"PEARY DUE NORTH POLE TWELVE M., THURSDAY" (APRIL 15, 1909).
Is Mr. Bridgman a psychic medium? How, with Peary thousands of miles away, hundreds of miles from the most northerly wireless station, did he sense the amazing feat? Were he and Peary in telepathic communication? Or, rather, does this not seem to point to an agreement entered into before the departure of Peary, about a year before the attempt was made, to announce on a certain day the "discovery" of the Pole?
From other sources we learn that the timing of the arrival of the ship at Cape Sheridan seems to have been made good, but in an apparent effort on the part of Peary to keep faith with Bridgman on April 15, we find him in trouble. If Peary arranged his "discovery" for this agreed date, he would have had to take nine days for his return trip from the Pole. This would increase his speed limit 50 per cent., and since he is regarded with suspicion on his speed limits, to make his "Pole Discovery" story fit in between the known time when he left Bartlett and the time when he got back to the ship, he was compelled to break faith with Bridgman and went back nine days on his calendar, placing the date of Pole reaching at April 6.
[7] Game List.—The following animals were captured from August 15, 1907, to May 15, 1909:
Two thousand four hundred and twenty-two birds, 311 Arctic hares, 320 blue and white foxes, 32 Greenland reindeer, 4 white reindeer, 22 polar bears, 52 seals, 73 walrus, 21 narwhals, 3 white whales, and 206 musk oxen.
[8] Auroras in the Arctic are best seen in more southern latitudes. The display here described was the brightest observed on this trip. Not more than three or four others were noted during the following year, but in previous trips I have witnessed some very wonderful color and motion displays.
The best illustrations of this remarkable color of aurora and night come from the brush of Mr. Frank Wilbert Stokes. These were reproduced in the Century Magazine of February, 1903. After their appearance, Mr. Peary accorded to Mr. Stokes (a member of his expedition) the same sort of treatment as he had accorded Astrup—the same as that shown to others. In a letter to the late Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century, he denounced and did his utmost to discredit Mr. Stokes by insisting that no such remarkable colors are displayed by the aurora borealis. Mr. Gilder replied, in defense of Mr. Stokes, by quoting from Peary's own book, "Northward," Vol. II, pages 194, 195, 198 and 199, descriptions of even more remarkable color effects.
[9] The so-called "Jesup" sled, which Mr. Peary used on his last Polar trip, is a copy of the Eskimo sledge, a lumbering, unwieldy thing weighing over one hundred pounds and which bears the same relation to a refined bent-hickory vehicle that a lumber cart does to an express wagon. In this "Jesup" sledge there is a dead weight of over fifty pounds of useless wood. The needless weight thus carried can, in a better sledge, be replaced by fifty pounds of food. This fifty pounds will feed one man over the entire route to the Pole. Mr. Peary claims that the Pole is not reachable without this sled, but Borup, in his book, reports that most of the sledges were broken at the first trial.
Since an explorer's success is dependent upon his ability to transport food it behooves him to eliminate useless weight. Therefore, the solid runner sled is as much out of place as a solid wood wheel would be in an automobile.
[10] A great deal of careful search and study was prosecuted about Svartevoeg, for here Peary claims to have left a cache, the alleged placing of which he has used as a pretext for attempting to take from the map the name of Svartevoeg, given by Sverdrup, when he discovered it, to the northern part of Heiberg Land. Peary, coming later, put on his map the name Cape Thomas Hubbard, for one who had put easy money in his hands. But no such cache was found, and I doubt very much if Peary ever reached this point, except through a field-glass at very long range.