The Falls City tribune., 1908-07-31
THE POLAR DASH
PEARY WILL PLANT AMERICAN
SET BY THE FLAG
Arctic Night to be L~ightened by
Globe Girdling Libraries. Two
of 5000 Book Chests Sent
to The Farthest North

New York, July 30.-With the
prospect of being the first printed
pages to penetrate the uppermost
polar region, two sets of American
books are today sailing the north
ern seas, snugly set up in the hold
of Lieut.. Peary' S stout ship Roo
sevelt'. Reports that these two
of their 1900 floating Libraries
were going into brisk circulation
among the arctic explorers when
the party finally cast off for the
pole have reached the headquar-
ters of the American Seamen' 8
Friend Society in this city today.
That some of this cations literary
works may eventually be planted
beside >the flag at the "farthest
north" is the object of the deter
mined crew who are to enjoy their
solace in the bitter solitude of the
next two years.
Months before the "Roosevelt'
was finally commissioned for its
latest dash toward the pole, the
preparation of these Ii brarie s,
which were to occupy the minds of
the men through the long polar
night, was carefully begun. From
q list of the 61S, 400 volumes which
they have placed before 422, $50
sailors on every sea in the last fifty
years, the officers of the American
Seamen's Friend Society chose two
sets best calculated to supply the
hungry brains of the isolated ex-
plorers. Those books of travel,
adventure, history, religion, fiction
and biography which have come
back most thumbed from almost a
hundred thousand fo'castles were
finally selected. In two of the So
ciety' ship-shape book chests the
collections were arranged and sent
to be set up in the mess room of
the Peary ship at Shooters Island,
where it was being finally Quilted.
A dictionary, bible, atlas and Pill
grim's Progress were included with
the fiction favorites of the seamen.
1t is the more sober works that
stand the men in best stead in the
long test of the arctic night, Lieut..
Peary declared before leaving this
city to JOIN his ship. In his last
"Farthest North expedition the
explorer found one of these Anne
rican Seamen's Friend Society H.
braries a steady resource for his
men. marooned in the ice packs.
The books which served through
that long night siege from October
18th to March 9th are today lying
in their weather.beaten case at the
headquarters Of the society. The
lighter fiction is much more free
from the tell-tale dogears which
mark heavily the more serious vol
umes that we're thumbed over and
over in the frigid solitude.
If Peary succeeds in planting
these treasured volumes beside the
American flag at the pole, the
twenty-six thousand libraries which
the American Seamen's Friend So
ciety has kept aloat for half a CEN
fury will have penetrated every
region on the globe known to the
seafarer. From almost every state
in this country applications to set
one of these book chests on it's con-
slant course have now been re-
ceived. Each library is registered
and regularly reported in its wan
behring's to any INT who may pay
twenty dollars to launch and keep
it afloat. To President Roosevelt,
who as a boy of ten presented one
of these libraries for the society,
the sight of the two book-chests on
Peary's ship was as familiar as it
has now become to hundreds of
thousands of sailors the world over,
Corn Worth Some Money to Him
j. M. Farmer, who lives near
Peru, has in his cribs for future