[3] The killing of Astrup.—The head of Melville Bay was explored by Eivind Astrup while a member of the Peary expedition of 1894-1895. Astrup had been a member of the first expedition, serving without pay, during 1891 and 1892 and proving himself a loyal supporter and helper of Mr. Peary, when he crossed the inland ice in 1892. As a result of eating pemmican twenty years old, in 1895, Astrup was disabled by poisoning, due to Peary's carelessness in furnishing poisoned food. Recovering from this illness, he selected a trustworthy Eskimo companion, went south, and under almost inconceivable difficulties, explored and mapped the ice walls, with their glaciers and mountains, and the off-lying islands of Melville Bay. This proved a creditable piece of work of genuine discovery. Returning, he prepared his data and published it, thus bringing credit and honor on an expedition which was in other respects a failure.
Astrup's publication of this work aroused Peary's envy. Publicly, Peary denounced Astrup. Astrup, being young and sensitive, brooded over this injustice and ingratitude until he had almost lost his reason. The abuse was of the same nature as that heaped on others, the same as that finally hurled at me in the wireless "Gold Brick" slurs. For days and weeks, Astrup talked of nothing but the infamy of Peary's attack on himself and the contemptible charge of desertion which Peary made against Astrup's companions. Then he suddenly left my home, returned to Norway, and we next heard of his suicide. Here is one life directly chargeable to Peary's narrow and intolerant brutality. Directly this was not murder with a knife—but it was as heinous—for a young and noble life was cut short by the cowardly dictates of jealous egotism.
[4] The Death of John M. Verhoeff.—As we passed Robertson Bay, there came up memories of the tragedy of Verhoeff. This young man was a member of Peary's first expedition, in 1891. He had paid $2,000 toward the fund of the expedition. Verhoeff was young and enthusiastic. He gave his time, his money, and he risked his life for Peary. He was treated with about the same consideration as that accorded the Eskimo dogs. When I last saw him in camp, he was in tears, telling of Peary's injustice. Mrs. Peary—I advert to this with all possible reluctance—had done much to make his life bitter, and over this he talked for days. Finally he said: "I will never go home in the same ship with that man and that woman." It was the last sentence he uttered in my hearing. He did not go home in that ship. Instead, he wandered off over the glacier, where he left his body in the blue depths of a crevasse.
[5] Before he sailed on his last Northern expedition Mr. Peary, learning that I had preceded him, took the initial step in his campaign to discredit me by issuing a statement to the effect that I was bent upon the unfair and dishonest purpose of enlisting in my aid Eskimos which he had the exclusive right to command. Mr. Peary's attitude that the Eskimos, because he had given them guns, powder and needles, belong to him, is as absurd as his pretension to the sole ownership of the North Pole. Although Mr. Peary had spent about a quarter of a century essaying the task by means of luxurious expeditions, he had done little more than other explorers and did not, in my opinion, either secure an option on the Pole or upon the services of the natives. In giving guns, etc., to the natives he also did no more than other explorers, and the Danes for many years, have done. Nor was this with him a magnanimous matter of gracious bounty, for, in prodigal return for all he gave them, Mr. Peary on every expedition secured a fortune in furs and ivory. The Eskimos belong to no one. For ages they have worked out their rigorous existence without the aid of white men, and Mr. Peary's pretension becomes not only absurd but grotesque when one realizes that following the arrival of ships with white crews, the natives have fallen easy victims of loathsome epidemics, mostly of a specific nature, for which the trivial gifts of any explorer would ill repay them.
[6] One of the charges which Mr. Peary circulated before he returned North in 1908, was, that I violated a rule of Polar ethics by not applying for a license to seek the Pole, nor giving notice of my proposed trip. There is no such rule in Polar ethics. The following letter, however, to his press agent, Mr. Herbert Bridgman, dated Etah, August 26, 1907, answers the charge:
"My dear Bridgman: I have hit upon a new route to the North Pole and will stay to try it. By way of Buchanan Bay and Ellesmere Land and northward through Nansen Strait over the Polar sea seems to me to be a very good route. There will be game to the 82°, and here are natives and dogs for the task. So here is for the Pole. Mr. Bradley will tell you the rest. Kind regards to all—F. A. Cook."
"It will be remembered," continued Mr. Bridgman, in his press reports, "that Dr. Cook, accompanied by John R. Bradley, Captain Moses Bartlett, and a number of Eskimos, left North Sidney, N. S., early last July on the American Auxiliary Schooner Yacht John R. Bradley, which landed the party at Smith Sound. Mr. Bradley returned to North Sydney on the yacht on October 1. The expedition is provisioned for two years and fully equipped with dogs and sledges for the trip. The party is wintering thirty miles further north than Peary did two years ago."
And yet Bridgman, in line with the indefatigable pro-Peary boosters, later tried to lead the public to believe that I had nothing but gum drops with which to undertake a trip to the Pole. This same Bridgman also printed in what Brooklyn people call the "Standard Liar" the fake about my using, as my own, photographs said to belong to the newspaper cub, Herbert Berri.
For fifteen years Bridgman used my photographs and my material for his lectures on the Arctic and Antarctic, generally without giving credit. Evidently, my work and my results were good enough for him to borrow as Peary did. So long as my usefulness served the Bridgman-Peary interests, there was no question of my credibility, but when my success interfered with the monopoly of the fruits of Polar attainment, then I was to be striped with dark lines of dishonor.
The most amusing and also the most significant incident of the Bridgman-Peary humbug was the faked wireless message which Bridgman printed for Peary in his paper. Peary claims he reached the Pole on April 6, 1909. In the Standard Union, Brooklyn, of April 14, 1909 (eight days after the alleged discovery), Peary's friend H. L. Bridgman, one of the owners, printed the following: