The North Pole quotes

Excellent conditions of ice and weather also contributed, not to mention the fact that the exhilaration of success lent wings to our sorely battered feet. But Ootah, the Eskimo, had his own explanation.

Said he: "The devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife, or we should never have come back so easily."

It will be noted in this comparison, that practically the only feature of the plan from which essential deviation was made was in returning to Cape Columbia on the coast of Grant Land instead of further eastward to the northern coast of Greenland as I …

but these drawbacks were fully balanced perhaps by a trained and hardened endurance, a perfect knowledge of myself, and of how to conserve my strength. I knew it was my last game upon the great Arctic chess-board.

It was win this time or be forever defeated.

The lure of the North! It is a strange and a powerful thing.

I knew it was my last game upon the great Arctic chess-board. It was win this time or be forever defeated.

The lure of the North! It is a strange and a powerful thing.

More than once I have come back from the great frozen spaces, battered and worn and baffled, sometimes maimed, telling myself that I had made my last journey thither, eager for the society of my kind, the comforts of civilization and the peace and serenity …

It is a principle in physics that a ponderable body moves along the line of least resistance; but that principle does not seem to apply to the will of man.

Every obstacle which has ever been placed in my way, whether physical or mental, whether an open "lead" or the opposition of human circumstances, has ultimately acted as a spur to the determination to accomplish the fixed purpose of my life—if I lived long enough.

On my return in 1906, great encouragement was received from Mr.

From this point on, the arctic highway is marked by the graves of those who have fallen in the terrible fight with cold and hunger. These rude rock piles bring home to any thoughtful person the meaning of arctic exploration.

The men who lie there were not less courageous, not less intelligent, than the members of my own party; they were simply less fortunate.

Let us look along that highway for a moment and consider these memorials. At North Star Bay are one or two graves of men from the British ship North Star, which wintered there in 1850.

In the Arctic the chances are always against the explorer. The inscrutable guardians of the secret appear to have a well-nigh inexhaustible reserve of trump cards to play against the intruder who insists upon dropping into the game.

The life is a dog's life, but the work is a man's work.

As we steamed northward from Cape York, on the first day of August, 1908, I felt that I was now in truth face to face with the final struggle. Everything in my life appeared to have led up to this day.

There are now between two hundred and twenty and two hundred and thirty in the tribe.

They are savages, but they are not savage; they are without government, but they are not lawless; they are utterly uneducated according to our standard, yet they exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence.

In temperament like children, with all a child's delight in little things, they are nevertheless enduring as the most mature of civilized men and women, and the best of them are faithful unto death.

I have made it a point to be firm with them, but to rule them by love and gratitude rather than by fear and threats.

An Eskimo, like an Indian, never forgets a broken promise—nor a fulfilled one.

It would be misleading to infer that almost any man who went to the Eskimos with gifts could obtain from them the kind of service they have given me; for it must be remembered that they have known me personally for nearly twenty years.

The long, flat stones which form the roof are weighted and counter-weighted at the outer ends, and in all my arctic experience I have never known the stone roof of an igloo to fall upon the inmates.

There are never any complaints made to the Building Department.

There is no door in the side, but a hole in the floor at the entrance leads to a tunnel, sometimes ten, sometimes fifteen, or even twenty-five, feet in length, through which the tenants crawl into their home.

On such occasions I have made the best of things, as a man would if compelled to sleep in a tenth-rate railroad hotel or a slum lodging-house, but I have tried to forget the experience as soon as possible.

It is not well for an arctic explorer to be too fastidious.

A night in one of these igloos, with the family at home, is an offense to every civilized sense, especially that of smell;

… kick the front out of it, that the evil spirits may not find shelter there, and when they throw away a worn-out garment it is never left intact, but is torn in such a way that the devil may not use it to warm himself.

A comfortable devil is presumably more dangerous than a shivering one.

Any sudden and unexplained barking or howling among the dogs indicates the invisible presence of Tornarsuk, and the men will run out and crack their whips or fire their rifles to scare away the invader.

If any other members of the tribe have the same name, they must take another until an infant is born to which the proscribed name can be given. This appears to remove the ban.

Eskimos are children in their grief, as in their pleasure; they weep for a dead friend a few days, then they forget.

Even a mother who has been inconsolable at the death of her baby soon laughs again and thinks of other things.

The Eskimos are, within barbaric limits, astronomers. The principal constellations visible in northern latitudes are well known to them and they have given them their own names and descriptions.

In the Great Dipper they see a herd of celestial reindeer.

The Pleiades are to the Eskimos a team of dogs pursuing a solitary polar bear. Gemini they describe as two stones in the entrance of an igloo.

Walrus, narwhal, and seal meat are valuable food for dogs, but a white man does not usually enjoy it—unless he is nearly starved.

Many times, however, during my twenty-three years of arctic exploration, I have thanked God for even a bite of raw dog.

From Etah to Cape Sheridan!

From Etah to Cape Sheridan!

Imagine about three hundred and fifty miles of almost solid ice—ice of all shapes and sizes, mountainous ice, flat ice, ragged and tortured ice, ice that, for every foot of height revealed above the surface of the water, hides seven feet below—a theater of action which for diabolic and Titanic struggle makes Dante's frozen circle of the Inferno seem like a skating pond.

Then imagine a little black ship, solid, sturdy, compact, strong and resistant as any vessel built by mortal hands can be, yet utterly insignificant in comparison with the white, cold adversary she must fight.

In the North we wear practically the same clothing as the Eskimos, including the fur stockings with the fur on the inside. Otherwise we should have frozen feet often instead of only occasionally.

A man who could not live without silk stockings would not be likely to attempt the North Pole.

As we had altogether, including the Eskimos, sixty-nine persons on board the ship—men, women, and children—it will be seen that there was considerable sewing to be done. Old garments had to be overhauled and mended, and new ones made.

but there was no darkness. The periods of day and night were measured only by our watches—not, during the passage of these channels, by sleeping and waking, for we slept only in those brief intervals when there was nothing else to do.

Unresting vigilance was the price we paid for our passage.

Bartlett's judgment was reliable, but the cabin had no attraction for me when the ship and the fortunes of the expedition were swaying in the balance.

… ahead for a streak of open water, studying the movement of the floes which pressed against us, I would hear him shouting to the ship below us as if coaxing her, encouraging her, commanding her to hammer a way for us through the adamantine floes:

"Rip 'em, Teddy! Bite 'em in two! Go it! That's fine, my beauty! Now—again! Once more!"

At such a time the long generations of ice and ocean fighters behind this brave, indomitable young Newfoundland captain seemed to be re-living in him the strenuous days that carried the flag of England 'round the world.

The other end of each wire was then connected with the battery, every one retreated to a respectful distance on the far side of the deck, and a quick, sharp push on the plunger of the battery sent the electric current along the wires.

Rip! Bang! Boom! The ship quivered like a smitten violin string, and a column of water and pieces of ice went flying a hundred feet into the air, geyser fashion.

The pressure of the ice against the ship being thus removed, she righted herself and lay quietly on her cushion of crushed ice—waiting for whatever might happen next.

The grave is covered with a large flat slab, and at the head is a board covered with a copper sheet from the boiler room of the Alert, with the inscription punched in it.

There may be a lonelier grave somewhere on earth, but if so I have no knowledge of it.

No explorer, not even the youngest and most thoughtless, could stand before that "mute reminder of heroic bones" without a feeling of reverence and awe.

It was the lack of food which had forced us to turn back at 87° 6´.

Hunger, not cold, is the dragon which guards the Rhinegold of the Arctic.

I did allow myself one break in the monotony of ship life—a trip to Clements Markham Inlet, in October.

It was not very cold that night, and we slept comfortably after a hearty supper of beans and tea.

Beans and tea! Perhaps it does not sound like a Lucullan feast, but after a day in the field in Grant Land it tastes like one.

We slept splendidly on that banquet, and, breaking out early the next morning, we passed up the ice of Porter Bay to its head, then, taking to the land, crossed the five-mile-wide isthmus which separates Porter Bay from the head of James Ross Bay.

When the sledges were empty, Ooblooyah's team shot by me, with Ooblooyah at the up-standers. Egingwah came next, and I threw myself on his sledge as it flew past. Behind us came Koolatoonah with the third team.

The man who coined the phrase "greased lightning" must have ridden on an empty sledge behind a team of Eskimo dogs on the scent of a polar bear.

The bear had heard us, and was making for the opposite shore of the fiord with prodigious bounds.

Every school boy learns that at the two ends of the earth the year is composed of one day and one night of equal length, and the intervening periods of twilight; but the mere recital of that fact makes no real impression on his consciousness.

Only he who has risen and gone to bed by lamplight, and risen and gone to bed again by lamplight, day after day, week after week, month after month, can know how beautiful is the sunlight.

During the long arctic night we count the days till the light shall return to us, sometimes, toward the end of the dark period, checking off the days on the calendar—thirty-one days, thirty days, twenty-nine days, and so on, till we shall see the sun …

… the long arctic night we count the days till the light shall return to us, sometimes, toward the end of the dark period, checking off the days on the calendar—thirty-one days, thirty days, twenty-nine days, and so on, till we shall see the sun again.

He who would understand the old sun worshipers should spend a winter in the Arctic.

After the cookers are lighted, the igloo is soon comparatively warm, and in the arctic regions, when men are tired out from a long march, they generally fall asleep easily.

Insomnia is not one of the arctic annoyances.

We never carry alarm clocks in the field to arouse us in the morning. The first man who has had his sleep out looks at his watch, and if it is time to be on the march again, he wakes the others.

This being settled, the outcome rested with the elements—the vagaries of the arctic pack, and the quality and amount of our own physical and mental stamina.

This was my final chance to realize the one dream of my life. The morning start would be the drawing of the string to launch the last arrow in my quiver.

Perhaps it will assist the reader to form a more vivid picture of the sort of work that now lay before the expedition and which the expedition eventually performed, if an effort is made to make him understand exactly what it means to travel nearly …

Their occurrence or non-occurrence is a thing impossible to prophesy or calculate. They open without warning immediately ahead of the traveler, following no apparent rule or law of action.

They are the unknown quantity of the polar equation.

Sometimes these leads are mere cracks running through old floes in nearly a straight line. Sometimes they are zigzag lanes of water just wide enough to be impossible to cross.

… just wide enough to keep a continual zone of open water or impracticable young ice in the center, as occurred on our upward journey of 1906 and the never-to-be-forgotten return journey of that expedition, when this lead nearly cut us off forever from life itself.

A lead might have opened right through our camp, or through one of the snow igloos, when we were sleeping on the surface of the polar sea. Only—it didn't.

Should the ice open across the bed platform of an igloo, and precipitate its inhabitants into the icy water below, they would not readily drown, because of the buoyancy of the air inside their fur clothing.

and as he turned back to the land his mind was glowing with hope for the future—the future which he was destined never to know. My last words to him were:

"Be careful of the leads, my boy!"

So we shook hands and parted in that desolate white waste, and Marvin set his face southward toward his death, and I turned again northward toward the Pole.

"Be careful of the leads, my boy!"

So we shook hands and parted in that desolate white waste, and Marvin set his face southward toward his death, and I turned again northward toward the Pole.

By an odd coincidence, soon after Marvin left us on his fatal journey from 86° 38´ back to land, the sun was obscured and a dull, lead-colored haze spread over all the sky.

As I climbed the pressure ridge back of our igloo, I took up another hole in my belt, the third since I left the land—thirty-two days before.

Every man and dog of us was as lean and flat-bellied as a board, and as hard.

Up to this time I had intentionally kept in the rear, to straighten out any little hitch or to encourage a man with a broken sledge, and to see that everything was in good marching order. Now I took my proper place in the lead.

… and trousers were tight, so that no water could get inside, and as the water froze on the fur of my trousers I scraped it off with the blade of the ice lance which I carried, and was no worse for my involuntary morning plunge.

I thought of my unused bath tub on the Roosevelt, three hundred and thirty nautical miles to the south, and smiled.

It was a fine marching morning, clear and sunlit, with a temperature of minus 25°, and the wind of the past few days had subsided to a gentle breeze. The going was the best we had had since leaving the land.

… light of the sun had stolen the color, it seemed hard to realize that its presence there had power to stir the great ice-fields around us with restlessness—power even now, when we were so near our goal, to interrupt our pathway with an impassable lead.

The moon had been our friend during the long winter, giving us light to hunt by for a week or two each month. Now it seemed no longer a friend, but a dangerous presence to be regarded with fear.

Its power, which had before been beneficent, was now malevolent and incalculably potent for evil.

A man who should wait for the ice to be really safe would stand small chance of getting far in these latitudes. Traveling on the polar ice, one takes all kinds of chances.

Often a man has the choice between the possibility of drowning by going on or starving to death by standing still, and challenges fate with the briefer and less painful chance.

That night we were all pretty tired, but satisfied with our progress so far. We were almost inside of the 89th parallel, and I wrote in my diary: "Give me three more days of this weather!"

The Eskimos complained much, and at every camp fixed their fur clothing about their faces, waists, knees, and wrists. They also complained of their noses, which I had never known them to do before.

The air was as keen and bitter as frozen steel.

At the next camp I had another of the dogs killed. It was now exactly six weeks since we left the Roosevelt, and I felt as if the goal were in sight.

But, weary though I was, I could not sleep long. It was, therefore, only a few hours later when I woke. The first thing I did after awaking was to write these words in my diary:

"The Pole at last. The prize of three centuries. My dream and goal for twenty years. Mine at last! I cannot bring myself to realize it. It seems all so simple and commonplace."

Everything was in readiness for an observation[1] at 6 p.m., Columbia meridian time, in case the sky should be clear, but at that hour it was, unfortunately, still overcast.

Of course there were some more or less informal ceremonies connected with our arrival at our difficult destination, but they were not of a very elaborate character.

We planted five flags at the top of the world.

The first one was a silk American flag which Mrs. Peary gave me fifteen years ago. That flag has done more traveling in high latitudes than any other ever made.

… human beings standing at the hitherto inaccessible summit of the earth was accomplished, and my work now lay to the south, where four hundred and thirteen nautical miles of ice-floes and possibly open leads still lay between us and the north coast of Grant Land.

One backward glance I gave—then turned my face toward the south and toward the future.

We turned our backs upon the Pole at about four o'clock of the afternoon of April 7.

Memories of this narrow escape were, therefore, in the minds of every member of our little party as we turned our backs upon the North Pole, and I dare say that every one of us wondered whether a similar experience were in store for us.

We had found the Pole. Should we return to tell the story?

Before we hit the trail I had a brief talk with the men of the party and made them understand that it was essential that we should reach the land before the next spring tides. To this end every nerve must be strained.

Perhaps we took chances here, perhaps not. One thing was in our favor: our sledges were much lighter than on the upward journey, and we could now "rush" them across thin ice that would not have held them a moment then.

In any event we got no thrill or irregularity of the pulse from the incident. It came as a matter of course, a part of the day's work.

As we left the camp where we had stopped for lunch, a dense, black, threatening bank of clouds came up from the south and we looked for a gale, but the wind fell and we arrived at the next camp, where Marvin had made a …

Another dog played out that day and was shot, leaving me with thirty. At the end of this march we could see the mountains of Grant Land in the far distance to the south, and the sight thrilled us.

It was like a vision of the shores of the home land to sea-worn mariners.

Again, the next day, we made a double march. Starting late in the afternoon we reached the sixth outward camp, "boiled the kettle," and had a light lunch;

sometimes we had made a short detour; sometimes we halted for the lead to close; sometimes we used an ice-cake as an improvised ferry: but whatever the mode of our crossing, we had crossed without serious difficulty.

It had seemed as if the guardian genius of the polar waste, having at last been vanquished by man, had accepted defeat and withdrawn from the contest.

Now, however, we were getting within the baleful sphere of influence of the "Big Lead," and in the fifth igloos from Columbia (the first ones north of the lead) I passed an intensely uncomfortable night, suffering from a variety of disagreeable symptoms which I diagnosed …

When the last sledge came to the almost vertical edge of the glacier's fringe I thought my Eskimos had gone crazy. They yelled and called and danced until they fell from utter exhaustion.

As Ootah sank down on his sledge he remarked in Eskimo: "The devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife or we should never have come back so easily."

We stopped long enough for a leisurely luncheon with tea ad libitum and then pressed on until Cape Columbia was reached.

"My life work is accomplished. The thing which it was intended from the beginning that I should do, the thing which I believed could be done, and that I could do, I have done.

I have got the North Pole out of my system after twenty-three years of effort, hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations, more or less suffering, and some risks.

I have won the last great geographical prize, the North Pole, for the credit of the United States.

The Eskimos were too far in the rear to hear his calls for help, and in that ice-cold water the end must have come very quickly.

He who had never shrunk from loneliness in the performance of his duty had at last met death alone.

Coming along over the trail in his footsteps, the Eskimos of his party came to the spot where the broken ice gave them the first hint of the accident.