146 PEARY'S LATER VOYAGES 



"At Storm Camp," he writes, "we abandoned everything noi absolutely 

 necessary and I bent every energy to setting a record pace. 



'The first march of ten hours, myself in the lead with the compass, some- 

 times on a dog trot, the sledges following in Indian file with drivers running 

 beside or behind, placed us thirty miles to the good — my Eskimos said forty. 

 Four hours out on the second march I overtook Henson (head of one of the 

 supporting parties) in his third camp, beside a lead which was closed. When 

 I arrived, he hitched up and followed behind my hurrying party. I had with 

 me now seven men and six teams with less than half a load for each. 



"As we advanced, the character of the ice improved, the floes becommg 

 much larger and pressure ridges infrequent, but the cracks and narrow leads 

 increased, and were nearly all active. These cracks were uniformly at right 

 aneles to our course, and the ice on the northern side was moving more rapidly 

 eastward than that on the southern. 



"As dogs gave out, unable to keep the pace, they were fed to the others. 

 April 20 we came into a region of open leads, trending nearly north and south, 

 and the ice motion became more pronounced. Hurrying on between these leads, 

 a forced march was made. Then we slept a few hours, and starting again 

 soon after midnight, pushed on till noon of the 21st. 



"My observation then gave 87° 6'. So far as history records this is the 

 nearest approach to the north pole ever made by human beings. 



"I thanked God with as good a grace as possible for what I had been able 

 to accomplish, though it was but an empty bauble compared with the splendid 

 jewel for which I was straining my life out. But, looking at the skeleton 

 forms of my remaining dogs and the nearly empty sledges, and bearing in 

 mind the drifting ice and the unknown quantity of the big lead between us 

 and the nearest land, I felt that I had cut the margin as narrow as could be. 

 reasonably expected. 



"My flags were flung out from the summit of the highest pinnacle near us, 

 and a hundred feet or so beyond this, I left a bottle containing a brief record 

 and a piece of the silk flag which six years before I had carried around the 

 northern end of Greenland." 



The scientific results of this expedition were the following : 



Reached 87 degrees N. latitude April 21, 1906. 



Traversed and delineated an unknown portion of the north coast of Grant 



Land. 



Discovered new land near Parallel 83 and Meridian 100. 



