COOK'S PREPARATION 89 



ranges of Alaska and I never knew him to be untruthful or to misrepresent 

 anything whatever. 



"When he failed in 1903 to reach the top of Mt. McKinley he came back 

 and frankly admitted his failure. There are those who doubt that he reached 

 the top on his second attempt, but I went with him far enough to know that 

 he did reach the top, and Jack Grill, an old Montana rancher, went to the top 

 with him." 



Mount McKinley is the highest peak in America. Its altitude is more 

 than 20,000 feet and its summit had never before been scaled by man. 



"I left Seattle on the steamship Santa Anna May i, 1906, bound for 

 Nome, to do some prospecting," said the man quoted above. "On the ship I 

 became acquainted with Dr. Cook through a Seattle newspaper photographer, 

 who was a member of Cook's party. 



"We were together a great deal and when he learned how well I knew 

 the country in Alaska he proposed that I should go with him and take him 

 around the mountain to the most accessible point. I agreed and landed at 

 Seldovia at the entrance of Cook's inlet with the party. 



"The Eskimos at Susitna laughed at these people and called them 'cheek 

 hawks,' or tenderfeet. 



"Finally, as the summer wore on, the "cneek hawks gave it up and went 

 back. Dr. Cook, Brill, the Montana rancher, and I went to the mouth of 

 the Chulitna River and there found the 'hog back' leading from the foothills 

 up the side of the mountain. Cook and Brill went up this 'hog back' and 

 reached the top September 15. Two days later they returned to the camp 

 where I was waiting." 



Henry Collins \A^alsh, secretary of the Explorers' Club, New York, has 

 told of one of Dr. Cook's Arctic expeditions as follows : 



"My first meeting with Dr. Frederick A. Cook was in the spring of 1904, 

 when he had organized our expedition to make a summer trip into the Arctic 

 regions and for which he had chartered the ill-fated steamer the Miranda, 

 I became a member of this expedition and was its historian. 



"The Miranda, it will be recalled, had many mishaps, colliding with an . 

 iceberg off the coast of Labrador, which necessitated a return to St. John's, 

 Newfoundland, where the ship was repaired, and later to run on some hidden 

 reefs off the coast of Sukkertoppen, South Greenland. In this encounter the 

 bottom was torn off the Miranda, but its balance tank saved it from sinking. 



"We arranged to steam back to Sukkertoppen, an Eskimo settlement with 



