WHO REACHED THE POLE?

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12354, 26 January 1926, Page 7

WHO REACHED THE POLE?

DR. COOK’S STORY PLAUSIBLE AMUNDSEN’S CONVICTION. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. NEW YORK, January 24. The question of who discovered the North Pole has been reopened by a lecture given by Captain Amundsen before a Fort Worth (Texas) audience. Captain Amundsen said that Dr Cook’s story of the discovery was just as plausible as Peary’s, and he deplored the weight given to the testimony of the Eskimos, on which Cook was discredited. Amundsen recently visited Cook in prison, where he is undergoing a long sentence for oil frauds, and talked of old times, both having been together in Antarctic explorations in 1897. Mr V. Stefansson is inclined to credit Peary’s data, pointing out that his own observations in 1915 showed the land which Peary called Crocker Land. Major-General Adolphus Greeley, the noted Arctic explorer, commenting on Amundsen’s statements, said that neither Cook nor Peary ever reached the North Pole. General Greeley conducted an Arctic expedition as early as 1881, reaching the further north up to that time, and discovering a new land north of Greenland.