PEARY'S FIRST VOYAGES 141 



"On July I, after fifty-seven days of travel, they came to the limits of the 

 ice-cap and stood, silent and amazed, looking down from the summit of the 

 snow desert across a wide open plain covered with vegetation, with here and 

 there a snowdrift showing white, and with herds of musk oxen contentedly 

 grazing over it. Such a discovery was absolutely so unexpected that at first 

 they could scarcely believe their eyes. There was no sign of any human habi- 

 tation on the land, and, for all that could be learned to the contrary, they were 

 the first human beings who had ever trod upon that plain, on which the yellow 

 Arctic poppies were waving in bloom and over which the drone of the humble 

 bee sounded, though for hundreds of miles around it the accumulated snow 

 of centuries lay frozen into the great mysterious snow-cap and its glaciers. 



"Having proved that they really were not dreaming, they shot a musk ox, 

 which they used for their own and their dogs' refreshment. Then they stacked 

 their stores and set out with reduced loads across the plain. They walked 

 for four days, exploring, surveying, and examining; and on the fourth of July, 

 the anniversary of the Declaration of Indepndence by the United States, they 

 stood on a summit of a magnificent range of cliffs, 3,500 feet high, and over- 

 looking a large bay, which in honour of the date, they named Independence 

 Bay. 



"The latitude was nearly 82 degrees N., and Lieutenant Peary, writing of 

 the discovery, says : It was almost impossible for us to believe that we were 

 standing on the northern shore of Greenland as we gazed from the summit 

 of this precipitous cliff with the most brilliant sunshine all about us, with yellow 

 poppies growing between the rocks around our feet and a herd of musk oxen 

 in the valley behind us. In that valley we had also found the dandelion in 

 bloom and had heard the heavy drone and seen the bullet-like flight of the 

 humble bee.' " 



For a week the party of investigators remained in this isolated region, 

 6,000 miles from their friends, and then journeyed back. Over the glistening 

 ice surface they made fast time, and often reached an average of thirty miles 

 a day. Sometimes, when the wind was good, sails were put up on the sledges, 

 and they flew along, like boys with their sleds on a pond. On August 8 the 

 party arrived back at the place where Mrs. Peary had been left, and a short 

 time later the Kite sailed for America, reaching New York September 20, 

 1892. 



From a scientific standpoint the results of this expedition were : 



