66 DR. COOK'S OWN STORY 



them. They do not see the pole through the mirage of the south. When I 

 noticed the signature to their telegrams I felt that they meant much. 



"Here was a plain statement of a fact as stupendous as the first words 

 Columbus uttered, to express the truth that he had added a new world to Leon 

 and Castile. The news soon spread through Copenhagen, which had heard 

 great news of Peary and Nansen before. The town was stirred as if Holger 

 Dansker had risen from beneath the vaults of Kronborg Castle — the castle of 

 Elsinore — and walked into the streets. Nobody questioned the truth of the 

 story, for Knud Rasmussen's name is a talisman, and the officers in Greenland 

 do not take travelers' tales seriously unless the travelers have serious claims. 



"Later came testimony from the great Norwegian explorer Amundsen and 

 from Captain Otto Sverdrup ; and then the time of waiting. Even the boys in 

 the street were waiting for Cook. A new Danish joke began to circulate. *Do 

 you believe that the cuckoo can prophesy ?' 'Yes ; once in the spring, I asked 

 who should be first at the North Pole and it said, "Cook, Cook, Cook." ' 



CHILDREN TOOK OFF CAPS. 



"The other day Dr. Cook drove with me through the streets of Copen- 

 hagen and along the Strandvej to Charlottenlund, one of the summer palaces 

 of the King ; even the little children waved their hands and took off their caps. 

 If he had been an explorer crowned with the laurels won by the discovery of 

 the South Pole, he would not have been so interesting to these little people, but 

 he came from a country which they had heard about from the moment that they 

 could hear at all — a country which is very near to them. * * * 



"Coming, ardently expected, was a hero whom they could understand, and 

 he needed no explanation. That he was approved of by Knud Rasmussen, 

 half an Eskimo himself, who knows all the ways of the Eskimo, to whom the 

 snow and ice are as the forest bark and leaves are to our Indians, was enough. 



"To me, knowing Dr. Cook through his articles in the Century and Har- 

 per's, and through his entrancing 'First Antarctic Night,' it was a great pleasure 

 to think of his coming, and to believe that he had added a new glory to Old 



Glory." 



"How Cook Came and Went" is the title of Dr. Egan's articles, and he 

 deals with details much more fully than have the cables. Coming down to the 

 morning of Dr. Cook's arrival in Copenhagen, he continues : 



"When I reached the environs of the harbor my coachmen would have 

 found it impossible to get near the open space reserved for members of the 



