Connecticut western news., 1893-07-20
PEARYs sLEDGE JOURNEY.
Reasons For Considering It . Most Re
 markable Performance.


 To the Editor of The Sun:
 SR-In your issue of this morning you speak ! of Lieutenant Peary's famous sledge trip as being the longest ever performed by two men with a dog team. Is not this error? Colonel W. H. Gilder's trip across Siberia was much 1 longer, and understand from him that the first | k000 miles of it were accomplished with only the aid of a single native. I do not write to dis parage Peary. but certainly Cesar should have | his own. DAVID A. CURrIs- Our correspondent has unintentionally | misauoted The Sun. We did not say that Peary's sledge trip was the longest ever performed" What The Sun said was,
 "He made the greatest sledge journey ever performed by two men with team of dogs, travelling on the ice cap as far as from this city to Omaha without a | single advance cache of supplies" This of course is matter of opinion. It is an opinion, however, that is sup ported by leading authorities in arctic | matters, as was shown, for instance, in
 the recent session of the Berlin Geograph- | ical society, when one of the honors of | the society was conferred upon Lieuten- I ant Pearv.
 His performance did not equal that of Glider or of several other sledge parties, | notably during the Franklin search, either in distance covered or in average
 rate per day, as The Sun showed months l ago. It is, however, the conditions un- der which such journey is made that | fix its relative position among similar performances.
 In the first place, his journey was made | many hundreds of miles north of every \ Al II @IxaA sa ax-%s x1,, lx, conspicuous both for distance covered
 and for average rate attained.
 Some of the conditions were wholly | new. It was the first time, for instance, | that an explorer had handled team of Eskimo dogs on the inland ice. Peary did not have single advance
 cache from which to replenish his sup plies. Many other sledge parties were | able to establish such caches, or at least there was the probability that they could secure some game to feed their dogs if dogs instead of men were in the traces | Peary had to face the probability that
 he would not be able to obtain pound
 of fresh meat, and he therefore had to
 drag every ounce of supplies for man
 and beast that he expected to use. All previous sledge work had been done at or near the sea level. Peary's
 sledge work was done throughout at a
 height above the sea of mile to mile and three-fifths. For two weeks at 8 | height of over 5000 feet he advanced
 among clouds so dense that from the
 rear of his sledges he could hardly see his dog teams. For two weeks he was utterly unable to steer 8 course except by taking the compass direction of the
 wind and stopping every 15 minutes to
 see if the wind had not veered point | or two.
 Under these and other equally unique, | untried and remarkable conditions Peary
 made record which in point of distance
 covered and average daily rate ranks
 among the conspicuous arctic sledge | journeys, and the conditions under which these results were attained make the journey the most remarkable of
 sledging exploits. If two men have
 matched it elsewhere, it would be inter- | esting to know it.-New York Sun.