i 4 8 PEARY CROSSES GREENLAND 



Misfortune awaited them, deep and desperate. The caches had 

 disappeared ! The storms of winter had overthrown or buried their 

 signal poles and only a hopeless stretch of white desolation v/as to 

 be seen. Under those trackless snows lay buried forever three- 

 quarters of a ton of pemmican and all the alcohol fuel. The situa- 

 tion was terribly disheartening. All their search ended in the 

 finding of only one of the caches, and that the least valuable of the 

 whole. What was to be done? To yield to fate and turn back? 

 No ! The resolute explorer was not to be defeated so easily. Send- 

 ing back the Eskimos, he went sturdily onward with his two com- 

 panions, though he knew that it was to meet with possible, even 

 probable, death by starvation. Of such stuff are heroes made. 



Three of the sledges and forty-two of the dogs were taken with 

 them. The cold was intense, for they were now on the Greenland 

 ice-cap, about six or seven thousand feet above sea-level, and facing 

 a constant current of biting wind that blew downward from the still 

 higher regions of interior Greenland. With it came a blinding flood 

 of snow, now only ankle deep, now blotting out their view of the sky. 



Lee fell ill, leaving all the work to Peary and Henson and 

 delaying the march. At times they had to drag him on the sledges. 

 The dogs fought like wolves and one went mad. One sledge after 

 another had to be abandoned, and when all the walrus meat was 

 devoured, they had to kill dogs and feed them to the pack. At length 

 the divide of central Greenland was passed and the slope began to 

 trend downward towards the Atlantic. It was necessary to reach 

 the coast, and that as quickly as possible, to obtain food for their 

 remaining dogs. Finally they pitched their camp on the crest of 

 the ice-cap, overlooking Independence Bay, five hundred miles from 

 their starting point. 



Their situation was now desperate. They had supplies still for 

 themselves, but if food was not found not a dog in the pack would 

 get even half-way home again, and they would have to drag the 

 sledges themselves for some five hundred miles on twenty days' 

 rations. 



