296 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



"man was not born to die beneath such 

 a sky." 



Here was belief in self, hope, optimism. 



Six years later, contrary to all Arctic 

 precedent, he dared to harness his dogs, 

 leave his ship frozen in the ice, and sledge 

 northward in the middle of the big Arctic 

 night. 



With the thermometer at fifty and 

 sixty below zero, not a particle of food 

 in his sledges, he groped his way along 

 the eastern shores of Ehesmere Land, 

 around Cape Baird, and into Lady 

 Franklin Bay, searching for the head- 

 quarters of the Greely Expedition, aban- 

 doned sixteen years before. 



He stumbled through the door with 

 both feet frozen to the ankles. Nothing 

 could be done here to relieve his suffer- 

 ing. Toe after toe sloughed off. Finally 

 he was lashed to a sledge and carried 

 through the broken ice of bays and in- 

 lets and along the ice foot back to his 

 ship, two hundred miles to the south. 

 And with him, to aid in the amputation 

 of the stumps of eight toes, went a can 

 of anesthetic, found there in the house 

 and brought into the Arctic regions in 

 1881. 



Now a cripple ? Within thirty-seven 

 days following the final amputation he 

 was headed north again, equipped with 

 crutches ! 



The antagonistic elements of the North- 

 land should have submitted meekly and 

 bowed humbly, as this plucky little cara- 

 van wound its way up through Kennedy 

 and Robeson channels with the great 

 unknown as its objective point. 



FIGHTING FOR THE LIVES OF HIS NATIVES 



Two years later we find this intrepid 

 man encamped on the bleak shores of 

 Cape Sabine, surrounded by his loyal 

 Eskimos, patiently perfecting his equip- 

 ment and preparing for that hazardous 

 trip of eight hundred miles to the top of 

 the earth. 



Every attack had been made upon him 

 that Torgnak, the evil spirit of the North, 

 could devise — bitter cold, cutting winds, 

 blinding drift, treacherous thin ice, rough 

 ice, pressure ridges, crevasses, piblocto 

 among his dogs, frost-bitten face, fingers, 

 feet, and starvation ; yet his will was 



adamant, his body strong, his purpose 

 unshaken. 



And now a new mode of attack to 

 thwart his plans, one cunningly devised 

 and relentlessly executed — deprive him 

 of the valuable services of his loyal 

 Eskimos ! Those were the darkest days 

 of Peary's career, fighting not for the 

 Pole, but for the lives of his natives, and 

 with the same energy and determination 

 which characterize all of his work. Six 

 mounds of rock within a few yards of 

 his wooden shack testify to his losing 

 fight. 



THE "ROOSEVELT" BEGINS HER CAREER 



Four years he remained in the North, 

 and returned scarred and temporarily 

 beaten, but with a knowledge of why he 

 was beaten — the secret of final success. 

 His staunch friends believed in him and 

 gathered around him, and in the fall of 

 1904 they saw the sturdy Roosevelt be- 

 ginning to take shape under the skillful 

 hands of Maine shipbuilders. 



With engines throbbing under high 

 pressure and smoke belching from her 

 funnel, Peary and Bartlett fairly hurled 

 this first American-built Polar ship 

 around Cape Sheridan and into the Polar 

 Sea, farther north than any other ship 

 had ever steamed. She had done what 

 she was planned to do ; she had justified 

 her existence ; and there she lay, on the 

 northern shore of Grant Land, panting 

 like an athlete at the end of the race. 



The sun dropped below the hills, dark- 

 ness crept over the land, and in that great 

 white expanse of snow and ice one thing 

 alone betokened that man lived in what 

 was apparently a world long dead or one 

 unfinished by the hand of the Creator — a 

 warm beam of light from the cabin of 

 the ship. 



Long before the sun returned the 

 ninety-mile trail to Cape Columbia was 

 patted down with the feet of more than 

 two hundred dogs. From that point to 

 the Pole the course lay straight out over 

 the drift-ice of the Polar Sea for 413 

 miles. 



"Impossible !" was the word brought 

 back to the British Government by the 

 British North Pole Expedition of 1875- 

 76. Peary never recognized this word in 

 connection with his life's work. 



