A Negro Explorer at the North Pole | Page 4

for China.
After my first voyage I became an able-bodied seaman, and for four
years followed the sea in that capacity, sailing to China, Japan, Manilla,
North Africa, Spain, France, and through the Black Sea to Southern
Russia.
It was while I was in Washington, D. C., in 1888, that I first attracted
the attention of Commander Peary, who at that time was a civil
engineer in the United States Navy, with the rank of lieutenant, and it
was with the instinct of my race that I recognized in him the qualities

that made me willing to engage myself in his service. I accompanied
him as his body-servant to Nicaragua. I was his messenger at the
League Island Navy Yard, and from the beginning of his second
expedition to the Arctic regions, in 1891, I have been a member of
every expedition of his, in the capacity of assistant: a term that covers a
multitude of duties, abilities, and responsibilities.
The narrative that follows is a record of the last and successful
expedition of the Peary Arctic Club, which had as its attainment the
discovery of the North Pole, and is compiled from notes made by me at
different times during the course of the expedition. I did endeavor to
keep a diary or journal of daily events during my last trip, and did not
find it difficult aboard the ship while sailing north, or when in
winter-quarters at Cape Sheridan, but I found it impossible to make
daily entries while in the field, on account of the constant necessity of
concentrating my attention on the real business of the expedition.
Entries were made daily of the records of temperature and the estimates
of distance traveled; and when solar observations were made the results
were always carefully noted. There were opportunities to complete the
brief entries on several occasions while out on the ice, notably the six
days' enforced delay at the "Big Lead," 84° north, the twelve hours
preceding the return of Captain Bartlett at 87° 47' north, and the
thirty-three hours at North Pole, while Commander Peary was
determining to a certainty his position. During the return from the Pole
to Cape Columbia, we were so urged by the knowledge of the supreme
necessity of speed that the thought of recording the events of that part
of the journey did not occur to me so forcibly as to compel me to pay
heed to it, and that story was written aboard the ship while waiting for
favorable conditions to sail toward home lands.
* * * * *
It was in June, 1891, that I started on my first trip to the Arctic regions,
as a member of what was known as the "North Greenland Expedition."
Mrs. Peary accompanied her husband, and among the members of the
expedition were Dr. Frederick A. Cook, of Brooklyn, N. Y., Mr.
Langdon Gibson, of Flushing, N. Y., and Mr. Eivind Astrüp, of

Christiania, Norway, who had the honor of being the companion of
Commander Peary in the first crossing of North Greenland--and of
having an Esquimo at Cape York become so fond of him that he named
his son for him! It was on this voyage north that Peary's leg was
broken.
Mr. John M. Verhoeff, a stalwart young Kentuckian, was also an
enthusiastic member of the party. When the expedition was ready to
sail home the following summer, he lost his life by falling in a crevasse
in a glacier. His body was never recovered. On the first and the last of
Peary's expeditions, success was marred by tragedy. On the last
expedition, Professor Ross G. Marvin, of Cornell University, lost his
life by being drowned in the Arctic Ocean, on his return from his
farthest north, a farther north than had ever been made by any other
explorers except the members of the last expedition. Both Verhoeff and
Marvin were good friends of mine, and I respect and venerate their
memories.
Naturally the impressions formed on my first visit to the Land of Ice
and Snow were the most lasting, but in the coming years I was to learn
more and more that such a life was no picnic, and to realize what
primitive life meant. I was to live with a people who, the scientists
stated, represented the earliest form of human life, living in what is
known as the Stone Age, and I was to revert to that stage of life by
leaps and bounds, and to emerge from it by the same sudden means.
Many and many a time, for periods covering more than twelve months,
I have been to all intents an Esquimo, with Esquimos for companions,
speaking their language, dressing in the same kind of clothes, living in
the same kind of dens, eating the same