PEARY'S EXPEDITION.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 240, 7 October 1909, Page 5

PEARY'S EXPEDITION.

NEWS BY THE MAIL

GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE

JOURNEY

(Received Oct. 7, 9.25 a.m.) FREMANTLE, Oct. 7. Commander Peary, after detailing the preliminary part of his journey, says: "Four months of northerly winds during the fall and winter instead of southerly ones led me to expect less open water than before, tut a great deal of rough ice, and I was prepared to hew a road through iagged ice for the first 100 miles or bo, and then cross a big lead. On the >last day in February Captain Bartlett, with the pioneer division, accomplished this, and the division got away due north over ice on March Ist. The remainder of the party followed shortly after.' The party now comprised seven members of the expedition, 17 Eskimos, 133 dogs and 19 sledges. On March 2nd we passed the British record made by Markham at 82. degrees 20 minutes. "On this march ,we negotiated a lead and reached Bartlett's third camp: Borup had gone back from here, but missed his way, owing to -the faulting of the trail by the movement of the ice. Marvin came back; also for more fuel and alcohol. The !wind continued, forming open water all about us. By the end of March 4 we were all upon Bartlett, who had been stopped by a wide lake of open water. We remained here till March 11th at noon. On March sth the sun—red ,and shaped like a" football by reflection—just raised itself above the horizon for a few minutes, and then disappeared again!-. It was the first time I had seen it since October Ist.

"I now began to feel a deal of Anxiety because there were no, signs of Marvin and Bprup. Besides, they had alcohol and oil, which were indispensable for us. We concluded that they had either lost the trail or had been imprisoned on an island by open water. -Fortunatelyj on March 11th the lead was practicable, and leaving a note for Marvin and Borup to push on after us by forced marches we proceeded northward. The sounding of the lead gave 110 fathoms During this march we crossed the 84th ■. parallel, and traversed a, sue* cession Tbf just frozen leads from a few - hundred yards to a mile in' width. This march was really, a simple one. : !

"On the 14th we got free of leads, and came on to. decent going. Whilo making camp a courier from Marvin came 'and informed me that he was One march in the rear. : The tern-« perature.was 59 degrees below, zerov At night Marvin and Borup came spinning in, with their men and dogs steaming in the bitter air like a squadron of battleships. Their arrival relieved me of all anxiety as to oil supply. In the morning we discovered that McMillan's foot was 'badly frqst-bitten. The mishap occurred two or three days before, but McMillan had said nothing about it, in the hope that it would come out all right. A glance showed that it was the right thing to send him back to Cape Columbia at once. The arrival of Marvin and Borup enabled me to spare sufficient men and dogs to go back with him. This early loss of McMillan was seriously disappointing. Soundings gave a depth of 825 fathoms.

"Leaving this camp the expedition comprised 16 men, 12 sledges and 100 dogs, and at the end of two short inarches we came upon Hansen and Ms party in camp, mending their sledges. Next morning we, put Marvin in'the lead to pioneer a trail, with instructions to make two forced marches and bring us up to the average, which had been cut down by the last two short ones. Marvin carried out his instructions implicitly. A considerable amount of young ice assisted in this. *

"At the end of the tenth march ; in latitude 85 deg^ 23 mm., Borup turned back in command of the second supporting party, having travelled a distance equivalent to Nansen's. I was sorry to lose this young Yale runner, with his enthusiasm and pluck. He had led his heavy sledge over floes in a way that commanded everyone's admiration. A day or two later Marvin obtained a satisfactory sight for latitude in clear weather, which placed us at 85.48. This agreed with the dead reckoning of Marvin, Bartlett and myself. Up to this time the slight altitude of the. sun made it not worth the trouble to waste time in observations. In the next two marches the going improved ,and we covered good distances. In one of these marches the lead delayed us for a few hours. We finally ferried across on ice-cakes. Next day Bartlett reeled off 20 miles. Here Marvin obtained another satisfactory sight on latitude; which gave our position as 86.38, or beyond the Farthest North of Nansen and the Duke of Abruzzi. It showed that we had covered 50 minutes of latitude in three marches. At this point Marvin turned back in command of the third supporting party. The expedition from this point consisted of nine men, seven sledges and 60 dogs. "We were obliged on the march to make a detour around an opened lead.

"We now encountered the heaviest and deepest snow of the journey. Through the thick, smothering mantle lying in depression of heavy rubble ice I came upon Bartlett and his party, fagged and discouraged by the heart-racking work of making a road. I knew what was the matter with them; they were simply spoiled by the good going on previous marches. I rallied them a bit, lightened their sledges and sent them oh, encouraged again. During the next march we travelled through a thick haze drifting before biting air from the north-east. At the end of the march we came upon Captain Bartlett camped beside a wide open lead with dense black water. We built our igloos and turned in, but before I liad fallen asleep I was roused out by

CABLENBWS.

[bt electric telegraph.—copyright.]

the movement of the ice, and found a startling condition of affairs. A rapidly widening road of black water ran but a few feet from our igloos. One of my teams of dogs escaped by only a few. f eet.f torn, being dragged; by the'movement of the ice to where another team had an equally narrow escape of being crushed by an ice block piled over them. The ic© on the north side of the lead was moving around eastward of the small floor on which we were. The captain's igloo was drifting eastward in open water, and the side of our igloo threatened to follow suit. Kicking out the door of my igloo I called to the captain and men to pack the sledges and be ready for a quick dash when a< favourable chance arrived. "We hurried the things on to the sledges, and moved on to the large floe to the west of us; then, leaving one man to look out for the dogs and sledges, we hurried over to assist the captain's, party to join up the corner of their raft impinged on the ice on our side. For the rest of the night and during the next day we suffered the torments of the damned, with ice siirging together, opening out, groaning and grinding, while the open water looked like the black smoke of a prairie fire. Then the motion ceased, the open water closed, the atmosphere to the north cleared, and we pushed across before the ice should open again. We came to layers of young ice, some of which buckled under our sledges. This was a good long march. The next march was also a long one. We encountered a high wind dead on our faces, bitter and insistent. We concluded that we were near the 88th parallel. Under the north wind we had lost several miles. Next morning Bartlett started to walk five or six miles to the north, to make sure of reaching the 88th .parallel. He found our position 87.48, showing that the continued north wind had robbed us of a number of hard-earned "miles. "Bartlett started on the back trail in command of my fourth supporting party, with two Eskimos, one sledge and 18 dogs. I felt pangs of regret as he disappeared in the distance, but it was only momentary; my work was still ahead, not in the rear. , Bartlett. had done good work, and had been a great help to, me. Circumstances thrustf the - brunt of the pioneering upon him instead of dividing it among several, as I had planned. He had reason to take pride in this fact, that he had bettered the Italian record by a degree and a quarter, and had covered a distance equal to the entire distance of the Italian ex-, pedition from Franz Josef's Land to Cagni's Furthest North. I had given Bartlett this position and post of honour in command of my fourth and last supporting party for two reasons: first, because of his magnificent handling of the Roosevelt, and second, because he had cheerfully stood between me and many trifling annoyances on the expedition. Then there was a third reason: it seemed to. me appropriate, in view of the magnificent British record of Arctic work, covering three, centuries, that it should be a British subject who could boast that, next to an Amerijcan, he had been nearest the Pole."