288 
THE GUASO NYERO 
[CH. XI 
by native runners, telling me of Peary’s wonderful feat 
in reaching the North Pole. Of course, we were all 
overjoyed ; and, in particular, we Americans could not 
but feel a special pride in the fact that it was a fellow- 
countryman who had performed the great and note¬ 
worthy achievement. A little more than a year had 
passed since I said good-bye to Peary as he started on 
his Arctic quest. After leaving New York in the 
Roosevelt , he had put into Oyster Bay to see us, and 
we had gone aboard the Roosevelt , had examined with 
keen interest how she was fitted for the boreal seas and 
the boreal winter, and had then waved farewell to the 
tall, gaunt explorer as he stood looking toward us over 
the side of the stout little ship. 1 
On September 21 Kermit and v? Tarlton started south¬ 
west toward Lake Hannington, and Cuninghame and I 
north toward the Guaso Nyero. Heller was under the 
weather, and we left him to spend a few days at Meru 
Boma, and then to take in the elephant skins and other 
museum specimens to Nairobi. 
As Cuninghame and I were to be nearly four weeks 
in a country with no food supplies, we took a small 
donkey safari to carry the extra food for our porters, 
for in these remote places the difficulty of taking in 
many hundred pounds of salt, as well as skin tents, and 
the difficulty of bringing out the skeletons and skins of 
the big animals collected, make such an expedition as 
ours, undertaken for scientific purposes, far more cum¬ 
bersome and unwieldy than a mere hunting trip, or 
even than a voyage of exploration, and treble the 
labour. 
1 When I reached Neri I received from Peary the following 
cable: “Your farewell was a royal mascot. The Pole is ours,— 
Peary. 1 ’ 
