True North Page 7

  Her husband stood before her, looking “well and hearty, safe at last.”

  There was rejoicing aboard Kite and also at Red Cliff, where Peary and Astrup were reunited with the rest of the expedition members. The Eskimos thought the two men were spirits and refused to approach them. Once they accepted them as living humans, the natives gathered around to ask about the spirits of their dead relatives, what they were eating and how they were faring. They were disappointed when informed there had been no sightings of spirits.

  Peary and Astrup related details of their difficult travel across the icy wasteland. For days on end, they had endured storms so vicious as to make traveling impossible. The most severe test proved to be the deep chasms in the ice that opened without warning in front of them. More than once they nearly lost the sledge and their supplies, and had to pull up the lead dog by his trace as he dangled helplessly in a dark, bottomless pit.

  Five hundred miles from McCormick Bay, they had come to a rocky 3,500-foot cliff, which Peary named for the U. S. Navy. From the top of Navy Cliff, he saw a channel, which he named Peary Channel; he declared it was the northern boundary of mainland Greenland and charted it as such. Beyond that, he saw what appeared to be a vast island to the northeast, which he designated Peary Land. These sightings were the basis for Peary, upon his return home, publicly to stake his claim to having proven the “insularity of Greenland,” a major geographical accomplishment that led greatly to the advancement of his reputation as an Arctic explorer.*

  The two men had traveled round-trip more than a thousand miles—the longest journey across Greenland up to that time—averaging fourteen miles per day during eighty-five days of marching. Although both had lost weight, they returned in excellent health.

  After a few days, Peary was ready for more. Under the threat of heavy storm clouds, he departed in a whaleboat with Josephine, Henson, Verhoeff, and five Eskimo rowers for a photographic and sightseeing excursion. After his long journey, the idea of taking a leisurely trip “free of the rush and hurry of preparation . . . or anxiety” with his wife had the feel of a “picnic in the woods.”

  Two days later, they landed on the shore of a small bay that Peary named Bowdoin after his alma mater—new land discoveries gave explorers naming rights, which were considered critical to generating both prestige and contributions from wealthy backers. Verhoeff struck out on his own—“on his proposed trip across the glacier . . . around to Red Cliff,” according to Peary, who made no comment about what discussion may have preceded Verhoeff’s departure. Peary had previously been a stickler for the rule of no solo hikes of any significant distance. In fact, as winter had approached after their arrival the preceding year, he had established a five-hundred-yard limit around Red Cliff—no one was to proceed farther alone. Verhoeff, the first to break that rule, had taken umbrage at the public dressing down he received from Peary, an incident that had sown the seeds of Verhoeff’s discontent with his commander.

  Cook was surprised to see Verhoeff back so soon at Red Cliff. The doctor considered Verhoeff “an insurgent type,” and although he found the geologist a willing worker, Cook was cognizant of a “suppressed bitterness” Verhoeff directed toward Peary. Verhoeff had already vowed to Cook, “I will never go home in the same ship with that man and that woman.”

  The next morning, Verhoeff said he was going to collect some mineral specimens at the head of McCormick Bay and would be back in four days. He took supplies to last him that length of time, and a rifle and ammunition.

  When Verhoeff did not return, Cook organized a search party, which members of the Kite crew joined, along with nine Eskimo hunters. The effort was ongoing when Peary returned. The size of the search party was expanded, and the natives were energized when Peary promised a rifle and ammunition to the man who first spotted Verhoeff.

  After six days and nights of searching, Verhoeff’s footprints were found atop a glacier twenty-five miles from Red Cliff, along with the label off a tin of food he had taken. No other trace of the strong-willed geologist was found.

  The inference seemed clear to both Peary and Cook: Verhoeff, who had previously set the dangerous precedent for himself by traveling alone across glaciers, had probably slipped on the icy surface, perhaps during a furious gale that had hit about then, and fallen into one of the countless yawning crevasses.

  Peary was concerned about the record of the expedition, given Verhoeff’s disappearance. He asked Cook to write and sign a report about the search, no doubt to ward off any possible criticism that they had not looked long enough. In his report, Cook wrote that Verhoeff’s loss was “peculiar, sad and mysterious,” but that “his commander [and] companions” had made a “long, systematic and careful search” and done “all in their power to discover his whereabouts.”

  The party of Philadelphia scientists had brought along many donations for the natives. The Eskimo families were lined up on the beach and given the most valuable possessions most had ever received: pots, kettles, knives, scissors, thimbles, and needles for the women, and for the men, lances, saws, gimlets, knives, timber, and other hardware items. It was repayment for their services for the year they had helped the expedition, and the Eskimos were overjoyed, ensuring that the next expedition to the region would be warmly received.

  Peary ordered that a cache of supplies—enough to sustain a man for a year—be established near Verhoeff’s last known position, in case he reappeared after the ship had departed. The geologist’s prediction in his first letter to Peary that the odds were against his returning alive had proven accurate.

  The man with whom Verhoeff did not want to travel home on the same ship did one more thing before Kite sailed away.

  The glacier where John M. Verhoeff fell was named for him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  RULED WITH AN IRON HAND

  AS KITE sailed south against unrelenting headwinds, which made the return trip long and monotonous, Cook, Astrup, and Gibson discussed the hardships of Arctic life. Cook was then of the opinion that the push to explore uncharted regions in the face of such miseries was akin to searching for “a fool’s paradise.” The three men agreed it was the end of their Far North endeavors.

  On the other hand, they were returning fully charged and alive, with a sense of accomplishment for the challenges they had met. Also, they had been deeply touched by the indigenous peoples they had come to know. None would forget life among the northernmost humans on Earth, the most direct, honest, and simple people they had ever met. Beyond having enough to eat and wear, the Eskimos had few cares. “We had from a savage intelligence learned a great deal,” Cook recognized, “but wondered if they in turn had acquired much from us.”

  They headed up the Delaware River to a chorus of ships’ horns and whistles and docked at Philadelphia on September 24, 1892. The North Greenland expedition had come to an end.

  An overflowing, gala reception was held for the returning explorers at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, to which Peary would make his final report on the accomplishments of the expedition. Peary stood tall in his Navy dress blues before more than a thousand guests, including his proud mother. Wearing an elegant black satin gown and cradling a bouquet of red roses, Josephine stood by her husband’s side as he was presented to the cheering crowd.

  In the course of receiving congratulations from friends and well-wishers, the men who had agreed they were finished with the Arctic began to think differently. “This is true of all frigid explorers” after they returned home and experienced something other than “the ice world,” Cook decided. Once duly recovered, “the lure of the Arctic becomes a permanent drawing power for life.”

  To Peary, the expedition proved the “correctness of [his] theory as to the quality of the personnel of an Arctic expedition,” which he thought should consist of “men of youth, perfect health and educated intelligence.” He made a point to commend the effort
s of each member of the expedition and praised the “soothing presence” of Josephine, her strength when he had found himself “a helpless cripple,” and her “valuable assistance” to the expedition.

  Peary credited Cook for being “always helpful and an indefatigable worker.” To Cook’s medical skills “may be attributed the almost complete exemption of the party from even the mildest of indispositions, and personally I owe much to his professional skill, and unruffled patience and coolness in an emergency.” As for his work in the ethnological field, Cook had obtained “a large mass of most valuable material concerning a practically unstudied tribe.”

  Henson, described by Peary as “my faithful coloured boy,” was cited for his hard work and being “apt at anything, being in turn cook, hunter, dog driver, housekeeper, and bodyguard.” Furthermore, Henson’s Arctic service should have dismissed any doubts as to the ability of his race to withstand frigid temperatures. “In powers of endurance and ability to withstand cold,” Peary declared, Henson had proven “the equal of others in the party.”

  As for his own efforts, Peary gladly accepted the accolades that came his way—“my friends were right in saying that I had accomplished a brilliant feat in my long sledge journey”—but believed there was for him still “important work to be done in the north.”

  Peary began to contemplate another Arctic expedition, its main intent to “complete the exploration of the northern lands which I discovered last summer,” with no intention of trying for the Pole. Coinciding with his desire to mount a new expedition was a proposal by Major James B. Pond, a well-known lecture manager and tour promoter, for Peary to deliver paid lectures around the country. This seemed to Peary an ideal way to raise money for the next trip.

  After settling into his new duties at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Peary petitioned for another leave of absence. Already, there was growing resentment in Navy circles at Peary’s frequent leaves. Believing that his request would not be readily granted, Peary enlisted a powerful ally, Isaac Jones Wistar, president of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, a former Union Army brigadier general and a prominent Philadelphia lawyer who had made a fortune after the war financing railroad construction. The retired general believed Peary should have the opportunity to carry on with his northern exploration and presented the proposition persuasively to the secretary of the Navy. Soon thereafter, Peary was granted a three-year paid leave beginning in November 1892.

  Peary launched his lecture tour in mid-November, opening in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, for a fee of $100. Two weeks later, on a rainy evening in Brooklyn, he lectured for the same fee in a dimly lit, sparsely filled hall. When the lantern to illuminate his photographic slides failed to work, Peary described in his own words the melancholy setting at Cape Sabine, wintering over at Red Cliff, and his sledge trip across northern Greenland. In the audience, hearing Peary speak for the first time, was a newspaperman from Brooklyn, Herbert Bridgman, who would before long become a mainstay of support for the naval engineer in his Arctic endeavors.

  Cook settled into his mother’s house in Brooklyn. Because of the publicity he had received as a member of the Peary expedition, his renewed practice of medicine began to prosper, although he found himself “ill at ease as all explorers are in the jungle of city life.” His thoughts often wandered to the Far North, and in the months to come it took little coaxing from Peary for Cook to agree to serve as second in command of the next expedition.

  Astrup, who had returned to his native Norway, also responded eagerly to Peary’s offer to go north again, as did Henson, who, unable to find work in Philadelphia, had fallen on hard times. When Cook learned that Henson was suffering from the lingering effects of snow blindness, he sent money for him to take the train to Brooklyn, where Henson lived as a guest at the Cook home for two months. During that time, Cook arranged for an eye specialist to treat Henson free of charge.

  When Henson recovered, he joined Peary on tour. To enliven the lectures, Henson dressed in Arctic furs and, upon Peary’s order, burst onto the stage cracking a whip above a team of Eskimo dogs brought back from Greenland. It made for a dramatic entrance with the dogs yelping and jumping about wildly, as Henson, sweltering in the furs, struggled to control them. The show—with “the dogs and sledges and the igloo lights glimmering through the white expanse, as effective a bit of Arctic realism as ever staged”—was soon playing to capacity crowds. St. Louis booked the show for 60 percent of the gross of the gate against a guarantee of $250; Evansville, Indiana, 60 percent of the gate (75 cents for reserved seating) for a matinee and evening performance; Nashville, $300 for two shows; Cincinnati, 55 percent of the gate. Peary filled halls in Columbus, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Trenton, New Haven, and dozens of other cities and towns.

  After an appearance in Philadelphia, Henson recognized in the crowd the Navy officer with whom he had made the bet that he would return from the Arctic with his fingers and toes intact. After the presentation, Henson went over and held out his hands. “You see, my fingers are all here.”

  At first, the officer seemed not to remember.

  “The hundred dollars,” Henson said.

  The officer smiled sheepishly. “Well, let’s have a look at you.”

  Henson sat down, removed his shoes and socks, and wiggled his ten toes. The officer wrote out a check and handed it to Henson with the comment “Hearing from Peary what you people went through, I’d say you earned it.”

  In the months that Peary toured, he and Cook corresponded. At one point, Peary wrote for information relating to Cook’s exhaustive study of the Eskimos for use in his lectures.

  In January 1893, Cook responded to Peary’s suggestion that he consider renting a hall or tent and lecture at the World’s Fair in Chicago: “I have been thinking about your suggestions as to the World’s Fair.” Cook went a step further as well, proposing his own tour “through such towns and cities as you did not enter. In this way assist in obtaining funds for your next expedition. If you think favorable of this, I will give you a detailed description.”

  When Peary asked for further details, Cook got down to specifics. “I have two plans regarding the proposed lecturing tour. In both, I wish you to furnish me with the slides and such prints as you wish me to clearly bring out in my lectures.” Cook’s first idea was to follow the major railroad lines into larger cities and towns that the train served, winding up in Chicago in April. Cook proposed splitting equally with Peary the net proceeds of such a tour. Cook’s second plan was for him to travel under Major Pond’s sponsorship and “fill such engagements as you will be unable to attend to.”

  Peary was cool to the notion of Cook’s undertaking his own lecture tour, although he continued to advance the idea of the doctor’s involvement in an Arctic exhibit at the World’s Fair. Cook went to Chicago to investigate the possibilities and returned unenthusiastic. “The rental of a suitable place is unreasonably high and there being so many things to see (at the World’s Fair) that I fear it would not prove a successful enterprise,” he wrote Peary. Also, Cook had been advised that summer would be the best-attended months at the World’s Fair, and since the new expedition’s planned departure date was late June or early July, “it would hardly do for [him] to undertake anything like this.”

  Meanwhile, Cook was appearing before local groups. After delivering a paper on the medical and reproductive practices of the northernmost Eskimos to the Kings County Medical Society in Brooklyn, he was urged by his fellow doctors to publish his findings in book form as scientific literature, along with the measurements, photographs, and other materials he had collected.

  Perhaps Cook called on him at a bad time, preoccupied as Peary was with financing the next trip. Seeking permission to publish his Eskimo research independently, which Cook naively thought would pose no problem, he found Peary in an uncharitable mood. Still stinging from the recent publication of a book by two members of Kite’s crew that covered the
details of his previous expedition, Peary pointedly reminded Cook that the contract each member of the expedition signed forbade anyone from coming out with a book until one year after Peary’s own book appeared.* Until then, Peary said, “not a word can be published by any member of any of my expeditions. Their work is my property for my use, and may or may not be printed.” The issue was entirely a judgment call on his part, Peary stated, based upon how the material gathered by others fit into the “scheme” of his forthcoming books.

  Cook was “entirely unprepared” for Peary’s dictatorial stance—up until that moment, he had found Peary “democratic and cordial” in their dealings. But clearly, Cook had pushed up against a boundary with Peary, who jealously guarded what he considered his turf. In his soft-spoken manner, Cook carefully repeated his intentions, explaining the scientific nature of his publishing interest and the narrowness of the academic audience he would be seeking. In truth, he was not anticipating much financial return from his ethnological study of Eskimos—he had not even received a fee for his talk to the local doctors.

  Peary remained silent as he listened, and Cook began to think he might be swaying Peary’s thinking.

  “I am inclined, Doctor, to extend to you freedom of action, but it is a bad precedent,” Peary said when Cook finished. “I cannot do this with others. Every member of my expeditions in the future must be ruled with an iron hand.”

  The answer was still no.

  Cook found Peary’s “sudden outburst of selfish autocracy” repugnant and knew instantly what he must do, although he said nothing at the time. The preceding month, Cook had finalized plans to close his medical practice and join the next expedition, a decision that left Peary “very glad to hear that you are willing once more to try a hazard of Arctic experiences.” But now Cook knew that going on another expedition with Peary would not be possible.