HOMEWARD WITH A HALF SLEDGE AND HALF-FILLED STOMACHS

THREE HUNDRED MILES THROUGH STORM AND SNOW AND UPLIFTED MOUNTAINS OF ICE TROUBLES—DISCOVER TWO ISLANDS—ANNOATOK IS REACHED—MEETING HARRY WHITNEY—NEWS OF PEARY'S SEIZURE OF SUPPLIES

XXIX
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On February 18, 1908, the reconstructed sledge was taken beyond the ice fort and loaded for the home run. We had given up the idea of journeying to Lancaster Sound to await the whalers. There were no Eskimos on the American side nearer than Pond's Inlet. It was somewhat farther to our headquarters on the Greenland shores, but all interests would be best served by a return to Annoatok.

During the night we had fixed all of our attention upon the return journey, and had prepared a new equipment with the limited means at our command; but, traveling in the coldest season of the year, it was necessary to carry a cumbersome outfit of furs, and furthermore, since we were to take the place of the dogs in the traces, we could not expect to transport supplies for more than thirty days. In this time, however, we hoped to reach Cape Sabine, where the father of E-tuk-i-shook had been told to place a cache of food for us.

Starting so soon after sunrise, the actual daylight proved very brief, but a brilliant twilight gave a remarkable illumination from eight to four. The light of dawn and that of the afterglow was tossed to and fro in the heavens, from reflecting surfaces of glitter, for four hours preceding and following midday. To use this play of light to the best advantage, it was necessary to begin preparations early by starlight; and thus, when the dim purple glow from the northeast brightened the dull gray-blue of night, the start was made for Greenland shores and for home.

We were dressed in heavy furs. The temperature was -49°. A light air brushed the frozen mist out of Jones Sound, and cut our sooty faces. The sled was overloaded, and the exertion required for its movement over the groaning snow was tremendous. A false, almost hysterical, enthusiasm lighted our faces, but the muscles were not yet equal to the task set for them.

Profuse perspiration came with the first hours of dog work, and our heavy fur coats were exchanged for the sealskin nitshas (lighter coat). At noon the snows were fired and the eastern skies burned in great lines of flame. But there was no sun and no heat. We sat on the sledge for a prolonged period, gasping for breath and drinking the new celestial glory so long absent from our outlook. As the joy of color was lost in the cold purple of half-light, our shoulders were braced more vigorously into the traces. The ice proved good, but the limit of strength placed camp in a snowhouse ten miles from our winter den. With the new equipment, our camp life now was not like that of the Polar campaign. Dried musk ox meat and strips of musk fat made a steady diet. Moulded tallow served as fuel in a crescent-shaped disk of tin, in which carefully prepared moss was crushed and arranged as a wick. Over this primitive fire we managed to melt enough ice to quench thirst, and also to make an occasional pot of broth as a luxury. While the drink was liquefying, the chill of the snow igloo was also moderated, and we crept into the bags of musk ox skins, where agreeable repose and home dreams made us forget the cry of the stomach and the torment of the cold.

At the end of eight days of forced marches we reached Cape Tennyson. The disadvantage of manpower, when compared to dog motive force, was clearly shown in this effort. The ice was free of pressure troubles and the weather was endurable. Still, with the best of luck, we had averaged only about seven miles daily. With dogs, the entire run would have been made easily in two days.

As we neared the land two small islands were discovered. Both were about one thousand feet high, with precipitous sea walls, and were on a line about two miles east of Cape Tennyson. The most easterly was about one and a half miles long, east to west, with a cross-section, north to south, of about three-quarters of a mile. About half a mile to the west of this was a much smaller island. There was no visible vegetation, and no life was seen, although hare and fox tracks were crossed on the ice. I decided to call the larger island E-tuk-i-shook, and the smaller Ah-we-lah. These rocks will stand as monuments to the memory of my faithful savage comrades when all else is forgotten.

From Cape Tennyson to Cape Isabella the coast of Ellesmere Land was charted, in the middle of the last century, by ships at a great distance from land. Little has been added since. The wide belt of pack thrown against the coast made further exploration from the ship very difficult, but in our northward march over the sea-ice it was hoped that we might keep close enough to the shores to examine the land carefully.

A few Eskimos had, about fifty years previously, wandered along this ice from Pond's Inlet to the Greenland camps. They left the American shores because famine, followed by forced cannibalism, threatened to exterminate the tribe. A winter camp had been placed on Coburg Island. Here many walruses and bears were secured during the winter, while in summer, from Kent Island, many guillemots were secured. In moving from these northward, by skin boat and kayak, they noted myriads of guillemots, or "acpas," off the southeast point of the mainland. There being no name in the Eskimo vocabulary for this land, it was called Acpohon, or "The Home of Guillemots." The Greenland Eskimos had previously called the country "Ah-ming-mah Noona," or Musk Ox Land, but they also adopted the name of Acpohon, so we have taken the liberty of spreading the name over the entire island as a general name for the most northern land west of Greenland. In pushing northward, many of the Eskimos starved, and the survivors had a bitter fight for subsistence. Our experience was similar.

PUNCTURED CANVAS BOAT IN WHIH WE PADDLED 1,000 MILES
FAMINE DAYS WHEN ONLY STRAY BIRDS PREVENTED STARVATION
DEN IN WHICH WERE SPENT 100 DOUBLE NIGHTS

Near Cape Paget those ancient Eskimos made a second winter camp. Here narwhals and bears were secured, and through Talbot's Fiord a short pass was discovered over Ellesmere Land to the musk ox country of the west shores. The Eskimos who survived the second winter reached the Greenland shores during the third summer. There they introduced the kayak, and also the bow and arrow. Their descendants are to-day the most intelligent of the most northern Eskimos.

BULL FIGHTS WITH THE MUSK OX ABOUT CAPE SPARBO

To my companions the environment of the new land which we were passing was in the nature of digging up ancient history. Several old camp sites were located, and E-tuk-i-shook, whose grandfather was one of the old pioneers, was able to tell us the incidents of each camp with remarkable detail.

As a rule, however, it was very difficult to get near the land. Deep snows, huge pressure lines of ice, and protruding glaciers forced our line of march far from the Eskimo ruins which we wished to examine. From Cape Tennyson to Cape Clarence the ice near the open water proved fairly smooth, but the humid saline surface offered a great resistance to the metal plates of the sled. Here ivory or bone plates would have lessened the friction very much. A persistent northerly wind also brought the ice and the humid discomfort of our breath back to our faces with painful results. During several days of successive storms we were imprisoned in the domes of snow. By enforced idleness we were compelled to use a precious store of food and fuel, without making any necessary advance.

Serious difficulties were encountered in moving from Cape Clarence to Cape Faraday. Here the ice was tumbled into mountains of trouble. Tremendous snowdrifts and persistent gales from the west made traveling next to impossible, and, with no game and no food supply in prospect, I knew that to remain idle would be suicidal. The sledge load was lightened, and every scrap of fur which was not absolutely necessary was thrown away. The humid boots, stockings and sealskin coats could not be dried out, for fuel was more precious than clothing. All of this was discarded, and, with light sleds and reduced rations, we forced along over hummocks and drift. In all of our Polar march we had seen no ice which offered so much hardship as did this so near home shores. The winds again cut gashes across our faces. With overwork and insufficient food, our furs hung on bony eminences over shriveled skins.

At the end of thirty-five days of almost ceaseless toil we managed to reach Cape Faraday. Our food was gone. We were face to face with the most desperate problem which had fallen to our long run of hard luck. Famine confronted us. We were far from the haunts of game; we had seen no living thing for a month. Every fiber of our bodies quivered with cold and hunger. In desperation we ate bits of skin and chewed tough walrus lines. A half candle and three cups of hot water served for several meals. Some tough walrus hide was boiled and eaten with relish. While trying to masticate this I broke some of my teeth. It was hard on the teeth, but easy on the stomach, and it had the great advantage of dispelling for prolonged periods the pangs of hunger. But only a few strips of walrus line were left after this was used.

Traveling, as we must, in a circuitous route, there was still a distance of one hundred miles between us and Cape Sabine, and the distance to Greenland might, by open water, be spread to two hundred miles. This unknown line of trouble could not be worked out in less than a month. Where, I asked in desperation, were we to obtain subsistence for that last thirty days?

To the eastward, a line of black vapors indicated open water about twenty-five miles off shore. There were no seals on the ice. There were no encouraging signs of life; only old imprints of bears and foxes were left on the surface of the cheerless snows at each camp. For a number of days we had placed our last meat as bait to attract the bears, but none had ventured to pay us a visit. The offshore wind and the nearness of the open water gave us some life from this point.

Staggering along one day, we suddenly saw a bear track. These mute marks, seen in the half-dark of the snow, filled us with a wild resurgence of hope for life. On the evening of March 20 we prepared cautiously for the coming of the bear.

A snowhouse was built, somewhat stronger than usual; before it a shelf was arranged with blocks of snow, and on this shelf attractive bits of skin were arranged to imitate the dark outline of a recumbent seal. Over this was placed a looped line, through which the head and neck must go in order to get the bait. Other loops were arranged to entangle the feet. All the lines were securely fastened to solid ice. Peepholes were cut in all sides of the house, and a rear port was cut, from which we might escape or make an attack. Our lances and knives were now carefully sharpened. When all was ready, one of us remained on watch while the others sought a needed sleep. We had not long to wait. Soon a crackling sound on the snows gave the battle call, and with a little black nose extended from a long neck, a vicious creature advanced.

Through our little eye-opening and to our empty stomach he appeared gigantic. Apparently as hungry as we were, he came in straight reaches for the bait. The run port was opened. Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook emerged, one with a lance, the other with a spiked harpoon shaft. Our lance, our looped line, our bow and arrow, I knew, however, would be futile.

During the previous summer, when I foresaw a time of famine, I had taken my four last cartridges and hid them in my clothing. Of the existence of these, the two boys knew nothing. These were to be used at the last stage of hunger, to kill something—or ourselves. That desperate time had not arrived till now.

The bear approached in slow, measured steps, smelling the ground where the skin lay.

I jerked the line. The loop tightened about the bear's neck. At the same moment the lance and the spike were driven into the growling creature.

A fierce struggle ensued. I withdrew one of the precious cartridges from my pocket, placed it in my gun, and gave the gun to Ah-we-lah, who took aim and fired. When the smoke cleared, the bleeding bear lay on the ground.

We skinned the animal, and devoured the warm, steaming flesh. Strength revived. Here were food and fuel in abundance. We were saved! With the success of this encounter, we could sit down and live comfortably for a month; and before that time should elapse seals would seek the ice for sun baths, and when seals arrived, the acquisition of food for the march to Greenland would be easy.

But we did not sit down. Greenland was in sight; and, to an Eskimo, Greenland, with all of its icy discomforts, has attractions not promised in heaven. In this belief, as in most others, I was Eskimo by this time. With very little delay, the stomach was spread with chops, and we stretched to a gluttonous sleep, only to awake with appetites that permitted of prolonged stuffing. It was a matter of economy to fill up and thus make the sled load lighter. When more eating was impossible we began to move for home shores, dragging a sled overloaded with the life-saving prize.

A life of trouble, however, lay before us. Successive storms, mountains of jammed ice, and deep snow, interrupted our progress and lengthened the course over circuitous wastes of snowdrifts and blackened our horizon. When, after a prodigious effort, Cape Sabine was reached, our food supply was again exhausted.[18]

Here an old seal was found. It had been caught a year before and cached by Pan-ic-pa, the father of E-tuk-i-shook. With it was found a rude drawing spotted with sooty tears. This told the story of a loving father's fruitless search for his son and friends. The seal meat had the aroma of Limburger cheese, and age had changed its flavor; but, with no other food possible, our palates were easily satisfied. In an oil-soaked bag was found about a pound of salt. We ate this as sugar, for no salt had passed over our withered tongues for over a year.

The skin, blubber and meat were devoured with a relish. Every eatable part of the animal was packed on the sled as we left the American shore.

Smith Sound was free of ice, and open water extended sixty miles northward. A long detour was necessary to reach the opposite shores, but the Greenland shores were temptingly near. With light hearts and cheering premonitions of home, we pushed along Bache Peninsula to a point near Cape Louis Napoleon. The horizon was now cleared of trouble. The ascending sun had dispelled the winter gloom of the land. Leaping streams cut through crystal gorges. The ice moved; the sea began to breathe. The snows sparkled with the promise of double days and midnight suns.

Life's buds had opened to full blossom. On the opposite shores, which now seemed near, Nature's incubators had long worked overtime to start the little ones of the wilds. Tiny bears danced to their mothers' call; baby seals sunned in downy pelts. Little foxes were squinting at school in learning the art of sight. In the wave of germinating joys our suppressed nocturnal passions rose with surprise anew. We were raised to an Arctic paradise.

As it lay in prospect, Greenland had the charm of Eden. There were the homes of my savage companions. It was a stepping-stone to my home, still very far off. It was a land where man has a fighting chance for his life.

In reality, we were now in the most desperate throes of the grip of famine which we had encountered during all of our hard experience. Greenland was but thirty miles away. But we were separated from it by impossible open water—a hopeless stormy deep. To this moment I do not know why we did not sit down and allow the blood to cool with famine and cold. We had no good reason to hope that we could cross, but again hope—"the stuff that goes to make dreams"—kept our eyes open.

We started. We were as thin as it is possible for men to be. The scraps of meat, viscera, and skin of the seal, buried for a year, was now our sole diet. We traveled the first two days northward over savage uplifts of hummocks and deep snows, tripping and stumbling over blocks of ice like wounded animals. Then we reached good, smooth ice, but open water forced us northward, ever northward from the cheering cliffs under which our Greenland homes and abundant supplies were located. No longer necessary to lift the feet, we dragged the ice-sheeted boots step after step over smooth young ice. This eased our tired, withered legs, and long distances were covered. The days were prolonged, the decayed seal food ran low, water was almost impossible. Life no longer seemed worth living. We had eaten the strips of meat and frozen seal cautiously. We had eaten other things—our very boots and leather lashings as a last resort.

So weak that we had to climb on hands and knees, we reached the top of an iceberg, and from there saw Annoatok. Natives, who had thought us long dead, rushed out to greet us. There I met Mr. Harry Whitney. As I held his hand, the cheer of a long-forgotten world came over me. With him I went to my house, only to find that during my absence it had been confiscated. A sudden bitterness rose within which it was difficult to hide. A warm meal dispelled this for a time.

In due time I told Whitney: "I have reached the Pole."

Uttering this for the first time in English, it came upon me that I was saying a remarkable thing. Yet Mr. Whitney showed no great surprise, and his quiet congratulation confirmed what was in my mind—that I had accomplished no extraordinary or unbelievable thing; for to me the Polar experience was not in the least remarkable, considered with our later adventures.

Mr. Whitney, as is now well known, was a sportsman from New Haven, Connecticut, who had been spending some months hunting in the North. He had made Annoatok the base of his operations, and had been spending the winter in the house which I had built of packing-boxes.

The world now seemed brighter. The most potent factor in this change was food—and more food—a bath and another bath—and clean clothes. Mr. Whitney offered me unreservedly the hospitality of my own camp. He instructed Pritchard to prepare meal after meal of every possible dish that our empty stomachs had craved for a year. The Eskimo boys were invited to share it.

Between meals, or perhaps we had better call meals courses (for it was a continuous all-night performance—interrupted by baths and breathing spells to prevent spasms of the jaws)—between courses, then, there were washes with real soap and real cleansing warm water, the first that we had felt for fourteen months. Mr. Whitney helped to scrape my angular anatomy, and he volunteered the information that I was the dirtiest man he ever saw.

From Mr. Whitney I learned that Mr. Peary had reached Annoatok about the middle of August, 1908, and had placed a boatswain named Murphy, assisted by William Pritchard, a cabin boy on the Roosevelt, in charge of my stores, which he had seized. Murphy was anything but tactful and considerate; and in addition to taking charge of my goods, had been using them in trading as money to pay for furs to satisfy Mr. Peary's hunger for commercial gain. Murphy went south in pursuit of furs after my arrival.

For the first few days I was too weak to inquire into the theft of my camp and supplies. Furthermore, with a full stomach, and Mr. Whitney as a warm friend at hand, I was indifferent. I was not now in any great need. For by using the natural resources of the land, as I had done before, it was possible to force a way back to civilization from here with the aid of my Eskimo friends.

Little by little, however, the story of that very strange "Relief Station for Dr. Cook" was unraveled, and I tell it here with no ulterior notion of bitterness against Mr. Peary. I forgave him for the practical theft of my supplies; but this is a very important part of the controversy which followed, a controversy which can be understood only by a plain statement of the incidents which led up to and beyond this so-called "Relief Station for Dr. Cook," which was a relief only in the sense that I was relieved of a priceless store of supplies.

When Mr. Peary heard of the execution of my plans to try for the Pole in 1907, and before he left on his last expedition, he accused me of various violations of what he chose to call "Polar Ethics." No application had been filed by me to seek the Pole. Now I was accused of stealing his route, his Pole, and his people. This train of accusations was given to the press, and with the greatest possible publicity. A part of this was included in an official complaint to the International Bureau of Polar Research at Brussels.

Now, what are Polar ethics? There is no separate code for the Arctic. The laws which govern men's bearing towards each other in New York are good in any part of the world. One cannot be a democrat in civilized eyes and an autocrat in the savage world. One cannot cry, "Stop thief!" and then steal the thief's booty. If you are a member of the brotherhood of humanity in one place, you must be in another. In short, he who is a gentleman in every sense of the word needs no memory for ethics. It is only the modern political reformer who has need of the cloak of the hypocrisy of ethics to hide his own misdeeds. An explorer should not stoop to this.

Who had the power to grant a license to seek the Pole? If you wish to invade the forbidden regions of Thibet, or the interior of Siberia, a permit is necessary from the governments interested. But the Pole is a place no nation owned, by right of discovery, occupation, or otherwise.

If pushing a ship up the North Atlantic waters to the limit of navigation was a trespass on Mr. Peary's preserve, then I am bound to plead guilty. But ships had gone that way for a hundred years before Mr. Peary developed a Polar claim. If I am guilty, then he is guilty of stealing the routes of Davis, Kane, Greely and a number of others. But as I view the situation, a modern explorer should take a certain pride in the advantages afforded by his worthy predecessors. I take a certain historic delight in having followed the routes of the early pathfinders to a more remote destination. This indebtedness and this honor I do now, as heretofore, acknowledge. The charge that I stole Mr. Peary's route is incorrect. For, from the limit of navigation on the Greenland side, my track was forced over a land which, although under Mr. Peary's eyes for twenty years, was explored by Sverdrup, who got the same unbrotherly treatment from Mr. Peary which he has shown to every explorer who has had the misfortune to come within the circle he has drawn about an imaginary private preserve.

The charge of borrowing Peary's ideas, by which is meant the selection of food and supplies and the adoption of certain methods of travel, is equally unfounded. For Mr. Peary's weakest chain is his absolute lack of system, order, preparation or originality. This is commented upon by the men of every one of his previous expeditions. Mr. Peary early charged that my system of work and my methods of travel were borrowed from him. This was not true; but when he later, in a desperate effort to say unkind things, said that my system—the system borrowed from himself—was inefficient, the charge becomes laughable. As to the Pole—if Mr. Peary has a prior lien on it—it is there still. We did not take it away. We simply left our footprints there.

Now as to the charge of using Mr. Peary's supplies and his people—by assuming a private preserve of all the reachable Polar wilderness of this section, he might put up a plausible claim to it as a private hunting ground. If this claim is good, then I am guilty of trespass. But it was only done to satisfy the pangs of hunger.

This claim of the ownership of the animals of the unclaimed North might be put with plausible excuses to The Hague Tribunal. But it is a claim no serious person would consider. The same claim of ownership, however, cannot be said of human life.

The Eskimos are a free and independent people. They acknowledge no chiefs among themselves and submit to no outside dictators. They are likely to call an incoming stranger "nalegaksook," which the vanity of the early travelers interpreted as the "great chief." But the intended interpretation is "he who has much to barter" or "the great trader." This is what they call Mr. Peary. The same compliment is given to other traders, whalers or travelers with whom they do business. Despite his claims Mr. Peary has been regarded as no more of a benefactor than any other explorer.

After delivering, early in 1907, an unreasonable and uncalled for attack, Mr. Peary, two months after the Pole had been reached by me, went North with two ships, with all the advantage that unlimited funds and influential friends could give. At about the same time my companion, Rudolph Francke, started south under my instructions, and he locked my box-house at Annoatok wherein were stored supplies sufficient for two years or more.

The key was entrusted to a trustworthy Eskimo. Under his protection this precious life-saving supply was safe for an indefinite time. With it no relief expedition or help from the outside world was necessary.

Francke had a hard time as he pushed southward, with boat and sledge. Moving supplies to the limit of his carrying capacity, he fought bravely against storms, broken ice and thundering seas. The route proved all but impossible, but at last his destination at North Star was reached, only for him to find that he was too late for the whalers he had expected. Impossible to return to our northern camp at that time, and having used all of his civilized food en route, he was now compelled to accept the hospitality of the natives, in their unhygienic dungeons. For food there was nothing but the semi-putrid meat and blubber eaten by the Eskimos. After a long and desperate task by boat and sled he returned to Etah but he was absolutely unable to proceed farther. Francke's health failed rapidly and when, as he thought, the time had arrived to lay down and quit life, a big prosperous looking ship came into the harbor. He had not tasted civilized food for months, and longed, as only a sick, hungry man can, for coffee and bread.

Almost too weak to arise from his couch of stones, he mustered up enough strength to stumble over the rails of that ship of plenty. After gathering sufficient breath to speak, he asked for bread and coffee. It was breakfast time. No answer came to that appeal. He was put off the ship. He went back to his cheerless cave and prayed that death might close his eyes to further trouble. Somewhat later, when it was learned that there was a house and a large store of supplies at Annoatok, and that the man had in his possession furs and ivory valued at $10,000, there was a change of heart in Mr. Peary. Francke was called on board, was given bread and coffee and whiskey. Too weak to resist, he was bullied and frightened, and forced under duress to sign papers which he did not understand. To get home to him meant life; to remain meant death. And the ship before him was thus his only chance for life. Under the circumstances he would naturally have put his name to any paper placed under his feeble eyes. But the law of no land would enforce such a document.

In this way Mr. Peary compelled him to turn over $10,000 worth of furs and ivory, besides my station and supplies, worth at least $35,000, which were not his to turn over. The prized ivory tusks and furs were immediately seized and sent back on the returning ship.

One of the narwhal tusks, worth to me at least $1,000, was polished and sent as Peary's trophy to President Roosevelt. Under the circumstances has not the President been made the recipient of stolen goods?

When Francke, as a passenger, returned on the Peary supply ship, Erik, a bill of one hundred dollars was presented for his passage. This bill was presumably the bill for the full cost of his return. But the priceless furs and ivory trophies were confiscated without a murmur of conscious wrongdoing. This is what happened as the ship went south.

Now let us follow the ship Roosevelt in its piratic career northward. With Mr. Peary as chief it got to Etah. From there instructions were given to seize my house and supplies. This was done over the signature of Mr. Peary to a paper which started out with the following shameless hypocrisy:

"This is a relief station for Dr. Cook."

According to Mr. Whitney even Captain Bartlett quivered with indignation at the blushing audacity of this steal. The stores were said to be abandoned. The men, with Peary's orders, went to Koo-loo-ting-wah and forced from him the key with which to open the carefully guarded stores. The house was reconstructed.

Murphy, a rough Newfoundland bruiser, who had been accustomed to kick sailors, was placed in charge with autocratic powers. Murphy could neither read nor write, but he was given a long letter of instruction to make a trading station of my home and to use my supplies.

Now if Mr. Peary required my supplies for legitimate exploration I should have been glad to give him my last bread; but to use my things to satisfy his greed for commercial gain was, when I learned it, bitter medicine.

Because Murphy could not write, Pritchard was left with him to read the piratic instructions once each week. Pritchard was also to keep account of the furs bought and the prices paid—mostly in my coin. Murphy soon forbade the reading of the instructions, and also stopped the stock-taking and bookkeeping. The hypocrisy of the thing seemed to pinch even Murphy's narrow brain.

This same deliberate Murphy, accustomed to life in barracks, held the whip for a year over the head of Harry Whitney, a man of culture and millions. Money, however, was of no use there. Audacity and self-assumed power, it seems, ruled as it did in times of old when buccaneers deprived their victims of gold, and walked them off a plank into the briny deep.

Murphy and Pritchard, the paid traders, fixed themselves cosily in my camp. Mr. Whitney had been invited as a guest to stay and hunt for his own pleasure. The party lived for a year at my expense, but the lot of Whitney was very hard as an invited guest, a privilege for which I was told he had paid Mr. Peary two thousand dollars or more. His decision to stay had come only after a disappointment in a lack of success of hunting during the summer season. He was, therefore, ill-provided for the usual Polar hardships. With no food, and no adequate clothing of his own, he was dependent on the dictates of Murphy to supply him. As time went on, the night with its awful cold advanced. Murphy gathered in all the furs and absolutely prohibited Whitney from getting suitable furs for winter clothing. He, therefore, shivered throughout the long winter in his sheepskin shooting outfit. Several times he was at the point of a hand-to-hand encounter with Murphy, but with young Pritchard as a friend and gentlemanly instincts to soften his manner, he grit his teeth and swallowed the insults.

His ambition for a hunting trip was frustrated because it interfered with Murphy's plans for trading in skins. The worst and most brutal treatment was the almost inconceivable cruelty of his not allowing Mr. Whitney enough food for a period of months, not even of my supplies, although this food was used eventually to feed useless dogs.

All of this happened under Mr. Peary's authority, and under the coarse, swaggering Murphy, whom Mr. Peary, in his book, calls "a thoroughly trustworthy man!" Mr. Peary's later contention, in a hypocritical effort to clear himself (see "The North Pole," page 76) that he placed Murphy in charge "to prevent the Eskimos from looting the supplies and equipment left there by Dr. Cook," is a mean, petty and unworthy slur upon a brave, loyal people, among whom thievery is a thing unknown. Unknown, yes, save when white men without honor, without respect for property or the ethics of humanity, which the Eskimos instinctively have, invade their region and rob them and fellow explorers with the brazenness of middle-aged buccaneers.