PEARY'S FIRST VOYAGES 137 



ments. Mrs. Peary, of course, remained in her temporary home. Says 

 Mr. Scott in describing this trip : 



"The two parties kept together until the costal range was surmounted, and 

 the beginning of the ice-cap was reached. Here the sledge which was to do 

 the great journey was laden with a full load, and the two explorers started 

 forward, Lieutenant Peary leading the way with a staff to which was at- 

 tached a silk banner — the Stars and Stripes — worked by Mrs. Peary. 



"The first of the ice-cap was a stretch of some fifteen miles of ice, formed 

 into enormous dome-shaped masses. They toiled up one side but traveled 

 easily down the other, and so on, up and down, until they had attained an 

 altitude of nearly 9,000 feet above the sea level, when they found that they 

 were on a vast expanse of snow. The white unbroken surface stretched away 

 as far as the eye could reach, unbroken by a ridge or rise, everywhere fiat, 

 white and immense. This was the great ice-cap, the frozen covering of the 

 interior of Greenland, the unknown region where no man had yet set foot. 



"But it was a mistake to term it an ice-cap. They found it to be rather 

 a desert, a Sahara with dry drifting snow instead of the dry burning sand. 

 And, like Sahara, it had its days of storm, when the snow whirled in clouds 

 just as the sand rises before the scorching blast of the simoom. Very won- 

 derful was the first experience of this Greenland dust-storm. The sky over- 

 head was filled with dull grey clouds, heavy and opaque, and the gloom spread 

 all around, so that whichever way one looked there was the same impenetrable 

 veil of grey gloomy haze. The snow lost its dazzling whiteness and took in- 

 stead the tint of the gloom of the surrounding atmosphere. Then the wind 

 came, at first in fitful gusts but later growing into a steady blow, the opening 

 squalls lifting the dry surface snow and whirling it up in the air. The steady 

 breeze caught it and carried it along in a constantly moving stream some two 

 feet deep, and it was then that the effect of the storm was most pronounced. 

 The drifting particles of snow made a curious rustling noise as they moved 

 and as they whirled around the travelers' legs the feet were hidden beneath 

 the dense moving veil. As a result, it was as though one were walking on 

 nothing and going nowhere, for the grey gloom all around made one un- 

 conscious of either direction or space, and the moving snow prevented one 

 seeing the feet or realizing that there was anything solid under them. 



"The steady hum of the drifting snow, together with its movement, made 

 the brain dizzy, and the two explorers generally found it necessary to form a 

 camp when such a storm came on, the snow soon piling up against their shelter 



