BY
ROBERT E. PEARY
CIVIL ENGINEER, U. S. NAVY
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1894
All rights reserved
THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK, U. S. A.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
On June 6, 1891, the steam-whaler “Kite,” which was to bear the expedition of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences northward, set sail from the port of New-York, her destination being Whale Sound, on the northwest coast of Greenland, where it had been determined to pass the winter, preliminary to the long traverse of the inland ice which was to solve the question of the extension of Greenland in the direction of the Pole. The members of the expedition numbered but five besides the commander, Mr. Peary, and his wife. They were Dr. F. A. Cook, Messrs. Langdon Gibson, Eivind Astrup, and John T. Verhoeff, and Mr. Peary’s faithful colored attendant in his surveying labors in Nicaragua, Matthew Henson. This was the smallest number that had ever been banded together for extended explorations in the high Arctic zone. A year and a quarter after their departure, with the aid of a relief expedition conducted by Professor Angelo Heilprin, Mr. Peary’s party, lacking one of its members, the unfortunate Mr. Verhoeff, returned to the American shore. The explorer had traversed northern Greenland from coast to coast, and had added a remarkable chapter to the history of Arctic exploration.