A Negro Explorer at the North Pole quotes

In the meantime, I have a steady job carpentering, also interpreting, barbering, tailoring, dog-training, and chasing Eskimos out of my quarters.

The Eskimos have the run of the ship and get everywhere except into the Commander’s cabin, which they have been taught to regard as “The Holy of Holies.”

With the help of a sign which tersely proclaims “No Admittance,” painted on a board and nailed over the door, they are without much difficulty restrained from going in.

I have been there and I have seen one of my Eskimo companions felled by a blow from a rock eighty-four pounds in weight, which struck him fairly between the shoulder-blades, literally knocking the life out of him.

I have been there, and believe me, I have been afraid.

A hundred-pound box of supplies, taking an aerial joy ride, during the progress of a storm down at Anniversary Lodge in 1894, struck Commander Peary a glancing blow which put him out of commission for over a week.

Imagine the effect of such a rainfall of death-dealing boulders on the feelings of a little group of three or four, who have sought the base of the cliff for shelter.

I have been there and I have seen one of my Eskimo companions felled by a blow from a rock eighty-four pounds in weight, which struck him fairly between the shoulder-blades, literally knocking the life out of him.

I have been there, and believe me, I have been afraid.

Having no poetry in my soul, and being somewhat hardened by years of experience in that inhospitable country, words proper to give you an idea of its unique beauty do not come to mind.

Imagine gorgeous bleakness, beautiful blankness.

It never seems broad, bright day, even in the middle of June, and the sky has the different effects of the varying hours of morning and evening twilight from the first to the last peep of day.

… commenced to shout and issue orders, and, by the time he had calmed down, both Captain Bartlett and George Borup had loaded up and pushed forward on to the ice of the Arctic Ocean, bound for the trophy of over four hundred years of effort.

The Peary discipline is the iron hand ungloved.

From now on we must be indifferent to comfort, and like poor little Joe, in “Bleak House” we must always be moving on.

From now on it was keep on going, and keep on—and we kept on; sometimes in the face of storms of wind and snow that it is impossible for you to imagine.

Day does not break in the Arctic regions, it just comes on quietly the same as down here

, but I must say that at daybreak on March 1, 1909, we were all excitement and attention. A furious wind was blowing, which we took as a good omen;

I did not make any entries in the diary that day, and there was many a day like it after that.

It was cold and dark when we left camp number one on the morning of March 2, at half past six o’clock.

Breakfast had warmed us up a bit, but the hard pemmican had torn and cut the roofs and sides of our mouths so that we did not eat a full meal, and we decided that at our next camp we would boil the pemmican in …

I have advised him to make a clean breast of it, but he feels good for a week or so more, and it is up to him.

We eat, and sleep, and watch the lead, and wonder.

Are we to be repulsed again? Is the unseen, mysterious guardian of this mist-covered region foiling us?

This is no place for jokes, yet his jokes are cheering and make us all feel more lighthearted.

He is the “life of the funeral” and by his cheerfulness has kept our spirits from sinking to a dead level

, and when the Eskimos commenced to get cranky, by his diplomacy he brought them to think of other subjects than going back to the ship.

Foolishly I rushed over, but, quickly realizing my danger, I slowed down, and with the utmost care he fished out the sledge, and the dogs, shaking as with palsy, were gently urged on.

Walking wide, like the polar bear, we crept after, and without further incident reached the opposite side of the lead.

My team had reached there before me and, with human intelligence, the dogs had dragged the sledge to a place of safety and were sitting on their haunches, with ears cocked forward, watching us in our precarious predicament.

March 28: Exactly 40° below zero when we pushed the sledges up to the curled-up dogs and started them off over rough ice covered with deep soft snow.

It was like walking in loose granulated sugar.

Indeed I might compare the snow of the Arctic to the granules of sugar, without their saccharine sweetness, but with freezing cold instead;

We staggered into camp like drunken men, and built our igloos by force of habit rather than with the intelligence of human beings.

It was continuously daylight, but such a light as never was on land or sea.

The next day was April 1, and the Farthest North of Bartlett. I knew at this time that he was to go back, and that I was to continue, so I had no misgivings and neither had he.

“What is the matter, George? Tell me.”

“Harvard beat Yale!”

The Roosevelt, accompanied by her consort, sailed south to North Star Bay and while entering the harbor ran ashore. Late in the afternoon, however, the rising tide floated her.

And now my story is ended; it is a tale that is told. “Now is Othello’s occupation gone.”

I long to see them all again! the brave, cheery companions of the trail of the North.

I long to see again the lithe figure of my Commander! and to hear again his clear, ringing voice urging and encouraging me onward, with his “Well done, my boy.”