The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1893-09-02
AMID SNOW AND ICE.
PEARY'S ADVENTU2ESIN GREEN
LANDS FARTHEST NORTH
The Marvellous Thirteen Hundred-Mile
Trip Made by Two Men-Musk Ok
Steaks and Broiled Snow Birds.


north to continue his explorations Of
the mysterious polar coasts. Formerly
it was the polar seas that tempted dar-
ing men to risk their lives in bewilder-
ing arctic journeys, now in ships, now
in sledges or on foot, sometimes in
channels between drifting ice foes
piled mountain high. Peary is the
pioneer in a new field, the discoverer
of a new method Of polar research.
After countless ships had been caught
and held fast in ice or had foundered
and been abandoned--theiro occupants
often held prisoners under hardships
beyond human strength to endure
and the phrase Sailing in polar seas"
was only another term for 'stuck in
arctic ice" Peary hit upon the idea
of overland exploration or journeys
upon inland snowfeds. Sailing ships
penetrated to the southern limits, as
supposed, of the polar sea skirted the
coasts of Greenland, the navigators
never losing sight Of her steep, icy
bluffs and always returning with the
certainty that arctic Greenland was no
less mysterious than the Arctic ocean,
no less inaccessible, also, and no less
dangerous for exploration. That was
because they looked at it from the
ocean level or the icehelds floating on
the sea.
All arctic voyagers accepted without
question the notion that long distance
travelling in the high attitudes Of inte-
rior Greenland was a physical impossi-
bility; that the abrupt cliffs and piled
up rocks, the glaciers, with their gigan-
TIC ice walls and yawning assures as
seen from the sounds lying between the
seventy ninth and eighty-fourth par
allels, would repulse all land expedi-
tons, or if the interior should once be
gained it would present difficulties
equal to if not greater than those of the
terrible coast To this idea Peary said
"No," and he proved his view by a
reconnaissance halfway across the
island in the SEVENTEEN parallel, in
1886. He found that beyond the
broken fissure-ice of the bluffs there
was an extensive plateau covered with
level snow, and he reasoned that il
Greenland reaches to the pole, as the
voyagers declared, Greenland might be
the true path to the pole; that if there
is an open polar sea it might wash the
northern shores of Greenland and
could be discovered by the land route
Up to the time of starting on the in
land trip in April, 1892, there wa:
nothing in Peary's north Greenland
expedition to distinguish it from score:
that had gone before. The steamer
Kite landed the party on the shores o
Mccormick bay, Smiths sound, jus
below the seventy-eighth parallel, in the
summer of 1891. Peary's leg was
broken by the tiller of the ship as shc
struggled through the ice to make the
harbor, but he insisted on going ashore
and wintering there, in order to ge
seasoned for the arctic journey. Tit
real start began May IS, 1892. o.
that day Peary, with three companions
four sledges and sixteen dogs, stooc
upon the long white slope of interio
Greenland, 1000 feet above the sea
and set their faces northward. The,
found that the red earh was buried GU
of sight by great shield or cap of ice
and that the ice was coated with hare
firm crust Of snow On this they mad,
progress at the rate of fifteen 10 twenty
miles a day, when not held back b,
storms. Their refuge during storm
from the driving snow and keen, cut
ting wind was a snow hut From thi
one of the party was always excluded
to act as Waterman over the dogs. Thu
animals were embarrassed and secure'
to stakes driven in the snow, and dur
ing storm, in the absence Of thei
masters, would howl and fight and tea
themselves loose. AS voracious a
wolves-for that is really what they arr
they would devour their harness, tn
fur sleeping bags of the explorers, ant
everything in the way of provisions tina
was in reach unless it was secured il
heavy tin cans.
The party, small as it was, was sub
divided at Humboldt glacier, 1870 mile
from the winter camp. Two were t
return to camp leaving Lieutenar
Peary and Evind Astrup, an educate
Norwegian, to explore the mysteriou
and icy north alone. There we're n
words said at that handshaking TIL
two who had been detailed to go bac
stood in silent awe while their con
panions turned their teams northwar
and began that perilous journey whic
might lead to fame and might also te
inmate in one of those arctic tragede
too horrible to contemplate.
Peary and Astrup took along 10 dos
with two sledges. 1t was the very fir
time that Eskimo dogs had been use
by explorers on island ice. Thei
were no advance caches for extra SUI
plies, and the party took the Chanc,
of subsisting on the food that was borr