The North Pole: Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club
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Title: The North Pole: Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club
Author: Robert E. Peary
Author of introduction, etc.: Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor
Theodore Roosevelt
Release date: August 3, 2006 [eBook #18975]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18975
Credits: Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Emmy and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NORTH POLE: ITS DISCOVERY IN 1909 UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE PEARY ARCTIC CLUB ***
Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Emmy and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE NORTH POLE
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
[Illustration: THE FIVE FLAGS AT THE POLE
LEFT TO RIGHT
1. Navy League--Ooqueah
2. D. K. E. Fraternity--Ootah
3. Polar Flag Carried 15 Years--Henson
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
[Illustration]
GREENWOOD PRESS, PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
Originally published in 1910 by Frederick A. Stokes Co.
First Greenwood Reprinting, 1968
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 68-55210
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
MY WIFE
INTRODUCTION
SOME _years ago I met at a dinner in Washington the famous Norwegian
arctic explorer, Nansen, 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 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 civilized world his
debtors; but, above all, we, his fellow Americans, 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.
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
[Illustration: 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 OF MY ESKIMOS LOSE THEIR NERVE 230
XXVI BORUP'S FARTHEST NORTH 240
XXVII GOOD-BY TO MARVIN 248
XXVIII WE BREAK ALL RECORDS 255
XXIX BARTLETT 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
FULL-PAGE PLATES REPRODUCING PHOTOGRAPHIC ENLARGEMENTS COLORED BY HAND
THE FIVE FLAGS AT THE POLE _Frontispiece._
Facing
Page
PORTRAIT OF ROBERT E. PEARY 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 FJORD 74
CAPTAIN BARTLETT AND HIS PARTY (A TYPICAL UNIT DIVISION OF THE
EXPEDITION) 140
ILLUMINATION OF THE _Roosevelt_ 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
Facing
Page
GEORGE A. WARDWELL, CHIEF ENGINEER 16
BANKS SCOTT, SECOND ENGINEER 16
ROBERT A. BARTLETT, MASTER 16
THOMAS GUSHUE, MATE 16
CHARLES PERCY, STEWARD 16
PROFESSOR ROSS G. MARVIN, ASSISTANT 17
GEORGE BORUP, ASSISTANT 17
DONALD B. MACMILLAN, ASSISTANT 17
DR. J. W. GOODSELL, SURGEON 17
SNOWY OWL, CAPE SHERIDAN 36
BRANT GOOSE 37
SABINE'S GULL 37
RED-THROATED DIVER, MALE AND FEMALE 37
KING EIDER, DRAKE 37
ESKIMOS COMING OFF TO THE _Roosevelt_ IN KAYAKS 42
THE MIDNIGHT SUN AS SEEN IN THE WHALE SOUND REGION 42
ESKIMO IN KAYAK 43
THE ICE-CLIFFS OF HUBBARD GLACIER 52
PEARY DISTRIBUTING UTENSILS TO WIVES OF HIS HUNTERS AT ETAH 53
DECK SCENE ON THE _Roosevelt_ 53
ESKIMO MOTHER AND CHILD 60
ESKIMO CHILDREN 61
KUDLAH, ALIAS "MISFORTUNE," WITH PUPPIES 61
KING ESKIMO DOG 70
THE DOG MARKET AT CAPE YORK 71
THE WHALE-BOAT RETURNING TO THE SHIP FROM THE WALRUS HUNT 71
THE CAPE JESUP GRENADIERS 71
HOISTING A WALRUS TO THE DECK OF THE _Roosevelt_ 86
A NARWHAL KILLED OFF CAPE UNION, JULY, 1909. THE MOST NORTHERLY
SPECIMEN EVER CAPTURED 87
CAPTAIN BARTLETT IN THE CROW'S NEST 104
TABULAR ICEBERG AND FLOE-ICE 105
THE _Roosevelt_ DRYING OUT HER SAILS AT CAPE SHERIDAN,
SEPTEMBER, 1908 122
THE _Roosevelt_ ON SEPTEMBER 12, 1908, MARIE AHNIGHITO
PEARY'S BIRTHDAY 123
"PEARY" SLEDGES ON BOARD THE _Roosevelt_ 123
VIEW BETWEEN THE _Roosevelt_ AND CAPE COLUMBIA 136
ESKIMO TYPE OF SLEDGE USED ON JOURNEY 137
"PEARY" TYPE OF 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 PARRY PENINSULA 152
HERD OF MUSK-OXEN ROUNDED UP 153
WEESHARKOOPSI AND MUSK-OX CALF 156
BEAR KILLED IN CLEMENTS MARKHAM INLET 156
MUSK-OX HEADS IN THE RIGGING OF THE _Roosevelt_ 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 OF 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 ROUGH ICE 224
STOPPED BY OPEN WATER 225
ATHLETIC SPORTS AT THE LEAD CAMP 232
PICKAXING A ROAD THROUGH ZONE OF ROUGH ICE 232
A CHARACTERISTIC VIEW OF THE EXPEDITION ON THE MARCH IN FINE
WEATHER 233
REPAIRING SLEDGES IN CAMP 248
MARVIN TAKING AN OBSERVATION IN A SNOW SHELTER 249
CROSSING A LARGE LAKE OF YOUNG ICE, NORTH OF 87° 264
CAMP AT 85° 48´ NORTH, MARCH 22, 1909 265
A MOMENTARY HALT IN THE LEE OF A BIG HUMMOCK NORTH OF 88° 265
BARTLETT AND HIS PARTY READY TO START BACK FROM 87° 47´ NORTH,
APRIL 1, 1909 270
CUTTING BLOCKS OF SNOW FOR IGLOOS AT NEXT TO LAST CAMP,
89° 25´ 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. JESUP, 89° 57´, APRIL 6 AND 7, 1909 285
THE RECONNOITERING PARTY AT THE POLE 288
THE DOUBLE TEAM OF DOGS USED WITH THE RECONNOITERING SLEDGE
AT THE POLE, SHOWING THEIR ALERTNESS AND GOOD CONDITION 289
PEARY WITH CHRONOMETER, SEXTANT, AND ARTIFICIAL HORIZON AT
THE POLE 290
PEARY TAKING AN OBSERVATION AT THE POLE, WITH ARTIFICIAL
HORIZON, IN A SNOW SHELTER 290
PEARY'S IGLOO AT CAMP MORRIS K. JESUP, APRIL 6, 1909; THE MOST
NORTHERLY HUMAN HABITATION IN THE WORLD 291
MEMBERS OF THE PARTY CHEERING THE STARS 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
EGINGWAH SEARCHING THE HORIZON FOR LAND 298
PEARY SEARCHING THE HORIZON FOR LAND 298
LOOKING TOWARD CAPE CHELYUSKIN 299
LOOKING TOWARD SPITZBERGEN 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 FATHOMS (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
EGINGWAH AFTER THE RETURN FROM THE TRIP 319
OOTAH BEFORE STARTING ON THE SLEDGE TRIP 319
OOTAH AFTER THE RETURN FROM THE SLEDGE TRIP 319
PERMANENT MONUMENT ERECTED AT CAPE COLUMBIA TO MARK POINT OF
DEPARTURE AND RETURN 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
OF 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 photographs not
retouched in the least, _e.g._, those facing pages 270, 284, 290, etc.
In others the sky-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 widely
extended. The color-plates are, of course, exceptions requiring special
treatment. THE PUBLISHERS
FOREWORD
The struggle for the North Pole began nearly one hundred years before
the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, being inaugurated
(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
discovered the strait which bears his name, and gained for Great Britain
what was then the record for the farthest north, 72° 12´, a point 1128
miles from the geographical 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. Barents, 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 Mayen, circumnavigated
Spitzbergen, and advanced the eye of man to 80° 23´. Most valuable 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 maritime nation.
The Dutch specially profited by Hudson'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 interesting 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 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 ambitions
for an arctic route to the Orient.
In 1819 Parry penetrated many intricate passages and overcame one-half
of the distance between Greenland 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 compass 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
officers 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, however, and he was compelled to depend on
the muscles of his men to haul his two heavy sledges, which were in
reality boats on steel runners. Leaving Spitzbergen 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 expedition, 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 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 engineers, 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 explorations 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
_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 navigated 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 imprisoned 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 a fortune to equip a searching party to
be commanded by Leopold McClintock, one of the ablest and toughest
travelers over the ice the world has ever known. In 1859 McClintock
verified 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 discovery 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 Collinson (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
Collinson 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 Baffin Bay and Bering Sea, but America had taken no active
part in polar exploration until the sympathy aroused by the tragic
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 resulted
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 outlined 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 Eskimo
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
separated from the ship. For five months, December to April, they lived
on this cold and desolate raft, which carried them safely 1300 miles to
Labrador, where they were picked up by the _Tigress_. During the winter
one of the Eskimo women presented the party with a baby, so that their
number had increased during 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 _viâ_ what
was now known as the American route, two ships most lavishly equipped
being despatched under command of George Nares. He succeeded in
navigating the _Alert_ fourteen miles further north than the _Polaris_
had penetrated four years previous. 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 government and commanded by Lieutenant--now
Major-General--A. W. Greely, U. S. A., to establish at Lady Franklin Bay
the American circumpolar station (1881). Greely during the two years at
Fort Conger carried on extensive explorations of Ellesmere 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 held
for 300 years. Greely's mark was 83° 24´, which bettered the British by
four miles. As the relief 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 supposed 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
suffering, G. W. Melville, the chief engineer, who was in charge of one
of the boats, with nine men, reached, on September 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 conduct 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. (September 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
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 southward
journey, when fortunately they met the Englishman Jackson, who was
exploring the Archipelago.
Meanwhile the _Fram_, after Nansen left her, continued 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 Nansen, 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.
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 discovered and first
explored the Archipelago.
It was from Spitzbergen that Andree, with two companions, 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.
The Northeast Passage was first achieved in 1878-1879 by Adolph Erik
Nordenskjold. Step by step energetic explorers, principally Russian, had
been mapping the arctic coasts of Europe and Siberia until practically
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 résumé 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 observations, 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 Frederiksthaal.
The preceding brief summary gives only an inadequate conception of the
immense treasures of money and lives expended by the nations to explore
the northern ice world and to attain the apex of the earth. All efforts
to reach the Pole had failed, notwithstanding 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 without
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 discoveries, 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 dauntless 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
projection northward. At the very beginning of his first expedition to
Greenland, in 1891, he suffered an accident 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 off 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 winter 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 another equally remarkable
crossing of the ice cap three 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 conception
and brilliancy of results these two crossings of Greenland are
unsurpassed in arctic history. The magnitude 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 effective 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 depressing winter night; and lastly to train the Eskimo to
become his sledging crew.
In his first north polar expedition, which lasted for four years,
1898-1902, Peary failed to get nearer than 343 miles to the 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 headquarters 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 _Roosevelt_, 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 opening 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 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 synonymous with tragedy and death.
Thus Robert E. Peary has crowned a life devoted to the exploration of
the icy north and to the advancement 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 knowledge 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.
[Illustration: 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
possible 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 informed and intelligent
persons saw fit to differ. But many others shared my views and gave
without stint their sympathy and their help, and now, in the end, 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 justified.
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 difference: 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 to 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 anticipate all of the moves of the adversary. Had
this been possible, my expedition of 1905-1906, which established 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 unforeseen 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 insufficient supplies, so that, when almost within
striking distance of the goal, it was necessary to turn back because of
the imminent peril of starvation. 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 quarters on the north shore of Grant
Land as in the winter of 1905-1906.
"The sledge march will begin as before in February, 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 Greenland (a course diagonally _with_ the set of the
ice) instead of attempting to come back to the north coast of Grant
Land (diagonally _against_ the set of the ice). An adjunct of this
program will probably be the establishment of a depot well up the north
coast of Greenland 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 'American' 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 commands 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 equidistant
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 capable 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 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 clearing up, or at least the fixing in their general
proportions, 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
practically 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 expedition 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 supplies 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 on March 1 the expedition left Cape
Columbia, heading 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. Excellent
conditions of ice and weather also contributed, not to mention the fact
that the exhilaration of success 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 eastward 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 supporting 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 faithfulness to detail, was composed of a number of elements,
the absence of any one of which might have been fatal to success. We
could scarcely have succeeded without the help of our faithful Eskimos;
nor even with them, had it not been for our knowledge of their
capacities for work and endurance, and for the confidence which years of
acquaintance had taught them to repose in me. We could certainly not
have succeeded without the Eskimo dogs which furnished the traction
power for our sledges, and so enabled us to carry our supplies where no
other power on earth could have moved them with the requisite speed and
certainty. It may be that we could not have succeeded without the
improved form of sledge which I was able to construct and which,
combining in its construction, strength, lightness, and ease of
traction, 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 driving
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 élan 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 perfect
knowledge of myself, and of how to conserve my strength. I knew it was
my last game upon the great Arctic chess-board. It was win this time or
be forever defeated.
The lure of the North! It is a strange and a powerful 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.
Civilization 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
PREPARATIONS
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 involuntary
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 Nordenskjöld 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 gradually 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 fastnesses 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 with the avowed intention of reaching ninety north--if
it were possible. Since then I have made six different 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 middle 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 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, latitude 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
expenses. 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 modifications 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 the foremast, and changing the
interior arrangements somewhat. The general features of the ship had
already proved themselves so well adapted for the purpose 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. Repeated oral promises were added to contractual agreements
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
expedition further in the future, with all the possible contingencies
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.
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 paralyzing
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 everybody concerned in the
success of the expedition.
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 financial 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 required time
for preparation.
[Illustration: GEORGE A. WARDWELL
CHIEF ENGINEER]
[Illustration: BANKS SCOTT
SECOND ENGINEER]
[Illustration: ROBERT A. BARTLETT, MASTER]
[Illustration: THOMAS GUSHUE, MATE]
[Illustration: CHARLES PERCY, STEWARD]
General Thomas H. Hubbard accepted the presidency 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 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.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR ROSS G. MARVIN, ASSISTANT]
[Illustration: GEORGE BORUP, ASSISTANT]
[Illustration: DONALD B. MACMILLAN, ASSISTANT]
[Illustration: DR. J. W. GOODSELL, SURGEON]
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 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 furnished 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 careless 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 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 Newfoundlanders, the Newfoundlanders are our next-door
neighbors and essentially our first cousins. This expedition went north
in an American-built ship, by the American 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.
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 associated 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,
enthusiastic, 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
1886, 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 living, 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 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, Cincinnati, O., 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 Association. At the time of his
departure on the expedition he was president of the Allegheny 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 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 expedition. 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 graduated 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
Company at Altoona, Pa.
To Captain Bartlett I left the selection of his officers and men, with
the single exception of the chief engineer.
The personnel of the expedition, as finally completed 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. Wardwell, 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, boatswain; 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 experience 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--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 expeditions 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 START
From her berth beside the recreation pier at the foot of East
Twenty-fourth Street, New York, the _Roosevelt_ steamed north on the
last expedition, 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 ferryboats 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
exceptional 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. Bridgman.
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 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 following
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
enthusiasm 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 the
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.
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 Sydney.
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 expedition I allowed nothing to worry me. Perhaps this feeling
of surety was because every possible contingency had been discounted,
perhaps because the setbacks 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 signaled 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 Colonel
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 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 confusion. My room was
filled so full of things--instruments, books, furniture, presents from
friends, supplies, 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 bunk, where 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 bathroom 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 office 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,
autographed. 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 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
greatest sources of pleasure. There were at least two hundred 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
popular, 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
assortment 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 homesickness, 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
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 Henson's room, the starboard messroom, and in the forward
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 succession the cabin of the chief engineer and his
assistant, the cabin of Percy, the steward, and the cabin of MacMillan
and Borup; then the mate and the boatswain 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 it is only a
pleasant summer 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 capricious 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 picking 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 captured 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 harpoon 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, 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 accentuated 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 thunderstorm which I remember having experienced.
I recall, however, that on our upward voyage in 1905 we ran into very
heavy thunderstorms with electrical 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 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 coming, so the fine edge of that
experience has been somewhat 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 wilderness 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.
[Illustration: SNOWY OWL, CAPE SHERIDAN]
[Illustration: BRANT-GOOSE]
[Illustration: SABINE'S GULL]
[Illustration: RED-THROATED DIVER, MALE AND FEMALE]
[Illustration: KING EIDER, DRAKE]
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, marking 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 and hunger.
These rude rock piles bring home to any thoughtful person the meaning of
arctic exploration. 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 Cary
Islands is the nameless grave of one of the ill-fated Kallistenius
Expedition. Still farther north, at Etah, is the grave of Sontag, 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 Sheridan, 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 Sontag's grave, 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,
bluff headland which marks the southern point of the stretch of arctic
coast inhabited 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 regions themselves
were to furnish for their own conquest. 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 sailing"; 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 civilization 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.
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
attainment. If that be so, then prayer has been my portion for many
years. Through all the seasons of disappointment 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 settlement 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 icebergs 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 to greet us. The
sight of them skimming the water so easily in their frail kayaks was the
most welcome spectacle I had seen since we sailed from Sydney.
[Illustration: ESKIMOS COMING OFF TO THE ROOSEVELT IN KAYAKS]
It seems fitting to give a good deal of attention at this point to the
consideration of this interesting little race, the most northerly people
in all the world, for their help is one of the elements without which it
is possible that the North Pole might never have been 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
appropriate 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
speaking, 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 constant 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.
[Illustration: ESKIMO IN KAYAK]
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 gratitude 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 another way, teaching them how to modify and
concentrate 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, unswerving 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 themselves 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 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 possessions 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 expedition, 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 illustration, 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 quarters in order that she
might see a white woman.
It may perhaps be fairly said that it has been my fortune to utilize the
Eskimos for the purpose of discovery 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 impossible 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, inhabiting 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 them are taken care of as a matter of course. They are
healthy and pure-blooded; they have no vices, no intoxicants, 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 philosophic
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 environment 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 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 descending 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 blubber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the
food-producing capacity of every hunter, and relieved the whole tribe
from the formerly ever-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 Society of London, that the Eskimos are the
remnants of an ancient Siberian tribe, the Onkilon; that the last
members 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 Siberian Islands, thence eastward over lands yet
undiscovered 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 suffixes, by which they
extend a word to a considerable length from the original stem. The
language is relatively 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 characterize 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 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 fundamental 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
undesirable 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 fulfilled
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
become good hunters or good seamstresses, as the case may be,
"Pearyaksoah" 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 illustration 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.
[Illustration: DECK SCENE ON THE ROOSEVELT]
CHAPTER VI
AN ARCTIC OASIS
In a little arctic oasis lives the meager and scattered 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 between 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.
[Illustration: THE ICE CLIFFS OF HUBBARD GLACIER]
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.
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 saxifrage, 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 mosquitoes, and even a few spiders.
Among the fauna of this country are the reindeer (the Greenland
caribou), 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 ventures 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
traveling, 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 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
Department. 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.
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 platform 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 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 forget 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
themselves 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 acquaintance 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 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.
Ten 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 improvement 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 cooking. 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 heat from the moss
dries 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 rectangular 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 illustration 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 wrestling, 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. 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 willing to start life again.
In these cases of primitive divorce, the husband keeps one or all of the
children if he wants them; if not, the woman takes them with her.
[Illustration: ESKIMO MOTHER AND CHILD]
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 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 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.
[Illustration: ESKIMO CHILDREN]
It would be worse than useless to attempt to engraft 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 walrus 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 man's tools, the
labors of the arctic traveler would be tremendously increased and the
size of his expedition would have to be enlarged to limits that might be
found unwieldy in the extreme.
[Illustration: KUDLAH, ALIAS "MISFORTUNE," WITH PUPPIES]
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 consideration 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 exception. 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
elements 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
capsizing 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 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 offering is made to him. The devil is supposed
to have a keen appreciation 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 shivering one. Any sudden and unexplained barking
or howling 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.
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
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 blubber
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 provided, 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 sufficient
condensed milk and other foods to keep the infant alive. 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 formalities 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 receive much attention from the
natives. The Eskimos are, within barbaric limits, astronomers. The
principal 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 Indian tribes,
a fleeing maiden and her pursuing admirer.
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 surprising 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 aboriginal 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 judging 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 aborigines 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 framework, 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 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 weighing about
175 pounds. Seegloo and Ooqueah are about 24 and 20 respectively. All
four of them have been brought up to regard me as the patron,
protector, and guide of their people. Their capacities, peculiarities,
and individual characteristics were perfectly 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.
[Illustration: THE DOG MARKET AT CAPE YORK]
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 nothing 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 live on any other food I know,
for I have made the experiment. For water they eat snow.
[Illustration: THE WHALE BOAT RETURNING TO THE SHIP FROM THE WALRUS
HUNT]
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.
[Illustration: KING ESKIMO DOG]
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 primitive communism, which is necessary to preserve their
existence. Once give them an idea of real-estate interest 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 common 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.
[Illustration: THE CAPE JESUP GRENADIERS]
CHAPTER VIII
GETTING RECRUITS
When on August 1 the _Roosevelt_ steamed out from Cape York, she had on
board several 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 cutlery, cooking
utensils, ammunition, matches, et cetera. So, as the Yankees say, we
traded.
[Illustration: PEARY DISTRIBUTING UTENSILS TO WIVES OF HIS HUNTERS AT
ETAH]
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 permanent 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 they draw from the snow and the
air the scanty nourishment which they require. Seen from a distance, the
snow looks like blood. This red banner of the Arctic has greeted me on
all my northern journeys.
Sailing by these cliffs, 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 Oomunnui 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 channels 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 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_, having 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 _Roosevelt_--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 vessel
than ours at this time--a sort of free tourist steamship for traveling
Eskimos, with their chattering children, barking dogs, and other goods
and chattels.
[Illustration: ESKIMO DOGS OF THE EXPEDITION (246 IN ALL) ON SMALL
ISLAND, ETAH FJORD]
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 clearness 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 cliffs, streaked here and there with
the yellows of the sandstone; a little farther away sometimes the
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 furnaces
cleaned, and the cargo overhauled and re-stowed to put the vessel in
fighting trim for her coming encounter 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. Whitney's belongings
were landed.
At Etah, Rudolph Franke, who had come north with Dr. Cook in 1907, came
to me and asked permission to go home on the _Erik_. He showed me a
letter 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
(presumably in January) so as to enable him to cross to Anoratok from
Ellesmere 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 terrestrial magnetism of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, Mr.
George S. Norton, of New York, and Mr. Walter A. Larned, the tennis
champion. The _Roosevelt'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, including 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--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 disagreeable 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 thousand miles
below at Sydney. We had some three hundred and fifty miles of almost
solid ice to negotiate 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
_Roosevelt_ 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 process by no means
devoid of peril, is an important part of every serious arctic
expedition, for on every expedition 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 walrus. 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
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, hitting 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!' ('Walruses! 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 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
harpoons, lines, floats, two rifles, and ammunition, we would cry,
'Stand by to lower away'; and as the _Roosevelt_ 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 sealskin, 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, 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 gunwale 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 general 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 another; 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, we
let drive--and he began to sink. With a triumphant 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.
"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 needless 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 everything 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 effort to sink
us--a regular dive-tackle.
"He was a large bull that an Eskimo had harpooned. 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 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 bosun, 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: '_Kingeemutt!
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 suddenly
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 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
destroyer, 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."
[Illustration: HOISTING A WALRUS TO THE DECK OF THE ROOSEVELT]
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 sparkling, to catch the
refuse thrown them by the Eskimos.
[Illustration: A NARWHAL KILLED OFF CAPE UNION, JULY, 1909. THE MOST
NORTHERLY SPECIMEN EVER CAPTURED]
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 comparison 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 centuries, 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 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 considerably. 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 Ellesmere 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
difficulty. South 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 Ellesmere Land
and Grant Land. At Cape Beechey, the narrowest 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 Baffin 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 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 _Discovery_, 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
meeting 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 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 constant hazard, as it
keeps the vessel between the immovable 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:
"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 Ellesmere Land and
Grant Land coasts, combined with Bartlett's energy and ice experience,
that enabled 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 Ellesmere 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.
"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 survivors 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
surging 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 catastrophe 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 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 declared 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, would have meant the failure of the
expedition.
In each of the six whale-boats were placed a case containing twelve
six-pound tins of pemmican, the 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 emergency 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
essential 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 QUARTERS 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 consider 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 winter 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 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 immediately, and the new
members of the expedition, MacMillan, 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 suggestions 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 journeys, 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 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 crispness 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 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 utilized the time in drying our clothing, wet and soggy from
the almost continuous rain and snow of the previous two days. As it was
still summertime in the Arctic, we did not suffer from cold. The pools
between 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 headway 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:
"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 pressure, when she would sink. The ice might open at
first just sufficiently 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
off as one would slice a cucumber with a knife, so that the iron
blubber
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