of further eastward to the northern coast of Greenland as I had done in 1906. This change was made for excellent reasons, which will be made clear in their proper place. Upon this record there is only one shadow—a tragic one indeed. I refer, of course, to the lamentable death of Prof. Ross G. Marvin, who was drowned on April 10, four days after the Pole had been reached, forty-five miles north of Cape Columbia, while returning from 86° 38´ north, in command of one of the supporting parties. With this sad exception, the history of the expedition is flawless. We returned as we went, in our own ship, battered but unharmed, in excellent health and with a record of complete success.
There is a lesson in all this—a lesson so obvious that it is perhaps superfluous to point it out. The plan, so carefully made and executed with such faithfulness to detail, was composed of a number of elements, the absence of any one of which might have been fatal to success. We could scarcely have succeeded without the help of our faithful Eskimos; nor even with them, had it not been for our knowledge of their capacities for work and endurance, and for the confidence which years of acquaintance had taught them to repose in me. We could certainly not have succeeded without the Eskimo dogs which furnished the traction power for our sledges, and so enabled us to carry our supplies where no other power on earth could have moved them with the requisite speed and certainty. It may be that we could not have succeeded without the improved form of sledge which I was able to construct and which, combining in its construction, strength, lightness, and ease of traction, made the heavy task of the dogs far easier than it would otherwise have been. It may even be that we should have failed had it not been for so simple a thing as an improved form of water boiler which I was fortunate enough to have hit upon. By its aid we were able to melt ice and make tea in ten minutes. On our previous journeys this process had taken an hour. Tea is an imperative necessity on such a driving journey, and this little invention saved one and one-half hours in each day while we were struggling toward the Pole on that journey when time was the very essence of success.
Success crowned the work, it is true, but, for all that, it is a genuine pleasure to reflect that even had we failed, I should have had nothing to reproach myself with in the way of neglect. Every possible contingency that years of experience had taught me to expect was provided for, every weak spot guarded, every precaution taken. I had spent a quarter of a century playing the Arctic game. I was fifty-three years old, an age beyond which, perhaps, with the one exception of Sir John Franklin, no man had ever attempted to prosecute work in the Arctic regions. I was a little past the zenith of my strength, a little lacking, perhaps, in the exuberant elasticity and élan of more youthful years, a little past the time when most men begin to leave the strenuous things to the younger generation; but these drawbacks were fully balanced perhaps by a trained and hardened endurance, a perfect knowledge of myself, and of how to conserve my strength. I knew it was my last game upon the great Arctic chess-board. It was win this time or be forever defeated.
The lure of the North! It is a strange and a powerful thing. More than once I have come back from the great frozen spaces, battered and worn and baffled, sometimes maimed, telling myself that I had made my last journey thither, eager for the society of my kind, the comforts of civilization and the peace and serenity of home. But somehow, it was never many months before the old restless feeling came over me. Civilization began to lose its zest for me. I began to long for the great white desolation, the battles with the ice and the gales, the long, long arctic night, the long, long arctic day, the handful of odd but faithful Eskimos who had been my friends for years, the silence and the vastness of the great, white lonely North. And back I went accordingly, time after time, until, at last, my dream of years came true.
CHAPTER II
PREPARATIONS
A great many persons have asked when I first conceived the idea of trying to reach the North Pole. That question is hard to answer. It is impossible to point to any day or month and to say, "Then the idea first came to me." The North Pole dream was a gradual and almost involuntary evolution from earlier work in which it had no part. My interest in arctic work dates back to 1885, when as a young man my imagination was stirred by reading accounts of explorations by Nordenskjöld in the interior of Greenland. These studies took full possession of my mind and led to my undertaking, entirely alone, a summer trip to Greenland in the following year. Somewhere in my subconscious self, even so long ago as that, there may have been gradually dawning a hope that I might some day reach the Pole itself. Certain it is, the lure of the North, the "arctic fever," as it has been called, entered my veins then, and I came to have a feeling of fatality, a feeling that the reason and intent of my existence was the solution of the mystery of the frozen fastnesses of the Arctic.
But the actual naming of the Pole as the object of an expedition did not materialize until 1898, when the first expedition of the Peary Arctic Club went north with the avowed intention of reaching ninety north—if it were possible. Since then I have made six different attempts, in six different years, to reach the coveted point. The sledging season, when such a "dash" is possible, extends from about the middle of February until the middle of June. Before the middle of February there is not sufficient light, and after the middle of June there is likely to be too much open water.
During these six former attempts made by me to win the prize, the successive latitudes of 83° 52´, 84° 17´, and 87° 6´ were attained, the last giving back to the United States the record of "farthest north," which had for a time been wrested from it by Nansen, and from him in turn by the Duke of the Abruzzi.
In writing the story of this last and successful expedition, it is necessary to go back to my return from the former expedition of 1905–6. Before the Roosevelt entered port, and before I reached New York, I was planning for another journey into the North, which, if I could obtain the essential funds—and retained my health—I intended to get under way as soon as possible. It is a principle in physics that a ponderable body moves along the line of least resistance; but that principle does not seem to apply to the will of man. Every obstacle which has ever been placed in my way, whether physical or mental, whether an open "lead" or the opposition of human circumstances, has ultimately acted as a spur to the determination to accomplish the fixed purpose of my life—if I lived long enough.
On my return in 1906, great encouragement was received from Mr. Jesup, the president of the Peary Arctic Club, who had contributed so generously to my former expeditions, and in whose honor I had named the northernmost point of land in the world, latitude 83° 39´, Cape Morris K. Jesup. He said, in so many words, that he would "see me through" on another journey north. His promise meant that I should not have to beg all the money in small sums from a more or less reluctant world.
The winter of 1906–7 and the spring of 1907 were devoted to presenting to the world the results of the previous undertaking, and to the work of interesting friends as far as possible in another expedition. We had the ship, which had cost about $100,000 in 1905; but $75,000 more was needed for new boilers and other changes, for equipment and for operating expenses. While the bulk of the necessary funds was furnished by the members and friends of the Peary Arctic Club, a very considerable amount came from all parts of the country in contributions ranging from $100 to $5 and even $1. These donations were not less appreciated than the big ones, because they showed the friendliness and the interest of the givers, and demonstrated to me the general recognition of the fact that while the expedition was financed by private individuals, it was in spirit a national affair.
At last the funds, actual and promised, were in such amount as to authorize our contracting for new boilers for the Roosevelt, and ordering certain modifications in her structure which would fit her more effectively for another voyage: such as enlarging the quarters forward for
