S96 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



■den was prepared, and in it we remained 

 until sunrise of 1909. 



On February 18 the start was made 

 for Annootok. With a newly prepared 

 ■equipment the Greenland shores were 

 reached on April 15. 



Here we were greeted by Harry Whit- 

 ney and an anxious group of Eskimo 

 friends. 



To facilitate an early return I moved 

 southward to the Danish settlement and 

 reached Upernavik on May 21, 1909. 



First Report by Commander Robert E. Peary, U. S. N., 



September 6, 1909 



{Copyright, 1909, by the New York Times Company. All rights reserved. 



cation in whole or part prohibited') 



Rcpubli- 



THE steamer Roosevelt, bearing 

 the North Polar expedition of 

 the Peary Arctic Club, parted 

 ■company with the Erik and steamed out 

 •of Etah Fiord late in the afternoon of 

 August 18, 1908, setting the usual course 

 for Cape Sabine. The weather was 

 •dirty, with fresh southeasterly winds. 

 We had on board twenty-two' Eskimo 

 men, seventeen women, and ten children, 

 two hundred and twenty-six dogs, and 

 some forty-odd walrus. 



We encountered the ice a short dis- 

 tance from the mouth of the harbor, but 

 it was not closely packed and was nego- 

 tiated by the Roosevelt without serious 

 difficulty. As we neared Cape Sabine 

 the weather cleared somewhat, and we 

 ■passed close by Three Voort Island and 

 Cape Sabine, easily making out with 

 the naked eye the house at Hayes Har- 

 bor occupied by me in the winter of 

 1901-2. 



From Cape Sabine north there was so 

 much water that we thought of setting 

 the lug sail before the southerly wind; 

 "but a little later appearance of ice to the 

 northward stopped this. There was 

 ■clean open water to Cape Albert, and 

 from there scattered ice to a point about 

 abreast of Victoria Head, thick weather 

 and dense ice bringing us some ten or 

 fifteen miles away. 



From here we drifted south somewhat, 

 and then got a slant to the northward 

 out of the current. We worked a little 

 further north, and stopped again for 

 some hours. Then we again worked 

 westward and northward till we reached 



a series of lakes, coming to a stop a few 

 miles south of the Windward's winter 

 quarters at Cape Derville. 



From here, after some delay, we 

 slowly worked away northeastward 

 through fog and broken ice of medium 

 thickness through one night and the fore- 

 noon of the next day, only emerging 

 into open water and clear weather off 

 Cape Eraser. 



From this point we had a clear run 

 through the middle of Robeson Channel, 

 uninterrupted by either ice or fog, to 

 Lady Franklin Bay. Here we encoun- 

 tered both ice and fog, and while work- 

 ing along in search of a practicable open- 

 ing were forced across to the Greenland 

 coast at Thank God Harbor. The fog 

 lifted there, and enabled us to make out 

 our whereabouts, and we steamed north 

 through a series of leads past Cape Lup- 

 ton, and thence southward toward Cape 

 Union. A few miles off that cape we 

 were stopped by impracticable ice, and 

 we drifted back through to Cape Union, 

 where we stopped again. 



We lay for a time in a lake of water 

 and then, to prevent being drifted south 

 again we took refuge under the north 

 shore of Lincoln Bay, in nearly the iden- 

 tical place where we had our unpleasant 

 experiences three years before. Here we 

 remained for several days during a 

 period of constant and at times violent 

 northeasterly winds. 



Twice we were forced aground by the 

 heavy ice; we had our port rail broken 

 and a hole in the bulwark, and twice we 

 pushed out in an attempt to get north, 



