My Arctic journal: a year among ice-fields and Eskimos

by Josephine Diebitsch Peary

THE GREAT WHITE JOURNEY
FROM McCORMICK BAY TO THE NORTHERN SHORE OF GREENLAND AND RETURN

BY

ROBERT E. PEARY

SAILING OVER THE INLAND ICE.

According to my program, the 1st of May was to be the time for the start on the inland ice, and on the 28th of April, Astrup, Gibson, Dr. Cook, and the native men then at Redcliffe left with the last load of supplies for the head of McCormick Bay. The natives were to return after helping the boys carry the supplies to the top of the bluff; the boys themselves were to push forward with the work until I joined them. This I did on the 3d of May. When I left Redcliffe the number of natives there had dwindled very materially; some drawn away to the seal-hunt, but more driven away by their superstitious feeling in regard to my going upon the great ice. We had the most exceptionally fine weather all through April, but on the very night that I reached the head of the bay a sullen sky over the ice-cap betokened a change. From this night until the morning of the 6th of August, when Astrup and myself clambered down the flower-strewn bluffs again, my couch was the frozen surface of the inland ice, and my canopy the blue sky.

The first two weeks after leaving the little house upon the shores of McCormick Bay were occupied in transporting the supplies—which at various times during the preceding month had been carried by the members of my party and helping natives to the crest of the bluffs at the head of the bay—to the edge of the true inland ice, some miles distant, and then in dragging them over and among the succession of the great domes of ice which extend inward some fifteen miles to the gradual slope of the vast interior snow-plain. One or two snow-storms and the constant violent wind rushing down from the interior to the shore, combined with the difficulties of the road and the constant annoyance from our team of twenty savage and powerful Eskimo dogs, entirely unaccustomed to us and to our methods, made these two weeks a time of unremitting and arduous labor for myself. The only pleasant break in this work was the occurrence of my own birthday, and the unexpected appearance from among the medical stores, in charge of Dr. Cook, of a little box from the hands of the dear one left behind, containing a bottle of Château Yquem, a wine endeared to both of us by many delightful associations, a cake, and a note containing birthday wishes for success and continued health. Once on the true ice-cap, two good marches brought us to the divide, from which, as from the ridge of a great white-roofed house, the ice-cap slopes north to the shores of Kane Basin and historic Renssellaer Harbor, where Kane and his little party passed so many Arctic months, and southward to the shores of Whale Sound and our own little home. From this divide we had a slight descent in our favor, and we kept on from the edge of the basin of the Humboldt Glacier, where the great mass of the inland ice, like very cold molasses, hollows itself slowly down to the mighty glacier itself. Here the fiercest storm that we had encountered thus far burst upon us, and for three days we were confined to our snow shelter, getting out as best we could in occasional lulls in the storm to secure loose dogs and endeavor to protect the loads upon the sledges from their ravages. In this we were fairly successful, though we did not succeed in preventing them from devouring some six pounds of cranberry jam, and eating the foot off Gibson’s sleeping-bag. This storm over, we were not again troubled by really violent storms during our northward march.

The Land beyond the Ice.

On the 24th of May Dr. Cook and Gibson, who had formed our supporting party, left us to return to Redcliffe, leaving Astrup as my sole companion for the remainder of the journey. On the last day of May, from the dazzling surface of the ice-cap we looked down into the basin of the Petermann Glacier—the grandest amphitheater of snow and ragged ice that human eye has ever seen, walled in the distance by a Titan dam of black mountains, and all lit by the yellow midnight sunlight. Still keeping on to the northward, navigating the ice as does the mariner the sea along an unknown coast, we were befogged for two or three days in clouds and mists which prevented us from seeing to any distance. As a result, we approached too near the mountains of the coast, and got entangled in the rough ice and crevasses of the Sherard Osborne Glacier system. Here we lost twelve or fourteen days in our efforts to get back to the smooth, unbroken snow-cap of the interior. Once there, we continued our march, always northeastward, till on the 27th of June I discerned black mountain-summits rising above the horizon of the ice-cap, directly ahead of us. Then the northwest entrance of a fjord came into view, and we could trace its course southeasterly just beyond the nearer mountains of the land north and northeast. I changed my course to east, when I was soon confronted by the land and the fjord beyond. Then I turned to the southeast, and traveled in that direction until the 1st of July, when we, after fifty-seven days of journeying over a barren waste of snow, stepped upon the rocks of a strange new land, lying red-brown in the sunlight, and dotted with snow-drifts here and there. The murmur of rushing streams, the roar of leaping cataracts from the ice-cap, and the song of snow-buntings made the air musical. Leaving the sledge and our supplies at the very edge of the rocks, leading our dogs, and with a few days’ supplies upon our backs, Astrup and myself started on over this strange land, bound for the coast, which we knew could not be far distant. Four days of the hardest traveling, over sharp stones of all sizes, through drifts of snow and across rushing torrents, and we came out at last upon the summit of a towering cliff, about 3500 feet high, now known as Navy Cliff, from which we overlooked the great and hitherto undiscovered Independence Bay.