A heavy pack was encountered in Victoria Strait, but they continued on their way “through the strait between Victoria Land and the mainland,” thence through “Dease Strait and Coronation Gulf out into Dolphin and Union straits, and on the morning of August 25 sighted Nelson Head—a tall and imposing headland.”
Having successfully passed from the Atlantic side into the Pacific side, the Gjoa had the good fortune to speak on the same day the American whaling schooner, Charles Hansson, from San Francisco. A delay of twenty-four hours was caused by the ice off Cape Bathurst. Near Bailey Island, several beset whalers were encountered, and the barks Alexander and Bowhead were sighted off Pullen Island.
Cape Sabine was reached September 2—but progress was only made to King Point, about thirty-five miles east of Herschel Island, where the Gjoa was forced to put in another Arctic winter.
On October 13, Amundsen, with a sledge and five dogs, made a journey of five months’ duration, covering a distance of fifteen hundred miles to Eagle City, Alaska. This included a two months’ sojourn in Eagle City, when all despatches were forwarded, and mails received, for himself and other members of the expedition.
The following August, the Gjoa was freed, but on the 19th of that month she received a bad injury to her propeller by grounding on a piece of ice, so continued her journey entirely under sail. She arrived at San Francisco, October 19, with a rich cargo of ethnographical, zoölogical, and botanical specimens, and many furs and curios. These were freighted to Christiania, the Gjoa taken charge of by Admiral Lyons, commandant of the Mare Island Navy-yard, and Amundsen and his companions started by rail for home.
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.