CHAPTER III. 

 DR. COOK'S OWN STORY. 



When Dr. Cook reached Copenhagen he gave a picturesque and detailed 

 account of his travels. In fact, he gave it many times, such was the mad 

 eagerness of learned men and laymen, of kings and men of humble position, 

 to know all that he had seen and to drink in the wonders of the North. Cook 

 was like one of the travelers of old who, returning from a far country to 

 their homes, were beseiged by their friends and were wont to sit for hours 

 in the great hall of a castle, telling and retelling the marvels that had befallen. 



Perhaps the best account Cook gave of his dash to the pole was given to 

 W. T. Stead, the noted London editor and publisher. Stead passed some 

 hours with Cook and this was what he heard : 



"Warning my Eskimos that only unyielding determination and patience 

 could take us through the fight against famine and frost and that my success 

 depended as much upon their loyahy to me as upon myself. I started for the 

 North Pole on the morning of February 19, with ten men and 103 dogs draw- 

 ing eleven heavily loaded sledges. Overcoming the reluctance of my Eskimos 

 to leave the mainland of Greenland by argument that I would discover new 

 hunting for them across the sound I marched my party out onto the quivering 

 ice of Smith Sound. We marched in the dark, the daylight of the Arctic 

 winter's end being limited to but a few hours. Gloom unrelieved even by the 

 Aurora surrounded us. Progress was of necessity slow, the piled up ice 

 forming veritable mountains in our path, over which we had in many in- 

 stances to drag dogs and sleighs. The thermometer as we crossed the sound 

 dropped to 83 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. On the heights of Ellesmere 

 Sound we suffered our first losses, several of our dogs being frozen. 



"Game trails helped us along through Nansen's Sound to the Land's End. 

 Musk oxen, Arctic hare and polar bears, which were comparatively plentiful, 

 supplied us with food. It was, of course, necessary to eat raw meat as our 

 supply of alcohol, the only fuel we carried, was being kept for extreme emer- 



59 



