EARLY YEARS 
vious to our arrival at the Red Cliffs. After 
this boy was washed and scrubbed by me, his 
long hair cut short, and his greasy, dirty 
clothes of skins and furs burned, a new suit 
made of odds and ends collected from differ- 
ent wardrobes on the ship made him a present- 
able Young American. I was proud of him, 
and he of me. He learned to speak English 
and slept underneath my bunk. 
This expedition was larger in numbers than 
the previous one, but the results, owing to the 
impossible weather conditions, were by no 
means successful, and the following season all 
of the expedition returned to the United States 
except Commander Peary, Hugh J. Lee, 
and myself. When the expedition returned, 
there were two who went back who had not 
come north with us. Miss Marie Ahnighito 
Peary, aged about ten months, who first saw 
the light of day at Anniversary Lodge on the 
12th of the previous September, was taken by 
her mother to her kinf oiks in the South. Mrs. 
Peary also took a young Esquimo girl, well 
known among us as "Miss Bill," along with 
her, and kept her for nearly a year, when she 
gladly permitted her to return to Greenland 
8 
