CHAPTER XXIII
Robert E. Peary.—The man.—First visit to the Arctic, 1886.—Other journeys, 1891.—Independence Bay, Greenland.—Discovers Melville Land and Heilprin Land.—Subsequent journeys, 1893-1895.—Discovery of famous “Iron Mountain.”—Summer voyages, 1896-1897.—North Pole journey of 1898.—Peary seriously disabled by frost-bites.—Polar expedition in S. S. Roosevelt, 1905-1906.—Final dash for the Pole, 1908.
For nearly a quarter of a century the name of Robert Edwin Peary has been closely identified with Arctic work. No man in the history of exploration has renewed his attacks upon the impassable barriers of the Great White North with such perseverance, endurance, and determination. Again and again in the face of disappointments, bodily disablements, failures, and discouragements that would have blasted the most sanguine hopes of the average man, he has persisted in his endeavours, returned to the field of action, fought gallantly the disheartening fight, come back to receive the polite indifference or enthusiastic praise of his countrymen, turned his energies to raising the necessary funds to renew his enterprise, and when this was done, faced to the north and passed again beyond the Arctic Circle.
He is typically American, tall, lean, wiry, muscular, keen-eyed, alert, positive, and possessed of that indomitable will which conquers or dies. Born in Cresson, Pennsylvania, May 6, 1856, he had early the misfortune to lose his father, and his widowed mother, with her boy of three, returned to her relatives and friends in New England and made her home in Portland, Maine. Here Peary, the lad, grew up, fond of the sea and the woods, loving the wild roar of the ocean as it beat upon the rocky coast, or the gentle summer winds whispering amid the northern pines.
He loved to roam, to explore, to find adventure, and to lead others to it, and in his schoolboy days he was noted for his athletic tastes and powers of endurance. At twenty-one years of age he completed his college life at Bowdoin, graduating second in a class of fifty-one, and four years later had passed the examinations which made him Civil Engineer in the United States Navy. From duty in Florida he was transferred to the Nicaragua Canal zone, where he remained engaged in the Interocean Ship-canal Survey from 1884 to 1885.
He returned under government orders to Washington in the fall of that year, and during a leisure hour, in an old book-store, he accidentally came upon a paper on the Inland Ice of Greenland. Remembering the adventures of Dr. Kane which had thrilled him as a boy, and reading the experiences of Nordenskjöld, Jensen, and the rest, Peary felt he must know for himself what was the truth of this great mysterious interior.
Thus early had the seed of ambition to explore the land of the mysterious north germinated in his active mind.
The “Roosevelt” drying her Sails
Courtesy of F. A. Stokes Company
FIRST VISIT TO THE ARCTIC
The following year he received permission from the Department for leave of absence to make a reconnoissance of the Greenland ice-cap, east of Disco Bay, 70° north latitude.
Accompanied by Christian Maigaard, a Dane, and eight natives, Peary examined the coast and fiords, penetrated the inland ice, and visited among other interesting spots the Tossukatek Glacier, the base of Noursoak Peninsula, and the fossil beds of Atanekerdluk. “Here,” he says, “I found fragments of trees, black petrifactions with the grain of the wood and the texture of the bark showing clearly. Pieces of sandstone split readily into sheets, between which were to be seen sharp, clear impressions of large net-veined leaves, every tiniest veinlet and minute serratum of the edges distinct as the lines of a steel engraving; long, slender, parallel-veined leaves and exquisite feathery forms.”
Full of enthusiasm for further adventure in the land of desolation, where the wild vivid poppy flourishes in sheltered nooks, near eternal glaciers; where a lifeless desert of perpetual snow, from five thousand to ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, extends over an area of some twelve hundred miles in length and five hundred in width,—a glistening shroud,—covering the mighty rocks of ages, the buried summits of high mountains thousands of feet below,—Peary returned to the United States and in a newspaper article attracted the attention of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, which offered to defray part of the expense of his second expedition.
Peary left, June 6, 1891, in the Kite, and with his party, including Mrs. Peary; Langdon Gibson, ornithologist and hunter; Dr. Frederick A. Cook, surgeon; Eivind Astrup, a Norwegian; John M. Verhoeff, mineralogist and meteorologist; and Matthew Henson, a coloured man, landed at M’Cormick Bay in August. An unfortunate accident aboard the Kite, which resulted in a broken leg, caused Peary disappointment and delay in carrying out his autumn plans. However, “Red Cliff House” was erected, communications with the natives established, and such work carried on as Peary’s unfortunate condition would permit. In April, 1892, Peary, being fully restored to health, left Red Cliff House and explored Inglefield Gulf; his next move was to establish caches of provisions to be used on his sledge journey across the ice-cap.
This journey was undertaken in May; four sledges, to which were harnessed sixteen dogs, carried the provisions and equipment. A supporting party advanced with Peary to a point about one hundred miles from M’Cormick Bay. The explorer, with one companion, Astrup, proceeded over the great ice at an elevation of about five thousand feet, and by May 31 looked down into Peterman Fjord. “Here,” says Peary, “we were on the ice-bluffs forming the limit of the great glacier basin, just as we had been at Humboldt, but a trifle less fortunate here than at Humboldt. I found it necessary to deflect some ten miles to the eastward, to avoid the inequalities of the glacier basin, and the great crevasses which cut the ice-bluffs encircling it.”
Peary’s object now was to make the east coast of Greenland, following the edge of the ice-cap, beset with crevasses, slippery ice, hummocks, drifting snow and fogs, and the journey was continued until July 4, 1892, when they reached Independence Bay, 81° 37´ north latitude. An ascent of Navy Cliff revealed a magnificent panorama of rugged, majestic, ice-free country to the north, and the broad expanse of the East Greenland Ocean.
Strange it seemed that in this remote country in sheltered nooks the flowers bloomed; the hum of bees, the drone of flies, fell upon the ear; the snow-bunting, the sandpiper, a Greenland falcon, and a pair of ravens greeted the adventurers. Musk-ox fed upon the patches of greensward, and no less than five fell to Peary’s rifle and supplied men and dogs with abundant meat.
The return journey back to M’Cormick Bay, a distance of some four hundred and fifty miles, was made over the ice-cap in the face of violent storms and wind, through drifts and fog, with diminished provisions and failing dogs.
A joyful meeting with Professor Heilprin and party, who had come north a month before with the Kite, took place on the Inland Ice, at the head of M’Cormick Bay, and a happy return was made to Red Cliff House.
DISCOVERS MELVILLE LAND
The results of Peary’s second voyage to the Arctic, embracing the great twelve-hundred-mile journey, determined the northern extension and insularity of Greenland; made the discovery of detached ice-free land-masses of less extent to the northward, and established the rapid convergence of the Greenland shores above the 78th parallel. It also included the discovery of Melville Land and Heilprin Land, and the accumulation of most valuable scientific data, besides laying the foundation for Peary’s comprehensive study of the Greenland Highlanders, or native Eskimo.
Immediately upon his return to the United States, Peary devoted his energies to a lecture tour from which he hoped to derive the necessary funds to promote a more extended exploration of Northeast Greenland.
Granted three years’ leave of absence by the Hon. B. F. Tracy, Secretary of the Navy, the North Greenland expedition of 1893-1894 sailed in the Falcon, June, 1893, and entered the mouth of Bowdoin Bay, in Inglefield Gulf, August 3.
Here a house was rapidly constructed, stores landed, the Falcon making a brief trip after the winter supply of meat, with a stop at Life-Boat Cove, where a visit was made to the site of Polaris House. A few relics were picked up bearing the stamp of the United States Navy-yard at Washington, dated 1865 to 1870. The 20th of August, after her return to the station at Bowdoin Bay, the Falcon steamed south, leaving the little group of fourteen persons, including, among others, Mr. and Mrs. Peary, Mr. Samuel J. Entrikin, Eivind Astrup, Dr. Edward E. Vincent, Mr. E. B. Baldwin, Mrs. Susan J. Cross, and the coloured man, Matthew Henson.
On September 12, in this far-away land, the famous “snow baby” was born, little blue-eyed Marie Ahnighito Peary, and “bundled deep in soft, warm Arctic furs, and wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.”
In early March, 1894, the last preparations were completed for a second twelve-hundred-mile journey across the Greenland Ice-cap. On the 6th of the month, accompanied by eight men, twelve sledges, and ninety-two dogs, Peary ascended the Inland Ice. The advance of such a caravan was slow and heavy. The dogs of the various teams, being unaccustomed to one another, were constantly fighting; the penetrating cold nipped with frost-bites the hands and feet of his men, so that after an advance of one hundred and thirty-four miles, at an elevation of five thousand five hundred feet, Peary determined at the end of thirteen days to cache surplus stores, send back the majority of his men, and proceed with three men alone. But the conditions of cold and storms were too adverse for human endurance, the thermometer reaching as low as -60°. The dogs were reduced to a most pitiable condition, many dying from exposure. On April 10, having advanced only about eighty-five miles, Peary decided it was inadvisable to attempt to proceed and prepared for his return to Bowdoin Bay.
Cairn erected over the Body of Marvin
Courtesy of F. A. Stokes Company
Abandoning and caching all unnecessary impedimenta, with only twenty-six dogs remaining out of the original number, the party reached the station in a much enfeebled and reduced state.
Though temporarily defeated in the main object of his enterprise, Peary had gleaned much information concerning the famous “Iron Mountain” of Melville Bay, first mentioned by Captain Ross in 1818, and as part of the programme he had laid down for himself, a visit to that interesting spot was undertaken. On May 27, 1894, Peary located this remarkable meteorite, leaving a cairn with records at a short distance from the spot.
In the meantime, Astrup had made a successful sledge journey and reconnoissance of Melville Bay, and carefully charting much of its hitherto little-known northeastern shore.
ANNIVERSARY LODGE CROSS SECTION
WINTER OF 1894-95
Courtesy of F. A. Stokes Co.
The last of July, the Falcon, with a party of scientists aboard, including, among others, Professor T. C. Chamberlin, Professor Wm. Libbey, Jr., H. L. Bridgman, and Mrs. Peary’s brother, Emil Diebitsch, anchored in M’Cormick Bay. After a sojourn in northern waters, it returned to the United States, carrying on board the entire Peary party, with the exception of the indomitable leader and two companions, Lee and Henson. Peary’s resources were limited; food and fuel were reduced so as to menace future activities, and the visit of a relief ship in the summer of 1895 depended practically upon Mrs. Peary’s sole exertions. Nevertheless, Peary determined to remain, and, immediately enlisting the natives to assist him, he drew on the country for his supplies.
The fall was occupied in the chase after reindeer and Arctic hare for human food, and walrus meat for the dogs; and later an examination and rehabilitation of the nearer caches of provisions left on the Inland Ice.
The monotonous winter passed, and as the spring advanced the day of departure approached for the next great journey across the Greenland ice. On April 2, 1895, the little band, consisting of its intrepid leader, with Lee and Henson, four natives, and the six sledges with their dog teams, started northward.
The fierce storms of winter had obliterated the marked caches; in vain was the immediate neighbourhood scoured in every direction, sometimes to a distance of five miles; no signs of the looked-for depots could be discovered.
Camp Morris Jesup
Courtesy of F. A. Stokes Company
Though Eskimos deserted and turned back, Peary still pushed on, at last left with only the two companions, some forty dogs and three sledges. The prospect was indeed dismal. Lee became disabled by frost-bites; the dogs died; the gaunt form of starvation loomed on the horizon. May 8, Lee could proceed no farther, and was left in camp, distant some sixteen miles from the coast, while Peary and Henson advanced in the desperate search for game. Four days and nights death by starvation faced them, in the fruitless search for food. Then, disappointed, back to camp, and a desperate march to Independence Bay. Then down the tortuous valley, across rocks, cobble, and boulder, the men plunged on. “A few miles beyond the valley, I saw a fresh hare track,” says Peary, “and a few hundred yards beyond came upon the hare itself, squatting among the rocks a few paces distant. With the sight of the beautiful spotless little animal, the feeling of emptiness in the region of my stomach increased. I called to Matt, who was some little distance back, to stop the dogs and come up with his rifle. He was so affected by the prospect of a good supper, his first and second bullets missed the mark, but at the third the white object collapsed into a shapeless mass, and on the instant gaunt hunger leapt upon us like a wolf upon its prey.... It was the first full meal we had had since the Eskimos left us thirty-five days ago.”
Later musk-ox fell to the hunter’s aim, which restored courage and strength to the desperate men. They reached the cairn which Peary had erected in 1892, and found the papers there still intact. To linger in the vicinity meant a constant consumption of food for which they were not prepared. There was yet the long journey back over the dread ice-cap, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. With nine dogs, and food for seventeen days only, they retraced their steps, fleeing in forced marches, from that ever present gaunt form, Starvation, closing upon their wake.
One by one the faithful dogs died by the wayside. This retreat over the Great Ice is one of the most desperate struggles in Arctic history. At last, June 25, the three starving, exhausted men reached Bowdoin Bay. “At the beginning of the last day there were left four biscuits, saved from the half and quarter rations of the preceding weeks; and one dog was still alive, the sole survivor of a pack of forty-two.”
“Poor brute!” says Peary, “the memory of those famine days upon the ‘Great Ice’ remained so vividly with him, that for weeks after our return, though weak and afflicted like ourselves, he might be seen at any time, when not asleep, hiding away every bit of meat or blubber, and every bone that he could find about the place.”
A few weeks of recuperation fitted the men for the journey home, and relief ship Kite, in charge of Captain Bartlett, reached them in early August.
SUMMER VOYAGES, 1896-1897
In 1896 and 1897, Peary made two summer voyages to the Arctic for the purpose of transferring to the United States the largest of the three Cape York meteorites. On the first trip he was successful in dislodging this ninety-ton mass from the ice grip of centuries, but was compelled to leave it until the next season, when he successfully had it transferred to the hold of the Hope, the Peary ship of that year, and the world wonder now reposes in the Museum of Natural History, New York City.
During these active years Peary had made warm friends, men who had said to him with the same confidence expressed by Theodore Roosevelt, “I believe in you, Peary,” and the Peary Arctic Club was formed, headed by that generous benefactor, Morris K. Jesup, as President, Frederick E. Hyde, Vice-President, Henry W. Cannon, Treasurer, and Herbert L. Bridgman, Secretary, and others to lend encouragement and financial aid.
Peary’s ambitions had not been satisfied by his brilliant achievements in twice crossing the Greenland ice-cap, and the lure of the Arctic had long beckoned him to try to reach the northernmost extremity of the earth.
The Sledge that went to the Pole
It is the perfected “Peary” type and is now in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.
Copyright, 1910, by Robert E. Peary
Copyright, 1910, by Benjamin B. Hampton
A Great Event in the Long Night
Christmas dinner on board the “Roosevelt,” 450 miles from the Pole. From left to right: Borup, Marvin, Captain Bartlett, Peary, Dr. Goodsell, McMillan.
Copyright, 1910, by Robert E. Peary
Copyright, 1910, by Benjamin B. Hampton
His journey of 1898 to 1902 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club had for its main purpose the attainment of the Pole itself. His carefully laid plan was to advance toward the Pole by the west coast of Greenland, and establish food stations, depending upon picked Eskimos for coöperation with his small party. In the final dash, supporting sledges would be sent back as soon as emptied, and the returning explorer, with two companions, would be met by a relief party of Eskimos.
PEARY SERIOUSLY DISABLED BY FROST-BITES
Mr. Harmsworth of London generously gave his yacht, the Windward, for this expedition. Peary started with every prospect of success. The Windward endeavoured to force a passage into Kennedy Channel, but was obliged to seek shelter and winter quarters at Cape D’Orville. In early autumnal journeys Peary determined the continuity of Ellesmere and Grinnell lands, and prepared to make his headquarters at Fort Conger. In January, 1899, came a sudden and most disheartening set-back to his ambitious plans. While on this dangerous sledge journey, in a frightful temperature that ranged between 51° to 63° below zero, he had both feet badly frozen, and this grave injury, which nearly cost him his life, resulted in the amputation of eight toes; but not before weeks of suffering had been passed in the melancholy winter darkness at Greely’s old quarters.
“During the following weeks,” writes Peary, “our life at Conger was pronouncedly à la Robinson Crusoe. Searching for things in the unbroken darkness of the ‘Great Night,’ with a tiny flicker of flame in a saucer, was very like seeking a needle in a haystack.” At last, on the 18th of February, in the moonlight, they started back to the ship. Lashed firmly down, with feet and legs wrapped in musk-ox skin, Peary was dragged, in the cold Arctic night, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles in eleven days.
Disheartening weeks of inaction and suffering aboard the Windward, but partially restored his health; nevertheless, in April, while still on crutches, he was dragged on sledges to Fort Conger. This season was passed in scientific work and map making. While crossing Ellesmere Land ice-cap in July, at an elevation of seven thousand feet, Peary discovered Cannon Bay.
Other results of his indefatigable endeavours were the collecting of relics of the Lady Franklin Bay expedition, which were sent home by the Windward, the sextant and record of the Nares expedition were also found and sent back to be presented to the Lords of the Admiralty of Great Britain, and placed in the Museum of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich.
Each season a vessel was sent to Greenland to carry him supplies, and bring back letters. Small parties of scientists, university students, and hunters took advantage of the opportunity to sail north and be left at various points, to be called for on the vessel’s return.
In 1899, Dr. Robert Stein of the United States Geological Survey, Dr. Leopold Kann of Cornell, and Mr. Samuel Warmbath had taken passage in the Peary supply ship Diana for explorations in Ellesmere Land.
In the fall of 1899, the Windward returned to the United States, leaving Peary in Etah, where he remained until the following March, when he journeyed to Fort Conger, and from there made his northern dash in an attempt to reach the Pole. The explorer followed closely the route laid down by Brainard and Lockwood, and, on May 8, beat their record; later he reached the most northern point of land to which he gave the name of Cape Morris K. Jesup, 83° 39´ N. From this point his travel was over the disintegrating polar pack, an advance of “ridges of heavy ice thrown up to heights of twenty-five to fifty feet, crevasses and holes masked by snow, the whole intersected by narrow leads of open water.” Having reached 83° 54´ N., he then returned to Cape Morris Jesup and followed the coast of Melville Land for some distance, then returned south. In 1901, he attempted another northern journey, but found advance impossible after reaching Lincoln Bay.
Undaunted by failure, his next attempt was made in February, 1902, and reached, April 21, 84° 17´ N., but again he was forced back, after risking his own life and that of his companions over the worst ice he had ever encountered. Momentarily discouraged, he wrote at this time: “The game is off. My dream of sixteen years is ended. I have made the best fight I knew. I believe it has been a good one. But I cannot accomplish the impossible.”
After four years of strenuous endeavour in the face of the most disheartening failure, Peary came back to the United States, took courage once more, renewed the losing fight, and planned his seventh voyage into the Arctic.
POLAR EXPEDITION IN S.S. “ROOSEVELT”
Under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club, a model ship was built for the sole purpose of assisting Peary in accomplishing the work upon which he had set his heart, lavished his fortune, and staked the confidence of his friends. The result was the building of the Roosevelt, the most modern of ice-fighters. The plans for the Roosevelt allowed a length of one hundred and eighty-four by thirty-five feet beam and sixteen feet draft, loaded. She was provided with engines capable of developing one thousand horse-power; she carried a light three-masted schooner rig. Her hull was especially designed to resist the terrific pressure of the ice-floes, and of such shape to lift easily from the treacherous ice cradles in which she was expected to test her resisting qualities. In this splendid craft, Peary started north in 1905; and boldly ploughed the Roosevelt farther than any vessel had yet penetrated, reaching nearly 82° 30´ north latitude on the north coast of Grant Land. The Roosevelt wintered at Cape Sheridan, and from this high latitude Peary started in February, 1906, for the Pole. Everything seemed favourable, improved equipment, Eskimo assistance, well-laid caches, and Peary himself full of the eternal vigour, which, in spite of years of hardship, gave to his mind and body the elasticity of youth.
On—across the interminable obstacles—on—past one degree and then another, with the ever present problem of cold, storm, rough ice, and diminishing food, until finally the forces of nature baffled once again the forces of human strength. At 87° 6´, the uncompromising voices of the North cried out, “This far shalt thou come, and no farther.” Back once more—step by step—over hummock, crevasse, and floe, over thin and treacherous ice, across the big lead whose thin, undulating surface, some two miles in width, barely supported the weight of a man, in his frantic race with death.
Back once more to the south, baffled once more in his schemes, but sterner than ever in the purpose to die or win “because the thing he has set himself to do is a part of his being.” Peary returned to the United States, the plans of his eighth and final journey already maturing in his mind.
The Roosevelt was docked for the purpose of repairs. Funds for this last journey were slow in forthcoming. Every expedient was tried, but, though a substantial sum was raised, there still lacked money to complete the work, provision and equip the expedition, and to pay the current expenses of the trip. In the midst of these perplexing problems, Peary received another blow in the news of the death of Mr. Morris K. Jesup, his most liberal supporter. With his death all seemed lost; the darkest hour of discouragement had come; delays of months meant perhaps the delay of years, or, possibly, the entire abandonment of this last voyage—the voyage of the forlorn hope. Proverbially the darkest hour is just before dawn, and the Peary Arctic Club, under its new president, General Thomas H. Hubbard, received a liberal check, tendered by Mr. Zenas Crane, the paper manufacturer of Massachusetts, which suddenly rent asunder the sombre clouds and showed once more their silver lining.
The Flag that Peary carried to the Pole
Copyright, 1909, by Robert E. Peary
Copyright, 1909, by Benjamin B. Hampton
Pieces cut from its Folds mark all the “Farthest” Northern Points of the Western Hemisphere: 1 and 2 were left at Cape Morris Jesup; 3 at Cape Thomas Hubbard; 4 at Cape Columbia; 5 at Peary’s Farthest North, 1906 (87° 6´), and 6 at the North Pole.
FINAL DASH FOR THE POLE, 1908
Relieved of the mental anxiety which had been his constant companion for months, Peary now hurried his final preparations, and, rejoicing in his good fortune, steamed out of New York harbour, July 6, 1908, in the gallant Roosevelt, with her penants flying bravely to the breeze. Peary, now grown old in Arctic service, sailed to the Great White North, this time to reach his goal.
The Route Taken by Commander Peary in 1908
Courtesy of Benjamin B. Hampton and F. A. Stokes Co.