124 ROBERT E. PEARY, INDOMITABLE POLAR EXPLORER 



In the latter year the young surveyor passed the Navy Depart- 

 ment examination for the admission of civil engineers, and was 

 commissioned an engineer in the naval service, October 26, 1881. 

 He has since remained a civil engineer in the navy, having advanced 

 from the rank of lieutenant to his present rank of commander. 



In this service Lieutenant Peary built a pier at Key West, 

 Florida, in 1881. This the contractors had abandoned, as impos- 

 sible to be built for the appropriation, but the young engineer com- 

 pleted it at a cost well within the sum appropriated. He subsequently 

 became sub-chief of the Inter-Oceanic Canal Survey in Nicaragua, 

 Central America, and in 1886 he was made engineer-in-chief of this 

 important survey, in connection with which he invented some im- 

 portant apparatus. In 1888 he was sent to superintend the building 

 of the new dry-dock at the League Island Navy Yard in Philadel- 

 phia. 



Previous to this he had taken the first step toward the realiza- 

 tion of his boyhood dream, that of adventure and research in the 

 polar region. Greenland was as yet the utmost goal of his ambition, 

 and in 1886 he applied for leave of absence from his naval duties to 

 visit this realm of his ardent hopes. 



His application was granted, and in July of that year he went 

 north on the first of his many expeditions. It is interesting to be 

 able to state that on this occasion he took with him Matthew Henson, 

 the faithful mulatto servant who has been with him on every expedi- 

 tion since and has formed one of his chosen companions on his 

 dashes for the Pole. Henson was a Philadelphia boy who had made 

 his way to Nicaragua, where Peary engaged him and has kept him 

 as his personal attendant ever since. It was not Lieutenant Peary's 

 purpose on this expedition to seek the Pole, but to explore the interior 

 of ice-clad Greenland, in which no white man had gone inward be- 

 yond the lowlands bordering the coast. It was an excursion not with- 

 out its fruits. Starting from Disco Bay, near the seventieth degree of 

 latitude, he penetrated many miles into the interior, and discovered 



