My Arctic Journal 1891. A Year Among Ice Fields and Eskimos

On June 6, 1891, the steam-whaler “Kite,” which was to bear the expedition of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences northward, set sail from the port of New-York, her destination being Whale Sound, on the northwest coast of Greenland, where it had been determined to pass the winter, preliminary to the long traverse of the inland ice which was to solve the question of the extension of Greenland in the direction of the Pole. The members of the expedition numbered but five besides the commander, Mr. Peary, and his wife. They were Dr. F. A. Cook, Messrs. Langdon Gibson, Eivind Astrup, and John T. Verhoeff, and Mr. Peary’s faithful colored attendant in his surveying labors in Nicaragua, Matthew Henson. This was the smallest number that had ever been banded together for extended explorations in the high Arctic zone. A year and a quarter after their departure, with the aid of a relief expedition conducted by Professor Angelo Heilprin, Mr. Peary’s party, lacking one of its members, the unfortunate Mr. Verhoeff, returned to the American shore. The explorer had traversed northern Greenland from coast to coast, and had added a remarkable chapter to the history of Arctic exploration.

The main results of Mr. Peary’s journey were:

The determination of the rapid convergence of the shores of Greenland above the 78th parallel of latitude, and consequently the practical demonstration of the insularity of this great land-mass;

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The discovery of the existence of ice-free land-masses to the northward of Greenland; and

The delineation of the northward extension of the great Greenland ice-cap.

In the following pages Mrs. Peary recounts her experiences of a full twelvemonth spent on the shores of McCormick Bay, midway between the Arctic Circle and the North Pole. The Eskimos with whom she came in contact belong to a little tribe of about three hundred and fifty individuals, completely isolated from the rest of the world. They are separated by hundreds of miles from their nearest neighbors, with whom they have no intercourse whatever. These people had never seen a white woman, and some of them had never beheld a civilized being. The opportunities which Mrs. Peary had of observing their manners and mode of life have enabled her to make a valuable contribution to ethnological learning.