Part 41 (1/2)

In my many years of Arctic work I had gathered pictures of almost every phase of Arctic life and scene; on subsequent trips, unless for some special reason, I did not duplicate photographs of impregnable, unmeltable headlands, or of walrus, or icebergs which I considered typical. In the early rush for ill.u.s.trative material I gave a number of these to the _Herald_, stating they were scenes I had pa.s.sed, but which had been taken on an earlier expedition. By some mistake, which is not unusual in newspaper offices, one of these pictures was put under a caption, ”Pictures of Dr. Cook's Polar Trip,” or something to this effect. Whereupon, Mr. Herbert Bridgman, secretary of the Peary Arctic Club, shouted aloud, ”Fraud!” and others took up the cry. A further charge that these pictures were not mine at all, but had been stolen or borrowed from Herbert Berri, was advanced--an absolute untruth, as I had the negatives, from which these pictures were made, in my possession.

What, in those early days, had seemed a serious criticism offered against my claim, was that I had exceeded possible speed limits by a.s.serting an average of about fifteen miles a day. The English critics were particularly severe. According to their reading, this had never been done before. Admiral Melville had taken this up in America before my arrival; by the time I got to New York, Mr. Peary had made a report of twenty to forty-five miles daily under similar conditions, and I asked myself the reason of the sudden hush.

Much s.p.a.ce was now given to the criticism by learned men of my giving seconds in observations. The point was taken that as you near the Pole the degrees of longitude narrow, and seconds are of no consequence.

Therefore I was charged with trying to fake an impossible accuracy. I always regarded seconds as of little consequence, put them down as a matter of routine--for in that snow-blinding, bewildering North I worked more like a machine than a reasoning being--and now the inadvertent use of these was used to cast suspicion upon me.

With this attack, like echoes from many places, came reiterations of the criticism, which, polly-like, was taken up by Rear-Admiral Chester.

Professor Stockwell of Cleveland had earlier brought out this academic discussion. Because I had seen the midnight sun for the first time on April 7 it was claimed I must have been at a more southern point of the globe than I believed. At the time it seemed the only serious scientific criticism of my reports which was used against me.

Whether I was on a more southerly point of the globe than I believed or not, I had not used the midnight sun, seen through a mystic maze of unknowable refraction, to determine position; to do so would have been impossible. With a constant moving and grinding of the ice, causing opening lanes of water, from which the inequality of temperature drew an evaporation like steam from a volcano, it is impossible at this season to see a low sun with a clear horizon. One looks through an opaque veil of blinding crystals. Every Arctic traveler knows that even when the sun is seen on a clear horizon, as it returns after the long night, his eyes are deceived--he does not see the sun at all, but a refracted image caused by the optical deception of atmospheric distortions. For this reason, as I knew, all observations of the sun when very low are worthless as a means of determining position. The a.s.sumption that I had done this seemed mere foolishness to me at the time.

Staggered by the blow that Whitney had buried my instruments in the North, the recurring thoughts of these hara.s.sing charges certainly had no soothing effect.

Alone, I was unable to cope with matters, anyway. I under-estimated the effect of the c.u.mulating attacks. Oppressed by the undercurrent feeling that it was all a fuss about very little, a thing of insignificant worth, and disturbed by the growing uncertainty of proving such a claim to the point of hair-breadth accuracy by any figures, despair overcame me.

I was so busy I could not pause to think, and was conscious only of the rush, the labor, the worry. I no longer slept; indigestion naturally seized me as its victim. A mental depression brought desperate premonitions.

I developed a severe case of laryngitis in Was.h.i.+ngton; it got worse as I went to Baltimore and Pittsburg. At St. Louis, where I talked before an audience said to number twelve thousand persons, I could hardly raise my voice above a whisper. The lecture was given with physical anguish. I was feverish and mentally dazed. Thereafter, day by day, my thoughts became less coherent; I, more like a machine.

I do not exaggerate when I say that there was practically not one hour of pleasure in those troubled days. The dinner which was given by the Arctic travelers at the Waldorf-Astoria pleased me more than anything during the entire experience. I felt the close presence of hundreds of warm friends; I was conscious of their good will.

I can recall the ceremony of presenting the keys of the City of New York to me, but I was so confused and half ill that I was not in a condition to appreciate the honor.

After I had been on my lecture tour for a few weeks, I began to feel persecuted. On every side I sensed hostility; the sight of crowds filled me with a growing sort of terror. I did not realize at the time that I was pa.s.sing from periods of mental depression to dangerous periods of nervous tension. I was pursued by reporters, people with craning necks, good-natured demonstrations of friendliness that irritated me. In the trains I viewed the whirling landscape without, and felt myself part of it--as a delirious man swept and hurtled through s.p.a.ce.

I suppose I answered questions intelligently; like an automaton delivered my lectures, shook hands. I have been told I smiled pleasantly always--mentally I was never conscious of a smile. It is strange how, machine-like, a man can conduct himself like a reasonable being when, mentally, he is at sea. I have read a great deal about the subconscious mind; on no other theory can I account for my rational conduct in public at the time. Really, as I view myself from the angle of the present, I marvel that a man so distraught did not do desperate things.

_Author's Note._--I have never attempted to disprove Mr. Peary's claim to having reached the North Pole. I prefer to believe that Mr.

Peary reached the North Pole.

So avid have been my enemies, however, to cast discredit upon my own achievement, by such trivial and petty charges, that it seems curious they have never noticed or have remained silent about many striking and staggering discrepancies in Mr. Peary's own published account of his journey.

In Mr. Peary's book, ent.i.tled ”The North Pole; Its Discovery, 1909,”

published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, on page 302, appears the following:

”We turned our backs upon the Pole at about four o'clock of the afternoon of April 7.”

According to a statement made on page 304, Mr. Peary took time on his return trip to take a sounding of the sea five miles from the Pole.

On page 305, Mr. Peary says: ”Friday, April 9, was a wild day. All day long the wind blew strong from the north-northeast, increasing finally to a gale.” And on page 306: ”We camped that night at 87 47'.”

Mr. Peary thus claims to have traveled from the Pole to this point, a distance of 133 nautical miles, or 153 statute miles, in a little over two days. This would average 76 statute miles a day. Could a pedestrian make such speed? During this time Mr. Peary camped twice, to make tea, eat lunch, feed the dogs, and rest--several hours in each camp.

Why I should never have gone out of sight of land for more than two days, as he has charged, when such miraculous speed can be made on the circ.u.mpolar sea, is something Mr. Peary might find interesting reasons to explain.

On page 310, Mr. Peary says: ”We were coming down the North Pole hill in fine shape now, and another double march, April 16-17, brought us to our eleventh upward camp at 85 8', one hundred and twenty-one miles from Cape Columbia.”

According to this, Mr. Peary covered the distance from 87 47', on April 9, to 85 8', on April 17--a distance of 159 nautical miles in eight day. This averaged twenty miles a day.