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THE
DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH POLE When two men have faced the same hardships, the same threat of starvation and death, together for so many years, a deep bond of trust and understanding is bound to grow between them. The credit of the discovery of the Pole should go to the curious cord of interdependency that bound these two valiant men to a common cause. The discovery of the North Pole is one of the noblest stories in the history of exploration. It is a story of the battle of two invincible Americans against the terrible elements of the Arctic; a battle which lasted eighteen years and left one of the Americans, a steel-willed man of grit, a cripple for life. It is a human story filled with tragic suffering, pathos and humiliation. And it is noble, because these two Americans, who made the last great discovery in the Northern Hemisphere, were a white man and a Negro. When Peary and Matthew Henson, America's greatest Negro explorer, went to Greenland in 1891, the quest for the North Pole was just taking form in Peary's mind. It grew into a determined challenge between these men and the elements in the subsequent expedition and the many that followed, until eighteen years later, on the seventh expedition, Peary, a tired man of fifty-three, crippled by the amputation of his toes ten years previously, and Henson, the great Negro, stood side by side at the apex of the earth. The account of that last and successful expedition is told here in Matthew Henson's own words. As one reads it they may be struck by the apparent simplicity of the task, of the smooth, and almost uneventful functioning of the march. But Henson, a modest man, is not trying to write modestly–he is merely writing with honest factual sincerity. The march to the Pole was performed like a well-rehearsed play because of the eighteen years of planning and relentless effort in which Henson and Peary had perfected their traveling methods. If there was ever a story of a great discovery in which adventure seemed to play no part because of the leaders' absolute competency of preparation, this is it. The things that happened were the things Henson and Peary had expected to happen. After years of trial and error, Henson and Peary finally learned there was no other way to the Pole except across the great mass of shifting sea ice that covered the Arctic Ocean. Then years of effort and two attempts were made to bring a ship up to the edge of the polar ice. In 1905 Bob Bartlett was able to drive the Roosevelt through the ice-choked channel separating Ellesmere Island andGreenland, to the edge of the Arctic Ocean. And shortly after, a strong, well-equipped party, led by Henson, started out for the North Pole. The chief hazard of the undulating mass of sea ice is the lead, a great crack in the ice exposing an open lane of water sometimes miles in width. It was an impassable lead that halted the small party in the expedition of 1905 to 1906 and very nearly cost Henson and Peary their lives, and drove them home defeated once again. This is but one of the many perils Peary, in planning his seventh expedition, knew he must prepare against. That he perfected one of the finest Arctic traveling machines ever composed of men, sledges and dogs is a tribute to his tireless efforts, and to the loyalty of his aid, Henson. |
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