A NAME FOR HISTORY: PEARY 129 



high in its organization lias been followed in a pressing forward for results. 

 The triumvirate worked together with unquestioned loyalty, the Club in 

 its share proving constantly its breadth of view and its generosity, so that 

 Peary planned his work without particular instructions from his support- 

 ers and the Museum was always custodian of all collections without super- 

 vision. Members of the Club give the highest credit to Mr. Jesup and 

 to Peary: it was the faith of these two that kept the w'ork in continuance. 

 Mr. Peary used his own money for the early trips and Mr. Jesup was by far 

 the largest contributor later, while other liberal supporters were General 

 Thomas H. Hubbard, president of the Club to-day, and the late Mr. 

 George Crocker. 



The records of the IVIuseum from 1895 to the landing of the Roosevelt 

 after the last expedition, contain long lists of Arctic possessions, and there 

 accompanies these lists even as far back as 1902 a note to the effect that the 

 American ]\ruseinu is undoubtedly the richest in the world in collections 

 from Arctic America. There are musk ox, polar bear, w^alrus, seal and 

 caribou, including the white Peary caribou, as well as large series of small 

 mammals and of birds. There are various sledges, among them the " Morris 

 K. Jesup," that strong flexible sledge which made the journey to the Pole 

 in 1909; besides Eskimo costumes of many kinds and other objects repre- 

 senting the culture of the Arctics. In addition there are the clothing, rifles, 

 and surveying and other instruments abandoned at Fort Conger by the 

 Greely expedition. The best-known objects in the Museum representa- 

 tive of Peary's energy in Arctic work are the three meteorites from Cape 

 York, Greenland, the two smaller obtained in 1895, the "Ahnighito" 

 meteorite weighing thirty-six tons, in 1897. These constituted the secret 

 "Iron Mountain" of the Eskimo from which the tribes obtained metal for 

 knives before a supply reached them as a result of the visits of explorers. 

 The five achievements named on the Peary Arctic Club medal [Frontis- 

 piece] are of magnitude to exalt the name of Peary for all time, but more- 

 over as long as histories are written and men lo\"e the heroic, the statement 

 of the events will be coupled with a story of the dogged will of the man, of 

 his pluck. The bust by Mr. Couper to be added to the other busts in the 

 Museum's memorial hall through the generosity of Mrs. Jesup, wife of 

 Peary's staunch supporter, shows the face of a dauntless man, one who has 

 suffered much without yielding. Looked at by another generation, and in 

 another perspective, it will tell the greatest story of endurance and stead- 

 fast purpose in the history of the earth's conquest of land and sea, and 

 although the historian may explain that recognition and fame came to this 

 explorer while he was yet in the prime of life, the stern yet chastened lines 

 that the sculptor has given the niarl)le will seem also to suggest the familiar 

 story that no greatness is won without some misunderstanding from con- 

 temporaries. 



