CHAPTER IVi 



Side-Lights on the Peary Expedition 



WHILE Commander Peary was winning the great prize of 

 his life, some of his companions were having their share 

 of experiences and adventures, and some of these, as told 

 by the parties concerned, were so full of spice and vital spirit that 

 they will serve as illuminating side-lights upon Peary's own story. 

 Especially bright and boyish is that given by young George Borup, 

 a Yale professor and athlete, the photographer of the expedition. 

 It is given in a letter written to his father and given by him to the 

 press. Good wine needs no bush, and the young fellow's graphic 

 account of his adventures may speak for itself. 



"DEAR DAD: Gee whiz! I've had a wonderful trip, and wish in 

 many ways we had been stuck up here for another year. The Com- 

 mander has been just great to me from start to finish. He is kind- 

 ness and consideration personified, and we fellows would do anything 

 for him. After we got to Cape Sheridan last fall, as soon as the 

 ice got strong enough to hold, the fall sledging of supplies began. 

 I was out in the field for about a month, sledging about five hun- 

 dred miles, but after one two-week trip came in with two heels, two 

 big toes, and ball of one foot frost-bitten, which was damnably 

 annoying, as it laid me up a month. Cause, inexperience. Was all 

 right by the December moon, when I sledged some two hundred and 

 twenty-five miles in ten days, taking provisions toward Cape Colum- 

 bia. In the January moon I went with four Eskimos to a large 

 glacier about one hundred miles from us, in the interior of the 

 country. We went after deer, but didn't get any. However, hares 



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