PEARY AS A LEADER 



295 



jU& ■•■■ «M- ' 





Photograph by Donald B. MacMillan 

 PEARY'S HUT AT CAPE SABINE, FROM WHICH THE EXPLORER MADE HIS DASH TOWARD 



THE POLE IN I9OO 



This refuge was formerly the deck-house of the steamship Windward, used by Peary in his 



1898-1902 Expedition. 



the broken fields of ice and disappeared 

 over the southern horizon, these gods 

 knew that here in the little tent on the 

 beach was a man against whom immedi- 

 ate warfare must be declared and their 

 strongest forces united (see also p. 319). 



"man was not born to die beneath 

 such a sky" 



At the first peep of dawn of the long 

 Arctic day we find Peary accepting the 



challenge and assembling his forces at 

 the edge of the ice-cap. On Independ- 

 ence Day the American flag was unfurled 

 at Navy Cliff, some six hundred miles to 

 the north. 



When, weeks later, he struggles to- 

 ward home over that apparently endless 

 white waste, with inflamed eyes, frost- 

 bitten and sunburnt face, dropping dogs, 

 and food nearly gone, he looks up into 

 the clear heavens and declares that 



