A Negro Explorer at the North Pole

by Matthew Alexander Henson

March 4: Heavy snow fall; but Commander Peary routed out all hands, and by seven o'clock we were following the Captain's trail. Very rough going, and progress slow up to about nine o'clock, when conditions changed. We reached heavy, old floes of waving blue ice, the best traveling on sea ice I had ever encountered in eighteen years' experience. We went so fast that we more than made up for lost time and at two o'clock, myself in the lead, we reached the igloo built by Captain Bartlett. It had been arranged that I should stop for one sleep at every igloo built by the Captain, and that he should leave a note in his igloo for my instructions; but, in spite of these previous arrangements, I felt that with such good traveling it would be just as wise to keep on going, and so we did, but it was only about half or three-quarters of an hour later when we were stopped by a lead, beside which the Captain had camped. With Ootah and Tommy to help, we built an igloo and crawled inside. Two hours later, the Commander and his party arrived, and we crawled out and turned the igloo over to him. Tommy, Ootah, and I then built another igloo, crawled inside, and blocked the doorway up with a slab of snow, determined not to turn out again until we had had a good feed and snooze.

From my diary, the first entry since leaving the land; with a couple of comments added afterward:

March 5: A clear bright morning, 20° below zero; quite comfortable. Reached here yesterday at two-forty-five p. m., after some of the finest going I have ever seen. Commander Peary, Captain Bartlett, and Dr. Goodsell here, and fourteen Esquimos. First view of the sun to-day, for a few minutes at noon, makes us all cheerful. It was a crimson sphere, just balanced on the brink of the world. Had the weather been favorable, we could have seen the sun several days earlier. Every day following he will get higher and higher, until he finally swings around the sky above the horizon for the full twenty-four hours.

Early in the morning of the 5th, Peary sent a detachment of three Esquimos, in charge of MacMillan, back to bring in Borup's cache, left by him at the point where he turned back to return to the land for more loads. This detachment was back in camp by four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. Nothing left to do but to rearrange the loads and wait for the lead to close.

The land is still in sight. Professor Marvin has gone back with two boys and is expected to keep on to the alcohol cache at Cape Columbia, turn back and meet us here, or, if the ice freezes, to follow us until he catches up with us. We are husbanding our fuel, and two meals a day is our programme. We are still south of the Big Lead of 1906, but to all intents and purposes this is it. I am able to recognize many of the characteristics of it, and I feel sure it is the same old lead that gave us many an anxious hour in our upward and downward journey three years ago.

Fine weather, but we are still south of the 84th parallel and this open water marks it. 8° below zero and all comfortable. We should be doing twenty or twenty-five miles a day good traveling, but we are halted by this open water.

March 7: Professor MacMillan came into camp to-day with the cache he had picked up. There was quite a hullabaloo among the boys, and a great deal of argument as to who owned various articles of provender and equipment that had been brought into camp by MacMillan, and even I was on the point of jumping into the fracas in order to see fair play, until a wink from MacMillan told me that it was simply a put-up job of his to disconcert the Esquimos. Confidentially and on the side he has been dressing his heel, which in spite of all keeps on freezing, and is in very bad shape. His kamiks stick to the loose flesh and the skin will not form. All of the frost has been taken out, but I think skin-grafting is the only thing that will cure it. He wants to keep on going and asks me how far we have gone and wants to know if he shall tell Commander Peary about his injury. I have advised him to make a clean breast of it, but he feels good for a week or so more, and it is up to him.

We eat, and sleep, and watch the lead, and wonder. Are we to be repulsed again? Is the unseen, mysterious guardian of this mist-covered region foiling us? The Commander is taking it with a great deal more patience than he usually has with obstacles, but in the face of this one he probably realizes the necessity of a calm, philosophic mood.

Captain Bartlett has been here longer than any of us, and he is commencing to get nervous. Commander Peary and he have done what is nautically known as "swinging the ship," for the purpose of correcting compass errors, and after that there is nothing for them to do but wait. Captain Bartlett describes it as "Hell on Earth"; the Commander has nothing to say, and I agree with him. Dr. Goodsell reads from his little books, studies Esquimo language, writes in his diary and talks to me and the rest of the party, and waits.

Professor MacMillan, with his eye ever to the south, and an occasional glance at his frozen heel, cracks a joke and bids us be cheerful. He is one man, and has surely made good. His first trip to this forsaken region, yet he wakes up from his sleep with a smile on his face and a question as to how a nice, large, juicy steak would go about now. This is no place for jokes, yet his jokes are cheering and make us all feel more light-hearted. He is the "life of the funeral" and by his cheerfulness has kept our spirits from sinking to a dead level, and when the Esquimos commenced to get cranky, by his diplomacy he brought them to think of other subjects than going back to the ship.