My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

A little later, however, Barrill said to his partner he "might as well see what was in it." Five thousand dollars to Barrill meant more than five million dollars to Mr. Peary or his friends. To Barrill, ignorant, poor, good-natured, but weak, it was an irresistible temptation.

Barrill now went to Seattle. He visited the office of the Seattle Times. In the presence of the editor, Mr. Joe Blethen, he dickered for the sale of an affidavit to discredit me. He knew such an affidavit had news value. Indefinite offers ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 were made. Not getting a lump sum off-hand, Barrill, dissatisfied, then went over to Tacoma, to the mysterious Mr. Ashton. That all this was done, was told me on my trip west shortly afterward, by Mr. Blethen himself.

After visiting Ashton, Barrill was seen in a bank in Tacoma. Barrill had said to his partner that to make an affidavit denying my climb would be "selling his soul." Barrill, ill at ease, reluctant, appeared. It is a terrible thing to lure a weak man to dishonor; it is still more tragic and awful when that man is bought so his lie may hurt another. The time for the parting of his soul had arrived in the bank. With the sadness of a funeral mourner Barrill was pushed along. The talk was in a muffled undertone. But it all happened. In the presence of a witness, whose evidence I am ready to produce, $1,500 was passed to him. This money was paid in large bills, and placed in Barrill's money-belt. There were other considerations, and I know where some of this money was spent. His soul was marketed at last. The infamous affidavit was then prepared.

This affidavit was printed first in the New York Globe. The Globe is partly owned and entirely controlled by General Thomas H. Hubbard, the President of the Peary Club. With General Hubbard, Mr. Peary had consulted at Bar Harbor immediately after his return from Sydney. Together they had outlined their campaign. General Hubbard is a multi-millionaire. A tremendous amount of money was spent in the Peary campaign. In the Mt. McKinley affidavit of Barrill we can trace bribery, a conspiracy, and black dishonor, right up to the door of R. E. Peary.

If Peary is not the most unscrupulous self-seeker in the history of exploration, caught in underhand, surreptitious acts too cowardly to be credited to a thief, caught in the act of bartering for men's souls and honor in as ruthless a way as he high-handedly took others' property in the North; if he, drawing an unearned salary from the American Navy, has not brindled his soul with stripes that fit his body for jail, let him come forward and reply. If Peary is not the most conscienceless of self-exploiters in all history, caught in the act of stealing honor by forcing dishonor, let him come forward and explain the Mt. McKinley perjury.

Now let us examine the others who were lined up in this desperate black hand movement. In New York there is a club, at first organized to bring explorers together and to encourage original research. It bore the name of Explorers' Club; but, as is so often the case with clubs that monopolize a pretentious name, the membership degenerated. It is now merely an association of museum collectors. Among real explorers, this club to-day is jocularly known as the "Worm Diggers' Union." In 1909 Mr. Peary was president. His press agent, Bridgman, was the moving spirit, and one of Colonel Mann's muck-rakers was secretary. Of course, such a society, committed to Peary, had no use for Dr. Cook.

In a spirit of helping along the pro-Peary conspiracy, and after the Barrill affidavit was secured, the Explorers' Club took upon itself the supererogatory duty of appointing a committee to pass on my ascent of Mt. McKinley. There was but one real explorer on this committee. The others were kitchen geographers, whose honor and fairness had been bartered to the Peary interests before the investigation began. Without a line of data before them, they decided, with glee and gusto, that Mt. McKinley had not been climbed. This was what one would expect from such an honor-blind group of meddlers. But Mr. Peary's press worker, Bridgman, who himself had engineered the investigation, used this seeming verdict of experts to Mr. Peary's advantage.[27]

Still all these combined underhanded efforts failed to reach vital spots and to turn the entire public Mr. Peary's way. Something more must still be done, Peary's press agent offered $3,000, and the cowardly Ashton, of Tacoma, offered another $3,000, to send an expedition to Alaska, to further the pro-Peary effort to down a rival. The traitor, Parker, responded. He was joined by the other quitter, Belmore Brown, who has conveniently forgotten to return borrowed money to me. This Peary-Parker-Brown combination went to Alaska in 1910, engaged in mining pursuits and hunting adventures. They returned with the expected and framed report that Mt. McKinley had not been climbed, and that they had climbed a snow-hill, had photographed it, and that the photograph was similar to mine of the topmost peak of Mt. McKinley. Mt. McKinley has a base twenty-five miles wide; it has upon the various slopes of its giant uplift hundreds of peaks, all glacial, polished, and of a similar contour. No one peak towers gigantically above the others. On the top are many peaks, no particular one of which can with any accuracy of inches be decided arbitrarily as the very highest. The top of a mountain does not converge to a pin-point apex. One looks out, not into immediate space on all sides, but over an area, as I have said, of many peaks. My photograph of the peak, which loomed highest among the others on the top, possesses a profile not unusual among ice-cut rocks. The Peary-Parker-Brown seekers tried hard to duplicate this photograph, so as to show I had faked my picture. The thing might have been done easily in the Canadian Rockies. It could be done in a dozen more accessible places in Alaska; but, without real work, it could be only crudely done near Mt. McKinley. The photograph which Peary's friends offered to discredit the first ascent is one of a double peak, part of which vaguely suggests but a poor outline of Mt. McKinley, and in which a rock has been faked. Who is responsible for this humbug? Where is the negative? The photograph bears no actual semblance to my picture of the top of Mt. McKinley whatever. But why was the negative faked? Parker excuses the evident unfairness of the dissimilar photograph by saying that he could not get the same position as I must have had. But is laziness or haste an excuse when a man's honor is assailed.[28]

Let us follow the Peary high-handed humbugs further. To the southeast of Mt. McKinley is a huge mountain, which I named Mt. Disston in 1905. This peak was robbed of its name, and over it Parker wrote Mt. Huntington. To the northeast of Mt. McKinley is another peak, charted on my maps, to which Peary gave the name of the president of the Peary Arctic Trust. To this peak was given the same name, by the same methods of stealing the credit of other explorers, as that adopted by Peary when, in response to $25,000 of easy money, he wrote the same name, "Thomas Hubbard," over Sverdrup's northern point of Heiberg Land. Can it be doubted that the Peary-Parker-Brown propaganda of hypocrisy and dishonor in Alaska is guided by no other spirit than that of Mr. Peary?