vessel was commanded by Captain Sam Bartlett (Captain Bob's uncle), who had been master of my own ship on several expeditions.
At Etah we took on a few more Eskimos, includ- ing Ootah and Egingwah, who were destined to be with me at the Pole; and I left there all the remaining Eskimos that I did not wish to take with me to winter quarters in the North. We retained forty-nine —
GETTING RECRUITS 77
twenty-two men, seventeen women, ten children — and two hundred and forty-six dogs. The Roosevelt, as usual, was loaded almost to the water's edge with the coal that had been crowded into her, the seventy tons of whale meat which we had bought in Labrador, and the meat and blubber of nearly fifty walruses.
We parted company from the Erik and steamed north on the 18th of August, an intensely disagree- able day, with driving snow and rain, and a cutting wind from the southeast which made the sea very rough. As the two ships separated, they signaled "good-by and good luck" with the whistles, and our last link with civilization was broken.
Since my return I have been asked if I did not feel deep emotion on parting with my companions on the Erik, and I have truthfully replied that I did not. The reader must remember that this was my eighth expedition into the Arctic, and that I had parted from a supply ship many times before. Constant repetition will take' the edge from the most dramatic experience. As we steamed north from the harbor of Etah, my thoughts were on the condition of the ice in Robeson Channel; and the ice in Robeson Channel is more dramatic than any parting — save from one's nearest and dearest, and I had left mine three thou- sand miles below at Sydney. We had some three hundred and fifty miles of almost solid ice to negoti- ate before we could reach our hoped-for winter quarters at Cape Sheridan. I knew that beyond Smith Sound we might have to make our slow way rod by rod, and sometimes literally inch by inch, butting and ramming and dodging the mountainous ice; that, if the Roose-
78 THENORTHPOLE
velt survived, I should probably not have my clothes off, or be able to snatch more than an hour or two of sleep at a time, for two or three weeks. Should we lose our ship and have to make our way over the ice southward from anywhere below Lady Franklin Bay, or possibly beyond there — it was good-by to my life's dream and probably to some of my companions.
CHAPTER IX
A WALRUS HUNT
THE walrus are among the most picturesque and powerful fauna of the far North. More than that, their pursuit and capture, a pro- cess by no means devoid of peril, is an important part of every serious arctic expedition, for on every expedi- tion of mine these huge creatures, weighing as they do all the way from 1,200 to 3,000 pounds, are hunted for the purpose of obtaining the maximum of meat for dog food in a minimum of time.
Wolstenholm and Whale Sounds, which are passed before reaching Etah, are favorite haunts of the wal- rus. The hunting of these monsters is the most exciting and dangerous sport in the arctic regions. The polar bear has been called the tiger of the North; but a contest between one or two, or even three, of these animals and a man armed with a Winchester repeating rifle is an entirely one-sided affair. On the contrary, a contest with a herd of walrus, — the lions of the North, — in a small whale-boat, will give more thrills to the minute than anything else I know of within the Arctic Circle.
On the last expedition I did not go after walrus myself, leaving that exhilarating labor to the younger men. I have seen so much of it in the past that my first vivid impression is somewhat blunted. I have
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80 THENORTHPOLE
therefore asked George Borup to write for me an account of walrus-hunting, as it appears to a novice, and his story is so vivid that I give it to the reader in his own words, graphic with the keen impressions of a young man and picturesque with college slang. He says:
"Walrus-hunting is the best sport in the shooting line that I know. There is something doing when you tackle a herd of fifty-odd, weighing between one and two tons each, that go for you whether wounded or not; that can punch a hole through eight inches of young ice; that try to climb into the boat to get at or upset you, — we never could make out which, and didn't care, as the result to us would have been the same, — or else try to ram your boat and stave holes in it.
"Get in a mix-up with a herd, when every man in the whale-boat is standing by to repel boarders, hit- ting them over the head with oars, boat-hooks, axes, and yelling like a cheering section at a football game to try to scare them off; with the rifles going like young Gatling guns, and the walruses bellowing from pain and anger, coming to the surface with mad rushes, sending the water up in the air till you would think a flock of geysers was turned loose in your immediate vicinity — oh, it's great!
"When we were walrus-hunting, the Roosevelt would steam along, with all hands on the watch. Then suddenly a keen-eyed Eskimo would sing out, 'Awick soah!' or, possibly, 'Awick tedicksoah!' ('Wal- ruses! A great many walruses!')
"We would look to see if there were enough of the animals to make a raid worth while; then, if the
AWALRUSHUNT 81
prospect was satisfactory, the Roosevelt would steam along to leeward, for if they smelled her smoke they would wake up and we would never see them again.
"Henson, MacMillan, and I used to take turns going after these brutes. Four or five Eskimos, one sailor, and a whale-boat were assigned to each of us. The boats were painted white to resemble pieces of ice, and the row-locks were muffled, that we might steal along as noiselessly as possible.
"As soon as we sighted a herd worthy of our lead, we would sing out to our men, ' Shake her up ! ' and they would all come on the jump. After a hurried though careful look to see if we had four or five oars, five har- poons, lines, floats, two rifles, and ammunition, we would cry, 'Stand by to lower away'; and as the Roose- velt slackened speed we would slide down the davit ropes, man the oars, and go out to look for trouble — which we usually found.
"We would get as near as possible to the walruses on the ice. If they were sound asleep, we could row to within five yards and harpoon a couple; but generally they would wake up, when we were about twenty yards away, and begin to slide off into the water. We would then shoot, and if they attacked us it was easy to harpoon them; while if they started to leave the country, it might be a Marathon race before we got close enough to make the harpoons fast in their hides.
"A walrus when killed will go to the bottom like a ton of lead, and our business was to get a harpoon into him before that event took place. The harpoon is fastened to the float by a long thong made of seal-
82 THENORTHPOLE
skin, and a float is made of the entire skin of a seal filled with air for buoyancy.
"A thing we soon learned to look out for was to let this thong, which was neatly coiled up like a lasso before it was thrown, have the right of way and all the space it needed; for if it happened to take a turn around one of our legs when the other end was fast to a walrus, we would be missing that useful member, and be pulled into the water — and possibly drowned.
"Now a crew that goes through a scrimmage with these monsters develops teamplay of a high order in a surprisingly short time. The sailor would steer, four Eskimos would row, and in the bow would be the best harpooner with one of us beside him. The two men forward would enable the men rowing to be spelled, if we had a long chase.
"I shall never forget my first mix-up with a herd. We had sighted about ten walruses two miles away, and MacMillan and I, Dennis Murphy, a sailor, and three Eskimos manned a whale-boat, and off we went. About two hundred yards from the walruses we quit rowing and let Murphy scull us, while Mac and I crouched side by side in the bow, the Eskimos with their harpoons being ready right behind us.
"When we were about twenty yards from the herd, one bull woke up, gave a grunt, poked another, woke him, and then — bang! bang! bang! we opened fire. Mac had a Winchester automatic rifle, and he got off five shots so fast that before the first one left the muzzle the other four were chasing it. He dropped a large bull, which gave a convulsive flop and rolled into the water with a splash. I hit a couple,
AWALRUSHUNT 83
and with hoarse grunts of pain and fury they all wriggled off the ice and dived out of sight. The boat was hurried to within five yards of Mac's bull, and an Eskimo hurled a harpoon, hit the large bull, and threw overboard the sealskin float. At this stage of the game about forty other walruses, that had been feeding below, came up to the surface to see what the noise was about, spitting the clam shells out of their mouths and snorting. The water was alive with the brutes, and many of them were so close to us that we could hit them with the oars. A harpoon was driven into another by a corking throw; and just then, when my magazine was empty, things began to come our way.
"Suddenly a large bull, followed by two others, all wounded, came to the surface twenty yards off, gave tongue to their battle-cry and charged. The Eskimos were not pleased at the look of things. They grabbed the oars and began to bang them on the gun- wale of the boat, yelling like so many steam sirens, hoping to scare the invaders off; but they might as well have been crooning lullabies.
"Mac, who had never before shot anything larger than a bird, was cool, and his automatic was going off like a pom-pom, when we cut loose on the charging trio. Their numerous companions added to the gen- eral din; and the reports of the rifles, the shouts and pounding of the Eskimos, with the bellowing of the infuriated animals, sounded like Vesuvius blowing its head off. We sank one walrus, then disabled an- other; but the biggest one dived and came up with a snort right alongside of the boat, so that he blew water in our faces. With our guns almost touching his head,
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we let drive — and he began to sink. With a tri- umphant cheer, the Eskimos harpooned him.
"Then we signaled to the Roosevelt to come up, and as soon as the friends and neighbors of the deceased smelled the smoke, they made for parts unknown.
"In this hunt, as in all other walrus hunts I was in, I had a hard time in trying not to take a crack at the floats. They were black, and jumped around in the weirdest way, so that they appeared to be alive. I knew that if I shot one, I would never hear the last of it, so took good care.
"Another time we went for a herd of fifty -odd walruses that were sleeping on the ice. The wind was blowing fairly hard, and it is never easy to shoot accurately from a whale-boat which is doing a cake- walk in the arms of a choppy sea. When we got twenty yards from the ice cake, we began to fire. I hit a couple of walruses, but did not kill them, and with fierce grunts the huge brutes wriggled into the sea. They were coming our way, and all hands stood by to show the visitors how we loved to speed the parting guest — our way of showing this being the vocal and instrumental method already described.
" Wesharkoopsi, an Eskimo, who stood right behind me and who had been telling us what an expert he was with the harpoon, was making threatening gestures which boded ill for any walrus that came near us.
"Suddenly, with a loud 'Ook! Ook!' a bull rose like a giant jack-in-the-box right alongside of me, giving us a regular shower bath, and he got both tusks on the gunwale of the boat.
AWALRUSHUNT 85
" Wesharkoopsi was not expecting a fight at such close quarters, and he got badly rattled. Instead of throwing his harpoon he dropped it, yelled madly, and began to spit in the monster's face. It is need- less to state that we never again took Wesharkoopsi walrus-hunting in a whale-boat.
"The others were shouting, swearing in English and Eskimo at Wesharkoopsi, the walrus, and every- thing in general; some were trying to hit the brute, others to back water.
"I was not eager just then to test the soundness of one arctic explorer's dictum: 'If a walrus gets his tusks over the side of the boat, you must not hit him, as such a course would induce him to back water and upset you; but gently grasp the two-thousand- pound monster by the tusks and drop him overboard' — or words to that effect. If this one had got his tusks a quarter inch further my way, he would have had them clear over the gunwale; so I held my rifle at port arms, stuck its business end into the visitor's face, and let him have it — which settled his account.
"That walrus had tried to upset us, but almost immediately another one tried a new variation of the game, an almost successful efifort to sink us — a regular dive-tackle.
"He was a large bull that an Eskimo had har- pooned. He showed what he was made of by promptly attacking the float and putting it out of commission, then he proceeded to make off with the harpoon, float, and all. He happened to come near my end of the boat, and I shot at him; but whether I hit the mark or not I do not know. Anyhow, he dived, and while
86 THENORTHPOLE
we were all looking over the side for him to appear, our craft was hit a tremendous whack by something under the stern — so hard that it upset the bosqn, who was standing there peacefully sculling.
"Our friend was getting a little too strenuous; but he dived before I could shoot again, and came up fifty yards off. Then I hit him with a bullet, and he disappeared. Maybe we were not an anxious crowd in that boat for the next few minutes, as we knew that that submarine earthquake was due for another blow-up at any instant — but when and where! We stared at the surface of the water, to see if possible from what direction the next attack would come.
"One more such scrimmage as the last and we would be all in — both literally and metaphorically; for he had put a big hole through the bottom of the boat, and as she had a double bottom we could not check the leak, and one man had to bale rapidly. We always carried along a lot of old coats to stop holes in the boats, but in this case they might as well have been pocket handkerchiefs.
"Suddenly an Eskimo who was looking over the side yelled: 'Kingeemuttl Kingeemutt ! ' ('Back her! Back her!') But the words were hardly out of his mouth when — smash! rip! bang! — the stern of the boat rose under the shock, the bosun was nearly knocked overboard, an Eskimo catching him on the fly, and a hole I could have put both fists through sud' denly appeared within an inch of his foot, just above the water line.
"I looked over the gunwale. There the brute lay on his back, tusks upright under the stern; then with
HOISTING A WALRUS TO THE DECK OF THE ROOSEVELT
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AWALRUSHUNT 87
a quick flop he dived. The men did their usual stunts to scare him off. Up he came fifteen yards away, gave his battle-cry, 'Ook! Ook! Ook!' to warn us to look out for trouble, and came tearing along the surface of Whale Sound like a torpedo boat de- stroyer, or an unmuffled automobile with a bicycle policeman on its trail.
"I got my rapid-fire gun into the game and sank him; then we made for the nearest cake of ice — and reached it none too soon."
To take up the story where Borup leaves it, when the first wounded walrus had been despatched with a bullet, and the floats were all taken in, an oar was erected in the boat for a signal, and the Roosevelt steamed up. The floats and the lines were taken over the rail of the ship, the walrus raised to the surface of the water, a hook inserted, and the winch on deck hoisted the monster on board, to be later skinned and cut up by the expert knives of the Eskimos. While this work was going on, the deck of the ship looked like a slaughterhouse, with the ravenous dogs — at this stage of the journey we had already about one hundred and fifty — waiting, ears erect and eyes spark- ling, to catch the refuse thrown them by the Eskimos.
In the Whale Sound region we sometimes obtained narwhal and deer, but there was no narwhal hunting to speak of on the upward journey this last time. Walrus, narwhal, and seal meat are valuable food for dogs, but a white man does not usually enjoy it — unless he is nearly starved. Many times, however, during my twenty-three years of arctic exploration, I have thanked God for even a bite of raw dog.
CHAPTER X
KNOCKING AT THE GATEWAY TO THE POLE
FROM Etah to Cape Sheridan! Imagine about three hundred and fifty miles of almost solid ice — ice of all shapes and sizes, mountainous ice, flat ice, ragged and tortured ice, ice that, for every foot of height revealed above the surface of the water, hides seven feet below — a theater of action which for diabolic and Titanic struggle makes Dante's frozen circle of the Inferno seem like a skating pond.
Then imagine a little black ship, solid, sturdy, compact, strong and resistant as any vessel built by mortal hands can be, yet utterly insignificant in com- parison with the white, cold adversary she must fight. And on this little ship are sixty-nine human beings, men, women, and children, whites and Eskimos, who have gone out into the crazy, ice-tortured channel between Baffin Bay and the Polar Sea — gone out to help prove the reality of a dream which has bewitched some of the most daring minds of the world for cen- turies, a will-o'-the-wisp in the pursuit of which men have frozen, and starved, and died. The music that ever sounded in our ears had for melody the howling of two hundred and forty-six wild dogs, for a bass accompaniment the deep, low grumbling of the ice, surging around us with the impulse of the tides, and
88
KNOCKING AT THE GATEWAY 89
for punctuation the shock and jar of our crashing assaults upon the floes.
We steamed northward into the fog beyond Etah, Greenland, on the afternoon of August 18, 1908. This was the beginning of the last stage of the Roosevelt's journey. All now on board would, if they lived, be with me until my return the following year. As an ungentle reminder of what was ahead of us, though going at half speed because of the fog, we struck a small berg a little way out from the harbor. Had the Roosevelt been an ordinary ship instead of the sturdy ice-fighter that she is, my story might have ended right here. As it was, the shock of the impact jarred things con- siderably. But the berg suffered more than the ship, which only shook herself like a dog coming out of the water, and with the main mass of the berg swaying heavily on one side from the blow we had given it, and a large fragment we had broken off churning the water on the other side, the Roosevelt scraped between them and went on.
This little incident made a strong impression on the new members of my party, and I did not think it necessary to tell them that it was only a mosquito bite to the crunching and grinding between the jaws of the heavier ice that was in store for us a little farther on. We were working in a northwesterly direction toward the EUesmere Land side, and headed for Cape Sabine, of terrible memories. As we steamed on, the ice became thicker, and we had to turn south to get out of the way of it, worming our course among the loose floes. The Roosevelt avoided the heavier ice; but the lighter pack she shoved aside without much difiiculty. South
90 THENORTHPOLE
of Brevoort Island we were fortunate in finding a strip of open water, and steamed northward again, keeping close to the shore.
It must be remembered that from Etah to Cape Sheridan, for the greater part of the course, the shores on either side are clearly visible, — on the east the Greenland coast, on the west the coast of EUesmere Land and Grant Land. At Cape Beechey, the narrow- est and most dangerous part, the channel is only eleven miles wide, and when the air is clear it almost seems as if a rifle bullet might be fired from one side to the other. These waters, save in exceptional seasons, are filled with the heaviest kind of ice, which is constantly floating southward from the Polar Sea toward Bafiin Bay.
Whether this channel was carved in the solid land by the force of pre-Adamite glaciers, or whether it is a Titanic cleft formed by the breaking off of Greenland from Grant Land, is a question still undetermined by geologists; but for difficulty and danger there is no place to compare with it in the whole arctic region.
It is hard for a layman to understand the character of the ice through which the Roosevelt fought her way. Most persons imagine that the ice of the arctic regions has been formed by direct freezing of the sea water; but in the summer time very little of the floating ice is of that character. It is composed of huge sheets broken off from the glacial fringe of North Grant Land broken up by contact with other floes and with the land, and driven south under the impetus of the violent flood tides. It is not unusual to see there ice between eighty and one hundred feet thick. As seven-eighths
KNOCKING AT THE GATEWAY 91
of these heavy floes are under water, one does not realize how thick they are until one sees where a huge mass, by the pressure of the pack behind it, has been driven upon the shore, and stands there high and dry, eighty or a hundred feet above the water, like a silver castle guarding the shore of this exaggerated and ice-clogged Rhine.
The navigation of the narrow and ice-encumbered channels between Etah and Cape Sheridan was long considered an utter impossibility, and only four ships besides the Roosevelt have succeeded in accomplishing any considerable portion of it. Of these four ships, one, the Polaris, was lost. Three, the Alert, the Dis- covery, and the Proteus, made the voyage up and back in safety; but one of those, the Proteus, was lost in an attempt to repeat the dash. The Roosevelt had on the expedition of 1905-6 made the voyage up and back, though she was badly smashed on the return.
Going north, the Roosevelt of necessity followed the coast a portion of the way, as only close to the shore could any water be found which would enable the ship to advance. With the shore ice on one side, and the moving central pack on the other, the changing tides were almost certain to give us an occasional opportunity to steam ahead.
This channel is the meeting place between the tides coming from Baffin Bay on the south and from Lincoln Sea on the north, the actual point of meet- ing being about Cape Frazer. South of that point the flood tide runs north, and north of it the flood tide runs south. One may judge of the force of these
92 THENORTHPOLE
tides from the fact that on the shores of the Polar Sea the mean rise is only a little over a foot, while in the narrowest part of the channel the tide rises and falls twelve or fourteen feet.
As a rule, looking across the channel, there seems to be no water — nothing but uneven and tortured ice. When the tide is at the ebb, the ship follows the narrow crack of water between the shore and the moving pack of the center, driving ahead with all her force; then, when the flood tide begins to rush violently southward, the ship must hurry to shelter in some niche of the shore ice, or behind some point of rock, to save herself from destruction or being driven south again.
This method of navigation, however, is one of con- stant hazard, as it keeps the vessel between the im- movable rocks and the heavy and rapidly drifting ice, with the ever-present possibility of being crushed between the two. My knowledge of the ice conditions of these channels and their navigation was absolutely my own, gained in former years of traveling along the shores and studying them for this very purpose. On my various expeditions I had walked every foot of the coast line, from Payer Harbor on the south to Cape Joseph Henry on the north, from three to eight times. I knew every indentation of that coast, every possible shelter for a ship, every place where icebergs usually grounded, and the places where the tide ran strongest, as accurately as a tugboat captain in New York harbor knows the piers of the North River water front. When Bartlett was in doubt as to making a risky run, with the chance of not finding shelter for the ship, I could usually say to him:
KNOCKING AT THE GATEWAY 93
"At such and such a place, so far from here, is a little niche behind the delta of a stream, where we can drive the Roosevelt in, if necessary"; or:
"Here icebergs are almost invariably grounded, and we can find shelter behind them"; or:
"Here is a place absolutely to be shunned, for the floes pile up here at the slightest provocation, in a way that would destroy any ship afloat."
It was this detailed knowledge of every foot of the EUesmere Land and Grant Land coasts, combined with Bartlett's energy and ice experience, that en- abled us to pass four times between this arctic Scylla and Charybdis.
The fog lifted about nine o'clock the first night out, the sun peeped through the clouds, and as we passed Payer Harbor, on the EUesmere Land side, we saw, sharply outlined against the snow, the house where I wintered in 1901-2. A flood of memories rushed over me at sight of the place. It was in Payer Harbor that Mrs. Peary and my little daughter had waited for me, on the Windward from September, 1900, to May, 1901, the ice being so heavy that year that the ship could neither reach Fort Conger, three hundred miles beyond, where I was, nor regain the open water to the south and return home. That was the spring when I had been obliged to turn back at Lincoln Bay, because the exhaustion of my Eskimos and dogs made a dash for the Pole impossible. It was at Payer Harbor that I had rejoined my family; it was at Payer Harbor that I had parted from them, determined to make one fight more to reach the goal.
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"One fight more," I said in 1902; but I had only reached 84° 17'.
"One fight more," I had said in 1905; but I had only reached 87° 6'.
And now, at Payer Harbor again, on August 18, 1908, it was still "One fight more!" Only this time I knew it was the last, in truth, whatever the result.
At ten o'clock that night we were steaming past the desolate, wind-swept and ice-ground rocks of Cape Sabine, the spot that marks one of the most somber chapters in arctic history, where Greely's ill-fated party slowly starved to death in 1884 — seven sur- vivors only being rescued out of a party of twenty- four! The ruins of the rude stone hut built by these men for shelter during the last year of their lives can still be seen on the bleak northern shore of Cape Sabine, only two or three miles from the extreme point. It is doubtful if a more desolate and unsheltered location for a camp could be found anywhere in the arctic regions, fully exposed to the biting winds from the north, cut off by the rocks back of it from the rays of the southern sun, and besieged by the ice pack surg- ing down from Kane Basin in the north.
I first saw the place in August, 1896, in a blinding snowstorm, so thick that it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. The impressions of that day will never be forgotten — the pity and the sickening sense of horror. The saddest part of the whole story for me was the knowledge that the catas- trophe was unnecessary, that it might have been avoided. My men and I have been cold and have been near to starvation in the Arctic, when cold and hunger
KNOCKING AT THE GATEWAY 95
were inevitable; but the horrors of Cape Sabine were not inevitable. They are a blot upon the record of American arctic exploration.
From Cape Sabine north there was so much open water that we thought of setting the lug sail before the southerly wind; but a little later the appearance of ice to the north caused us to change our minds. About sixty miles north of Etah, we came to a dead stop in the ice pack off Victoria Head. There we lay for hours; but the time was not altogether wasted, for we filled our tanks with ice from a floe.
In the afternoon of the second day out, the wind came on strong from the south, and we slowly drifted northward with the ice. After some hours, the wind began to form pools of open water through the pack, and we steamed westward toward the land, with the spray flying clear across the decks. An Eskimo de- clared that this was the devil spitting at us. After a few miles, we ran into denser ice and stopped again.
Dr. Goodsell, MacMillan and Borup were busy storing food and medical supplies in the boats, to be ready for an emergency. Had the Roosevelt been crushed by the ice or sunk, we could have lowered the boats at a moment's notice, fitted and equipped for a voyage, and retreated to the Eskimo country — thence back to civilization on some whaler, or in a ship which would have been sent up with coal the following year by the Peary Arctic Club, though that, of course, wovdd have meant the failure of the expe- dition.
In each of the six whale-boats were placed a case containing twelve six-pound tins of pemmican, the
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compressed meat food used on arctic expeditions; two twenty-five pound tins of biscuit; two five-pound tins of sugar, a few pounds of coffee and several cans of condensed milk; an oil stove and five one-gallon tins of oil; a rifle with one hundred rounds of ammunition and a shotgun with fifty rounds; matches, a hatchet, knives, a can opener, salt, needles and thread; and the following medical supplies: catgut and needles, bandages and cotton, quinine, astringent (tannic acid), gauze, plaster-surgical liniment, boracic acid, and dusting powder.
The boats were swung at the davits, with a full complement of oars, mast, sails, etc., and the emer- gency outfit above described would have fitted them for a voyage of a week or ten days. On leaving Etah the essential items of supplies, such as tea, coffee, sugar, oil, pemmican, and biscuit, had been stowed on deck, close to the rail on both sides, ready instantly to be thrown over the rail onto the ice, in case the ship should be crushed.
Every person on board, both the men of the ship and the Eskimos, was ready with a little bundle packed to get right over the side at a moment's notice, after lowering the boats and throwing onto the ice the essen- tial supplies stowed near the ship's rail. Nobody thought of undressing regularly; and the bathtub in my cabin might as well have been a trunk, for all the time I dared to spend in it between Etah and Cape Sheridan.
CHAPTER XI
CLOSE QUAETERS WITH THE ICE
THAT no time should be lost on the upward voyage, and also that my Eskimos might not have too much leisure in which to con- sider the dangers which constantly threatened their floating home, I kept them all busy. The men were put to work making sledges and dog-harness, so that when we reached Cape Sheridan — if we reached it, — we might be ready for the fall hunting. I had on board the raw materials, and each Eskimo built a sledge for himself, putting his best work into it. This pride of the Eskimo in personal achievement has been of great service to me, and has been encouraged by special prizes and special praise.
The Eskimo women were put to work on our win- ter garments as soon as possible after leaving Etah, so that, in the event of our losing the ship, every man would have a comfortable outfit. In the North we wear practically the same clothing as the Eskimos, including the fur stockings with the fur on the inside. Otherwise we should have frozen feet often instead of only occasionally. A man who could not live without silk stockings would not be likely to attempt the North Pole. As we had altogether, including the Eskimos, sixty-nine persons on board the ship — men, women, and children — it will be seen that there
97
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was considerable sewing to be done. Old garments had to be overhauled and mended, and new ones made.
The worst of the ice fighting did not begin immedi- ately, and the new members of the expedition, Mac- Millan, Borup, and Dr. Goodsell, were at first much interested in watching the Eskimo women at their sewing. They sit on anything that is convenient, a chair, a platform, or the floor. In their own quarters they remove their footgear, put up one foot, and hold one end of the fabric between their toes, sewing a seam over and over from them, instead of toward them, as our women do. The foot of an Eskimo woman is a sort of third hand, and the work is gripped between the great toe and the second toe.
The Eskimo women have great confidence in their own skill at garment-making, and they take sugges- tions from the inexperienced white men with a good- natured and superior tolerance. When one of the northern belles was shaping a garment for Bartlett to wear on the spring sledge journey, he anxiously urged her to give him plenty of room. Her reply was a mixed Eskimo and English equivalent for:
"You just trust me, Captain! When you get out on the road to the Nor Pol, you'll need a draw-string in your jacket, and not gussets." She had seen me and my men come back from previous sledge jour- * neys, and she knew the effect of long continued fatigue and scanty rations in making a man's clothes fit him loosely.
The Eskimos had the run of the ship, but the port side of the forward deck house was given to them
CLOSE QUARTERS WITH ICE 99
entirely. A wide platform three or four feet high, made of packing boxes, was placed around the wall of the deck house for them to sleep on. Each family had its own quarters, partitioned off by planks, and screened in front by a curtain. They cooked their own meat and whatever else they desired, though Percy, the ship's steward, provided them with tea and coffee. If they had baked beans, or hash, or anything of that kind from the ship's store, it was cooked for them by Percy; and he also furnished them with his famous bread, which for lightness and crisp- ness is unsurpassed in the round world.
The Eskimos seemed always to be eating. There was no table for the crowd of them, as they do not incline to regular meal hours; but each family ate by itself, as appetite dictated. I gave them pots, pans, plates, cups, saucers, knives, forks, and oil stoves. They had access to the ship's galley, day and night; but Percy was always amiable, and the Eskimos at length learned not to wash their hands in the water in which he purposed to boil meat.
The third day out the weather was villainous. It rained steadily, and there was a strong southerly wind. The group of dogs on the main deck stood about with low, dejected heads and dripping tails. Only at feeding time did they take courage even to fight or snap at one another. Most of the time the ship was stationary, or drifting slowly with the ice toward the mouth of Dobbin Bay. When at last the ice loosened, we made about ten miles in open water — then the wheel rope broke, and we had to stop for repairs, unable to take advantage of the
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stretch of water still before us. The captain's remarks when the strands of that cable parted I will leave to the imagination of the reader. Had the accident occurred at a time when the ship was between two big floes, the fortress of the North Pole might still remain uncaptured. It was after midnight before we got under way, and half an hour later we were stopped again by the impassable ice.
On the fourth day we lay quiet all day long, with a slight breeze from Princess Marie Bay setting us slowly eastward; but, as the sun was shining, we util- ized the time in drying our clothing, wet and soggy from the almost continuous rain and snow of the pre- vious two days. As it was still summertime in the Arctic, we did not suffer from cold. The pools be- tween the ice floes were slowly enlarging, and at nine in the evening we were on our way again, but at eleven we ran into a thick fog. All night we bored and twisted through the ice, which, though thick, was not heavy for the Roosevelt, and only once or twice we had to back her. An ordinary ship could have made no head- way whatever.
Wardwell, the chief engineer, stood his eight-hour or twelve-hour watch the same as his assistants, and during the passage of these dangerous channels he was nearly always in the engine-room, watching the machinery to see that no part of it got out of order at a crucial moment — which would have meant the loss of the ship. When we were between two big floes, forcing our way through, I would call down the tube leading from the bridge to the engine- room:
CLOSE QUARTERS WITH ICE 101
"Chief, you've got to keep her moving until I give you word, no matter what happens."
Sometimes the ship would get stuck between the corners of two floes which were slowly coming together. At such a time a minute is an eternity. I would call down the tube to Wardwell, "You've got to jump her now, the length of fifty yards," or whatever it might be. And I could feel the ship shaking under me as she seemed to take the flying leap, under the impulse of live steam poured directly from the boilers into the fifty-two-inch low-pressure cylinder.
The engines of the Roosevelt have what is called a by-pass, by which the live steam can be turned into the big cylinder, more than doubling the power of the engines for a few minutes. This simple bit of mechanism has saved us from being crushed flat by the ice on more than one occasion.
The destruction of a ship between two ice floes is not sudden, like her destruction by a submarine mine, for instance. It is a slow and gradually increasing pressure from both sides, sometimes till the ice meets in the vitals of the ship. A vessel might stay thus, suspended between two floes, for twenty-four hours — or until the movement of the tides relaxed the pres- sure, when she would sink. The ice might open at first just suflBciently to let the hull go down, and the ends of the yards might catch on the ice and break, with the weight of the water-filled hull, as was the case with the ill-fated Jeannette. One ship, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, was caught in the ice and dragged over the rocks like a nutmeg over a nutmeg grater. The bottom was sliced oflf as one would slice a cucumber
102 THENORTHPOLE
with a knife, so that the iron blubber tanks in the hold dropped out of her. The ship became nothing but the sides and ends of a box. She remained some twenty- four hours, gripped between the floes, and then went down.
On the 22d of August, the fifth day, our lucky stars must have been working overtime; for we made a phenomenal rim — more than a hundred miles, right up the middle of Kennedy Channel, uninter- rupted by ice or fog! At midnight the sun burst gloriously through the clouds, just over Cape Lieber. It seemed a happy omen.
Could such good fortune continue? Though my hopes were high, the experience of former journeys reminded me that the brightest coin has always a reverse side. In a day we had run the whole length of Kennedy Channel, and immediately before us there was only scattered ice. But beyond lay Robeson Channel, only some thirty miles away, and the navi- gator who knows Robeson Channel will never be sanguine that it has anything good in store for him.
Soon we encountered both ice and fog, and, while working slowly along in search of an opening, we were forced clear across to the Greenland coast at Thank God Harbor, the winter quarters of the Fo- laris in 1871-72. I have mentioned the lane of water which often lies at ebb tide between the