SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE PEARY EXPEDITION 75 



Just a picnic from start to finish. This is not blowing my horn, but 

 simply to state a few facts that will speak for themselves. 



"These performances were due to the great system Peary has 

 developed, to his breaking us in the best way so that when we 

 started north in February Dr. 'Mac' and I, who had never been in 

 the Arctic before, had stacked up against conditions many other 

 expeditions would never dare face, and had sledged enough to make 

 us veterans. Result, confidence in ourselves and equipment, and, 

 what's more, as to the conditions likely to be met with. 



"Another point, in a country where the English found no game 

 they died of scurvy. Where Greely, Brainard and Lockwood, fine 

 men as they were, could obtain no game, we, through the Eskimos, 

 never were in want of fresh meat, and, unlike what you will find in 

 most books, I don't imagine you will find in my diary or in those of 

 the others, which are fairly voluminous, any evidence that I was 

 conducting a clinic or a continual squeal on the cold. 



"I can tell you this member of the class of 1908 has been up 

 against some queer conditions, and I have learned many things since 

 I saw you last. Possibly the queerest, but not the most uncomfort- 

 able, was when my Eskimo and I had run out of fuel after being 

 hung up at Cape Fashaw Martin for four days by heavy winds. We 

 had to beat in the teeth of a howling gale and drifts so bad the dogs 

 could hardly be induced to face them, which nipped and froze our 

 faces for twenty-five miles, when it was so cold we had to run prac- 

 tically the whole way to keep warm, but I could appreciate the 

 humorous side of it. 



"One thing is sure, this Arctic shows, as you have often told 

 me when up against it good, and you are here a good deal of the time, 

 there is nothing like going at everything with a grin and good- 

 naturedly, like the Eskimos; and no matter how scared, as when I 

 had an angry Eskimo, whom I had thrown, point his rifle at me and 

 look as though he meant business, or when crossing ice which bends 

 beneath you and the thermometer in the minus fifties, so if you break 



