The North Pole! One white man, a negro, and four Eskimos treading where
never before had trodden human foot! And Old Glory flying free at the
top of the world! That was on April 6, 1909. After years of such effort
as only those can appreciate who have struggled with the frozen North,
Robert E. Peary had reached the goal of which he had dreamed for a
quarter of a century. The thought, the plan, the untiring effort, were
all his, and now the everlasting glory and honor of the achievement
were to be his also.
Robert E. Peary is a man peculiarly fitted by nature to be the
discoverer of the North Pole. He was born in Pennsylvania on May
6, 1856. He comes of an old family of Maine lumbermen, an active,
adventurous, outdoor stock of French-Anglo-Saxon origin. His father
died when he was three years old, and his mother moved to Portland,
Maine, where the boy grew up with the sea and its swimming, rowing, and
sailing on one side of him, and the woods and fields to stimulate his
love for nature on the other.
He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1877, second in a class of
fifty-one. In college, besides being a brilliant student, he was a good
athlete, being especially proficient in running, jumping, and walking.
After graduating he was first a land surveyor, and then in 1879 secured
a place in the Coast and Geodetic Survey at Washington. Then he was
appointed a member of the Navy Department of Civil Engineering, with
the rank of lieutenant. In the first year of his service (1881) he
saved the government nearly thirty thousand dollars on a pier that he
built at Key West, Florida. He was then sent to Nicaragua as sub-chief
of the Interoceanic Canal Survey. There he learned to manage men;
he gained experience in equipping expeditions, in making camp under
adverse conditions, in traversing wild and unexplored country.
It was in 1885, on his return from Nicaragua, that the idea of Arctic
exploration first came to him. He managed to secure leave of absence,
and sailed in May, 1886. On this voyage he penetrated over a hundred
miles into the interior of Greenland. Six years later he proved that
Greenland was an island by crossing it and reaching its northern end.
After that he continued his explorations, in 1906 reaching 87° 6´, the
“farthest north” anyone had yet gone, and in 1909 he reached the Pole.
Here is how Peary describes his feelings after he knew that he had
succeeded:
“But now,” he writes in his book, “The North Pole,” “while quartering
the ice in various directions from our camp, I tried to realize that,
after twenty-three years of struggles and discouragement, I had at last
succeeded in placing the flag of my country at the goal of the world’s
desire. It is not easy to write about such a thing, but I knew that we
were going back to civilization with the last of the great adventure
stories,--a story the world had been waiting to hear for nearly four
hundred years, a story that was to be told at last under the folds of
the Stars and Stripes, the flag that during a lonely and isolated life
had come to be for me the symbol of home and everything I loved--and
might never see again.”
By special act of Congress Peary was promoted to the rank of rear
admiral and received the thanks of Congress. He has been awarded the
premier medal of every prominent geographical society in the world.
[Illustration: SIR ERNEST H. SHACKLETON]
_Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton_