Mr. Bennett offered me $5,000 additional for the European rights of this story. To this offer I made no reply, giving Mr. Bennett the sole news rights of the story for the entire world.

When I reached New York, needing ready money, I wired Mr. Bennett for an advance on my story. He cabled back an immediate order for the entire sum of $25,000. This gave me a sudden glow, a feeling of pleasure at what I regarded as a display of confidence.

With my lecture work and traveling I was kept so busy that I did not have time to go over the story, typewritten from my almost illegible notes, which was sent to the New York Herald. When I did go over the proofs and found many grievous errors, the Herald had already syndicated the story. It was too late for any corrections, and thus many errors appeared.

I made a contract with a New York publishing house, while in Copenhagen, with the idea of getting out my book and all proofs possible as soon as the presses would allow, in view of the imminent controversy. For the English and American rights to my book I was to receive $150,000 in a lump sum and an additional $150,000 in royalties. Although papers were signed for this, later on, when things seemed turning against me and I saw the publishers were getting "cold feet," I voluntarily freed them from the contract.

By the time I left Copenhagen, as I figured later, offers for book and magazine material and lectures had aggregated just one and one-half million dollars. A prominent New York manager made me an offer of $250,000 for a series of lectures. During the first few days I had absolutely no system of caring for this correspondence, hundreds of important cablegrams remained unopened, and huge offers of money were ignored. It was only after Minister Egan sent Walter Lonsdale, in response to my request for a competent secretary, that some intelligible information was gleaned from the mass of correspondence. Most of it, as a matter of fact, was read only when we were on the Oscar II, bound for home.

After making my arrangement with Mr. Bennett, the Matin of Paris had sent me an offer of $50,000 for the serial rights of a French translation of the story to appear in the Herald. This included a lecture under the auspices of the paper in Paris. My anxiety to get home prevented a consideration of this; and it was only after I sailed on the Oscar II that I realized I could have gone to Paris, delivered the lecture, and returned to New York by a fast boat.

On the Oscar II a wireless had reached me of a large offer for a lecture during the convention in St. Louis. This I decided to accept, the simple reason being that I needed money.

Much criticism has been hurled at me because I started on a lecture campaign when I should have prepared my data and submitted proof. At that time I was in no position to anticipate or understand this criticism. Every explorer for fifty years had done the same thing, all had delivered lectures and written articles about their work after a first preliminary report. Supplementary and detailed data were usually given long afterwards, not as proof but as a part of the plan of recording ultimate results. I had the precedents of Stanley, Nordenskjöld, Nansen, Peary, and others.

Had I anticipated the furore that was being raised about proofs, I probably should have taken public opinion into my consideration. So firm was my own conviction of achievement that the difficulty of supplying such absolute proof as the unique occasion afterwards demanded never occurred to me. My feeling at the time was that I was under no obligation to patrons, to the Government, to any society, or anyone, and that I had a right to deliver lectures at a time when public interest was keyed up, and to prepare my detailed reports at a time when I should have more leisure.

My family needed money. Huge sums were offered me hourly; I should have been unwise indeed had I not accepted some of the offers. I am advised that stories of enormous lecture profits have been told. I am informed that the newspapers said I was to receive $25,000 for going to St. Louis. The truth is that I got less than half that, though I believe St. Louis probably spent more than $25,000 in preparing for my appearance there. All told, I delivered about twenty lectures in various large cities, receiving from $1,000 to $10,000 per lecture. My expenses were heavy, so that in the end I netted less than $25,000. When I determined to stop the lecture work and prepare my data, I canceled $140,000 worth of lecture engagements.

Each day there was a routine of lunches with speeches, dinners with speeches, suppers with speeches. The task of devising speeches was ever present; with me it did not come easy. But speeches must be made, and I felt a tense strain, as if something were drawing my mentality from me.

Everywhere I went crowds pressed about me. I shook hands until the flesh of one finger was actually worn through to the bone. Hundreds of people daily came to see me.

About this time, too, my bewildered brain began to realize that I was also the object of most ferocious attacks from many quarters. I had no time to read the newspapers, and these charges and suspicions filtered in to me through reporters and friends. Usually they reached me in an exaggerated or a distorted form.

There began at this time the publication of innumerable fake interviews and stories misrepresenting me.[25] One interviewer quoted me as saying that Dagaard Jensen had seen my records, and therefore confirmed my claim to the people in Copenhagen; another that I said Governor Kraul of Greenland had reported talking with my Eskimos, who had confirmed my report. Dagaard Jensen justly denied this by cable, as I had made no such statement. That about Governor Kraul was absurd on the face of it, as he was a thousand miles away from my Eskimos. I have no means of knowing the embarrassing statements attributed to me—things which were variously denied, and which hurt me. There was not time for me to consider or answer them.

Then came the blow which almost stunned me—the news that Harry Whitney had not been allowed by Peary to bring my instruments and notes home with him.

During the long night at Cape Sparbo I had carefully figured out and reduced most of my important observations. The old, rubbed, oily, and torn field notes, the instrumental corrections and the direct readings were packed with the instruments, and these were mostly left with Mr. Whitney. The figures were important for future recalculation, but otherwise had not seemed materially important to me, for they had served their purpose. I had with me all the important data, such as is usually given in a traveler's narrative. No more had ever been asked before.

Under ordinary circumstances, these instruments and papers would not have been of great value, but under the public excitement their importance was immensely enhanced.

I had publicly announced that Mr. Whitney would bring these with him on the boat in which he was to return. Had there been no notes and no instruments, I hardly should have said this were I perpetrating a fraud, for I should have known that the failure of Mr. Whitney to supply these would provoke widespread suspicion. This is just what happened. Had I foreseen the trouble that resulted, I should have taken my instruments with me to Upernavik, and have supplied my observations and notes at once.

As I have said before, I believed in an accomplishment which I felt was largely personal, for which a world excitement was not warranted and in which I had such a sure confidence that I never thought of absolutely accurate proof. This was my folly—for which fate made me pay. Imagine my dismay, the heartsickness which seized me when, through the din of tumult and excitement, in the midst of suspicion, came the news that Mr. Whitney had been forced by Mr. Peary to take from the Roosevelt and bury the very material with which I might have dispelled suspicion and quelled the storm of unmerited abuse.

The instruments carried on my northern trip, and left with Mr. Whitney, and which he had seen, consisted of one French sextant; one aluminum surveying compass, with azimuth attachment, bought of Keuffer & Essen, New York; one glass artifical horizon, set in a thin metal frame, adjusted by spirit levels and thumbscrews, bought of Hutchinson, Boston; one aneroid barometer, aluminum, bought of Hicks; an aluminum case with maximum and minimum spirit thermometer; other thermometers, and one liquid compass.

Other instruments used about stations were also left. With these were papers giving some instrumental corrections, readings, and comparisons, and other occasional notes, and a small diary, mostly loose leaves, containing some direct field reading of instruments and meteorological data. These took up very little space; and, if I remember correctly, all were snugly packed in one of the instrument cases.

Mr. Whitney especially asked, as a personal favor, the honor of caring for my flag. Later, after his return, he said that as Mr. Peary had refused to let him take aboard my things, he had no alternative but to bury them at Etah. I have no complaint to make against Mr. Peary about this. He was at liberty to pick the freight of his own ship. But he later said: "His [Dr. Cook's] leaving of his records at Etah was a scheme by which he could claim that they were lost." If Mr. Peary knew this, why did he not bring them?

At the time I felt crippled; my feeling of disgust with the problem, with myself, and with the situation began. It would be impossible to give in my report a continuous line of observations. I had no corrections for the instruments. I knew they might vary. I had no means of checking them. I had some copies of the original data, but they were not complete. I should have to rest my whole case on a report with reduced observations, for I knew it would not be possible to send a ship to Etah until the following year. And I also knew that if Eskimos were not given strong explicit instructions all would be lost.

Meanwhile, many apparently trivial accusations against me were being widely discussed, which, never refuted, had their weight in the long run in discrediting my good faith. On every side I was attacked, not so much for unintentional error, as for deliberate falsehood.

In the bewildering days that followed—during which I traveled to various cities to fulfill lecture engagements—I felt alone, a victim of such pressure as, I believe, has seldom been the fate of any human being.

Friends confused me as much as the attacks of foes. Some advised one thing; others another; my brain staggered with their well-meaning advice. Most of them wanted me to "light out," as they expressed it, and attack Mr. Peary. A number suggested the formation of an organization, the work of which would be to issue counter attacks on Mr. Peary, to be written by various men, and to reply systematically to charges made against me. Such a course was distasteful to me, and, furthermore, the selfish, envious origin of all of Mr. Peary's charges seemed evident.

Many of the other attacks seemed so ridiculous that I felt no one would believe them—which was another of my many mistakes. The more serious charges I believed could wait until I had time to sit down and reply to them at length. I felt the futility of any fragmentary retorts. At no time did I have an intelligent grasp of the situation, of the excited and exaggerated interest of the public, or of the fluctuating state of public opinion.

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 illustrative material I gave a number of these to the Herald, stating they were scenes I had passed, 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 asserting 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 space 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 assumption 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 harassing charges certainly had no soothing effect.

Alone, I was unable to cope with matters, anyway. I under-estimated the effect of the cumulating 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 Washington; 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 passing 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 space.

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.

THE KEY TO THE CONTROVERSY

PEARY AND HIS PAST—HIS DEALING WITH RIVAL EXPLORERS—THE DEATH OF ASTRUP—THE THEFT OF THE "GREAT IRON STONE," THE NATIVES' SOLE SOURCE OF IRON

XXXIII

Actions Which Call for Investigation

Aiming to be retired from the Navy as a Captain, with a comfortable pension; aiming eventually to wear the stripes of a Rear-Admiral, which necessitated a promotion over the heads of others in the normal line of advancement, a second Polar victory, which was all that Peary could honestly claim, was not sufficient. Something must be done to destroy in the public eye the merits of my achievement for the first attainment of the Pole. I had reached the Pole on April 21, 1908. Mr. Peary's claims were for April 6, 1909, a year later. To destroy the advantage of priority of my conquest, and to establish himself as the first and only one who had reached the Pole, was now the one predominant effort to which Mr. Peary and his coterie of conspirators set themselves. To this end the cables were now made to burn with an abusive campaign, which the press, eager for sensations, took up from land's end to land's end, even to the two worlds. The wireless operators picked up messages that were being thrown from ship to ship and from point to point. Each carried unkind insinuations coming from the lips of Mr. Peary. The press and the public were induced to believe that Peary's words came from one who was himself above the shadow of suspicion. Their efforts, however, as we will see later, did not differ from the battle of envy forced against others before me, but it was now done more openly.

It was difficult to remain silent against such world-wide slanders. But I reasoned that truth would ultimately prevail, and that the rebound of the American spirit of fair play would quell the storm.

I had known for nearly a quarter of a century the man for whom the press now attacked me. I had served on two of his expeditions without pay; I had watched his successes and his failures; I had admired his strong qualities, and I had shivered with the shocks of his wrongdoings. But still I did not feel that anything was to be gained by retaliative abuse; and the truth about him, out of charity, I hesitated to tell. No, I argued, this warfare of the many against one, under the dictates of envy, must ultimately bring to light its own injustice.

I had always reasoned that a quiet, dignified, non-assailing bearing would be most effective in a battle of this kind. Contrary to the general belief at the time, this was not done out of respect for Mr. Peary; it seemed the best means to a worthier end. But I did not know at this time that the press, dog-like, jumps upon him who maintains a non-attacking attitude. In modern times, the old Christian philosophy of turning the other cheek, as I have found, does not give the desired results.

The press, which, at my home-coming, had lavished praise and glowing panegyric, now, as promptly, swung completely around and heaped upon my head terms of opprobrium and obloquy. Faked news items were issued to discredit me by Peary's associates; editors devoted space to jibes and sarcasms at my expense; clever writers and cartoonists did their best to make my name a humorous byword with my countrymen. Much of this I did not know until long after.

The suddenness of all this—the terrible injustice and unreasonableness of it—simply overwhelmed me. Arriving from the cruel North, completely spent in body and in mind, the rest that I was urgently in need of had been constantly denied me. Instead, I had been caught up and held within a perfect maelstrom of excitement. That excitement still ran like fever in my veins. The plaudits of the multitude were still ringing in my ears when this horror of a world's contumely burst on my head. I could only bow my head and let the storm spend itself about me. Sick at heart and dazed in mind, conscious only of a vague disgust with all the world and myself, I longed for respite and forgetfulness within the bosom of my family.

So, quietly, I decided to retire for a year, out of reach of the yellow papers; out of reach of the grind of the pro-Peary mill of infamy, still maintaining silence rather than stoop to the indignity of showing up the dark side of Mr. Peary's character. Having returned, I hesitate to do it now; but the weaving of the leprous blanket of infamy with which Peary and his supporters attempted to cover me cannot be understood unless we look through Mr. Peary's eyes—regard other explorers as he regarded them; regard the North as his inalienable property as he did, and regard his infamous, high-handed injustices as right.

I have now decided to uncover the incentive of this one-sided fight to which I have so long maintained a non-attacking attitude. I had hoped, almost against hope, that the public would ultimately understand, without a word from me, the humbug of the mudslingers who were attempting to defame my character. I had felt sure that the hand which did the besmearing was silhouetted clearly against the blackness of its own making. But the storm of a sensation-seeking press later so thickened the atmosphere that the public, from which one has a sure guarantee of fair play, was denied a clear view.

Now that the storm has spent its force; now that the hand which did the mudslinging has within its grasp the unearned gain which it sought; now that a clear point of observation can be presented, I am compelled, with much reluctance and distaste, to reveal the unpleasant and unknown past of the man who tried to ruin me; showing how unscrupulous and brutal he was to others before me; with evidence in hand, I shall reveal how he wove his web of defamation and how his friends conspired with him in the darkest, meanest and most brazen conspiracy in the history of exploration.

In doing this, my aim is not to challenge Mr. Peary's claim, but to throw light on unwritten pages of history, which pages furnish the key to unlock the longclosed door of the Polar controversy and the pro-Peary conspiracy.

From the earliest days, Mr. Peary's effort to reach the Pole was undertaken primarily for purposes of personal commercial gain. For twenty years he has passed the hat along lines of easy money. That hat would be passing to-day if the game had not been, in the opinion of many, spoiled by my success.

For nearly twenty years he sought to be promoted over the heads of stay-at-home but hardworking naval officers. During all of this time, while on salary as a naval officer, he was away engaged in private enterprises from which hundreds of thousands of dollars went into his pockets. By wire-pulling and lobbying he succeeded in having the American Navy pay him an unearned salary. Such a man could not afford to divide the fruits of Polar attainment with another.

In 1891, as the steamer Kite went north, Mr. Peary began to evince the brutal, selfish spirit which later was shown to every explorer who had the misfortune to cross his trail. Nansen had crossed Greenland; his splendid success was in the public eye. Mr. Peary attempted to belittle the merited applause by saying that Nansen had borrowed the "Peary system." But Peary had borrowed the Nordenskiold system, without giving credit. A few months later, Mr. John M. Verhoeff, the meteorologist of the Kite expedition, was accorded such unbrotherly treatment that he left his body in a glacial crevasse in preference to coming home on the same ship with Mr. Peary. This man had paid $2,000 for the privilege of being Peary's companion.

Eivind Astrup, another companion of Peary, a few years later was publicly denounced because he had written a book on his own scientific observations and did work which Peary had himself neglected to do. This attempt to discredit a young, sensitive explorer was followed by his mental unbalancement and suicide.

About 1897, Peary took from the people of the Farthest North the Eskimos' treasured "Star Stone." At some remote period in the unknown history of the frigid North, thousands of years ago, when, possibly, the primitive forefathers of the Eskimos were perishing from inability to obtain food in that fierce war waged between Nature and crude, blindly struggling, aboriginal life because of a lack of weapons with which to kill, there swiftly, roaringly, descended from the mysterious skies a gigantic meteoric mass of burning, white-hot iron. Whence it came, those dazed and startled people knew not; they regarded it, as their descendants have regarded it, with baffled mystified terror; later, with reverence, gratitude, and a feeling akin to awe. Gazing skyward, in the long, starlit nights, there undoubtedly welled up surgingly in the wild hearts of these innocent, Spartan children of nature, a feeling of vague, instinctive wonder at the Power which swung the boreal lamps in heaven; which moves the worlds in space; which sweeps in the northern winds, and which, for the creatures of its creation, apparently consciously, and often by means seemingly miraculous, provides methods of obtaining the sources of life. As the meteor and its two smaller fragments cooled, the natives, by the innate and adaptive ingenuity of aboriginal man, learned to chip masses from it, from which were shaped knives and arrows and spearheads. It became their mine of treasure, more precious than gold; it was their only means of making weapons for obtaining that which sustained life. With new weapons, they developed the art of spear-casting and arrow-throwing. As the centuries passed, animals fell easy prey to their skill; the starvation of elder ages gave way to plenty.

The arm of God, it is said in the Scriptures, is long. From the far skies it extended to these people of an ice-sheeted, rigorous land, that they might survive, this miraculous treasure. It seemed, however, that the arm of man, in its greed, proved likewise long; and as the strange providence which gave these people their chief means of killing was kind, so the arm of man was cruel.

In 1894, R. E. Peary, regarding the Arctic world as his own, the people as his vassals, came north, and a year later took from these natives, without their consent, the two smaller fragments. In 1897 he took "The Tent," or Great Iron Stone, the natives' last and one source of mineral wealth and ancestral treasure. That it was these people's great source of securing metal meant nothing to him; that it was a scientific curio, whereby he might secure a specious credit from the well-fed armchair gentlemen of science at home, meant much to the man who later did not hesitate to employ methods of dishonor to try to secure exclusive credit of the achievement of the Pole. Just as he later tried to rob me of honor, so he ruthlessly took from these people a thing that meant abundance of game—and game there meant life.

The great "Iron Stone" was hauled aboard the S. S. Hope, and brought to New York. Today it reposes in the Museum of Natural History—a bulky, black heap of metal, which can be viewed any day by the well-fed and curious. In the North, where he will not go again to give his mythical "abundance of guns and ammunition," the Eskimos need the metal which was sold to Mrs. Morris K. Jesup (who presented it to the museum) for $40,000. That money went into Mr. Peary's pockets. In a land where laws existed this act would be regarded as a high-handed, monumental and dishonorable theft. One who might attempt now to purloin the ill-gotten hulk from the museum would be prosecuted. Taken from the people to whose ancestors it was sent, as if by a providence that is divine, and to whom it meant life, it gave Mr. Peary so-called scientific honors among his friends. In the name of religion, it has been said, many crimes have been committed. It remained for this man to reveal what atrocious things could be done in the fair name of science.

At about the same time a group of seven or eight Eskimos were put aboard a ship against their will and brought to New York for museum purposes. They were locked up in a cellar in New York, awaiting a market place. Before the profit-time arrived, because of unhygienic surroundings and improper food, all but one died. When in the grip of death, through a Mrs. Smith, who ministered to their last wants, they appealed with tears in their eyes for some word from Mr. Peary. They begged that he extend them the attention of visiting them before their eyes closed to a world of misery and trouble. There came no word and no responsive call from the man who was responsible for their suffering. Of seven or eight innocent wild people, but one little child survived. That one—Mene—was later even denied a passage back to his fathers' land by Mr. Peary.

A few years later, the Danish Literary Expedition visited the northernmost Eskimos in their houses. The splendid hospitality shown the Danes by the Eskimos saved their lives. The Danish people, aiming to express their gratitude for this unselfish Eskimo kindness, sent a ship to their shores on the following year, loaded with presents, at an expenditure of many thousands of kroner. That ship, under the direction of Captain Schoubye, left at North Star great quantities of food, iron and wood. After the Danes had turned their backs, Mr. Peary came along and deliberately, high-handedly, took many of the things. This story is told today by every member of the tribe whom Peary claims to have befriended, whom he calls "my people."

The sad story of the unavoidable deaths by starvation of the members of General Greely's Expedition has for years been issued and reissued to the press by Mr. Peary and his press agents, in such form as to discredit General Greely and his co-workers. His own inhuman doings about Cape Sabine and the old Greely stamping-grounds have been suppressed.

In 1901 the ship Erik left Mr. Peary, with a large group of native helpers, near Cape Sabine. An epidemic, brought by the Peary ship, soon after attacked the Eskimos. Many died; others survived to endure a slow torture. Peary had no doctor and no medicine. In the year previous, Peary had shown the same spirit to the ever faithful Dr. Dedrick that he had shown to Verhoeff, to Astrup, and to others. Although Dedrick could not endure Peary's unfairness, he remained, against instructions, within reach for just such an emergency as this epidemic presented. He offered his services when the epidemic broke out, but Peary refused his offer, and allowed the natives to die rather than permit a competent medical expert to attend the afflicted.

Near the same point, a year later, Captain Otto Sverdrup wintered with his ship. His mission was to explore the great unknown to the west. This unexplored country had been under Mr. Peary's eye for ten years; but instead of exploring it, his time was spent in an easy and comparatively luxurious life about a comfortable camp. When Sverdrup's men visited the Peary ship, they were denied common brotherly courtesy and were refused the hospitality which is universally granted, by an unwritten law, to all field workers. Mr. Peary even refused to send him, on his returning ship, important letters and papers which Sverdrup desired taken back. He also refused to allow Sverdrup to take native guides and dogs-which did not belong to Mr. Peary. This same courtesy was later denied to Captain Bernier, of the Canadian Expedition.

Thus attempting to make a private preserve of the unclaimed North, he attempted to discredit and thwart every other explorer's effort. In line with the same policy, every member of every Peary expedition has been muzzled with a contract which prevented talking or writing after the expedition's return—contracts by which Mr. Peary derived the sole credit, the entire profit, and all the honor of the results of the men who volunteered their services and risked their lives. This same spirit was shown at the time when, at 87° 45ʺ, he turned Captain Bartlett back, because he (Peary), to use his own words, "wanted all the honors."

In profiting by his long quest for funds for legitimate exploration, we find Peary engaged in private enterprises for which public funds were used. Much of this money was, in my judgment, used to promote a lucrative fur and ivory trade, while the real effort of getting to the Pole was delayed, seemingly, for commercial gain. I believe the Pole might have been reached ten years earlier. But delay was profitable.

After being thus engaged for years in a propaganda of self-exploitation, in assailing other explorers whom he regarded as rivals, in committing deeds in the North unworthy of an American and officer of the Navy, Peary, knowing that I had started Poleward, knowing that relief must inevitably be required, ultimately appropriated my supplies, and absolutely prevented any effort to reach me, which even the natives themselves might have made. Peary knew he was endangering my life. He knew that he was getting ivory and furs in return for supplies belonging to me, and which I should need. He knew, also, that it would not coincide with his selfish purposes of appropriating all honor and profit if I reached the Pole and should return and tell the world. His deliberate act was in itself—whether so designed or not—an effort to kill a brother explorer. The stains of at least a dozen other lives are on this man.

The property which Peary took from Francke and myself, with the hand of a buccaneer and the heart of a hypocrite, was worth thirty-five thousand dollars. This was done, not to insure expedition needs, but to satisfy a hunger for commercial gain, and to inflict a cowardly, underhanded injury on a rival. All of my caches, my camp equipment, my food, were taken; and under his own handwriting he gave the orders which deprived me of all relief efforts at a time when relief was of vital importance. Certainly to all appearances this was a deliberate, preconceived plan to kill a rival worker by starvation. Here we find an American naval officer stooping to a trick for which he would be hanged in a mining camp.

Many members of his expeditions, some rough seamen, speak with shuddering of his actions in that far-away North. In my possession are affidavits, voluntarily made and given to me by members of Mr. Peary's expeditions, revealing gross actions, which, in an officer of the Navy, call for investigation. Mention has been made of certain facts, because, only by knowing these things, can people understand the spirit and character of the man and the unscrupulous attacks made upon me, and understand, also, why, out of a sense of delicacy and dislike for mudslinging, I remained silent so long. It is only because the public has been misled by a sensational press, because I realize I have suffered by my own silence, in order that history may know the full truth and accord a just verdict, that with reluctance, with a sense of shuddering distaste, I have been compelled to present these unpleasant pages of unwritten Arctic history.

When Mr. Peary and his partisans attacked me they hesitated at nothing that was untrue, cruel and dishonorable—forgery and perjury even seemed justifiable to them in their effort to discredit me. I still hesitate to speak of certain unworthy, unblushing and utterly cruel acts of which Mr. Peary is guilty. I would have preferred to remain silent about the actions of which I have told.

Assuming the attitude of one above reproach, Peary, upon his return, assailed me as a dishonest person who tried to rob him of honor. Had the actual and full truths been told at the time about Peary's life in the North, his charges would have rebounded annihilatingly upon himself. For certain things the people of this country, who are clean, honest and fair, will not stand. The facts told about Peary in the affidavits given me make his charges of dishonor and dishonesty against me a travesty, indeed. Yet, at a time when I might have profited by revealing phases of Mr. Peary's personal character, I preferred to remain silent. Of certain things men do not care to speak. Although Mr. Peary and his friends endeavored to make the Polar controversy a personal one, I regarded Mr. Peary's personal actions as having no bearing upon his, or my, having attained the Pole. He and his friends forced a personal fight; they tried to injure my veracity, my reputation for truth-telling, my personal honor. I had hoped against hope that the truth would resolve itself without any necessity of my revealing elements of Mr. Peary's character. I have herein recited pages from his past, known to Arctic explorers but not to the general public, so that his attitude toward me may be understood. Yet all, indeed, has not been told. Although Mr. Peary did not scruple to lie about me, I still hesitate to tell the full truth about him.

In the white, frozen North a tragedy was enacted which would bring tears to the hearts of all who possess human tenderness and kindness. This has never been written. To write it would still further reveal the ruthlessness, the selfishness, the cruelty of the man who tried to ruin me. Yet here I prefer the charity of silence, where, indeed, charity is not at all merited.

The knowledge of these facts tempered the shocks I felt when the Peary campaign of defamation was first made against me. I told myself that a man who had done these things would, in the nature of things, be branded by the truth, as he deserved.

I was not so greatly surprised that Peary tried to steal my honor. I knew that he had stolen tangible things. Yet the theft of food, even though a man's life depends upon it, is not so awful as the attempt to steal the good name a father hopes to bequeath his children. Yet Peary has attempted to do this.

He has attempted to blacken me in the eyes of my family; but, with the conscience of a brute, he has deserted two of his own children—left them to starve and freeze in the cheerless north. They are there today crying for food and a father, while he enjoys a life of luxury at the expense of the American tax-payers. This statement calls for an investigation by the Secretary of the Navy. See photograph of the deserted child of the Sultan of the North, facing page 493.

THE MT. McKINLEY BRIBERY

THE BRIBED, FAKED AND FORGED NEWS ITEMS—THE PRO-PEARY MONEY POWERS ENCOURAGE PERJURY—MT. M'KINLEY HONESTLY CLIMBED—HOW, FOR PEARY, A SIMILAR PEAK WAS FAKED

XXXIV

How a Man's Soul Was Marketed

After Mr. Peary had done his utmost to try to disprove my Polar attainment; after the chain of newspapers which, for him, in conjunction with the New York Times, had printed the same egregious lies on the same days, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; after they had expended all possible ammunition, the damages inflicted were still insufficient. My narrative, as published in the New York Herald, was still more generally credited than Mr. Peary's. To gain his end, something else had to be done. Something else was done. The darkest page of defamation in the world's history of exploration was now written by the hands of bribers and perjurers.

The public suddenly turned from the newspaper-inculcated idea of "proof" in figures to a more sane examination of personal veracity. To destroy my reputation for truth in the public mind was the next unscrupulous effort decided upon. The selfish and self-evident press campaign, obviously managed by the Peary cabal, to that end had given unsatisfactory results. Some vital blow must be delivered by fair means or otherwise.

The climb of Mt. McKinley was now challenged.

I had made a first ascent of the great mid-Alaskan peak in 1906. The record of that conquest was published during my absence in the North, under the title, "To the Top of the Continent." The book, being printed at a time when I was unable to see the proofs, contained some mistakes; but in it was all the data that could be presented for such an undertaking.

The Board of Aldermen of the City of New York decided to honor me by offering the keys and the freedom of the metropolis on October 15. This was to be an important event. The pro-Peary conspiracy aiming to deliver striking blows through the press, their propaganda was so planned that the bribed, faked and forged news items were issued on days which gave them dramatic and psychologic climaxes. Two days before the New York demonstration in my favor, the pretentious full-page broadside of distorted Eskimo information was issued. This fell flat; for it was instantly seen to be a pretentious rearrangement of old charges. But it was so played up as to fill columns of newspaper space and impress readers by its magnitude. This was followed by the Barrill affidavit, similarly played up so as to fill a full newspaper page, which I shall analyze later. All this was done to draw a black cloud over the day of honor in New York, the 15th day of October.

Since the published affidavit of my old associate, Barrill, was a document which proved him a self-confessed liar; since the affidavit carried with it the earmarks of pro-Peary bribery and perjury, I reasoned again that fair-minded people would in time see through this moneyed campaign of dishonor. In all history it has been shown that he who seeks to besmear others usually leaves the greatest amount of mud on himself. But again I had not counted on the unfairness of the press.

The only reason given that I should have faked the climb of Mt. McKinley is that, in some vague way, I was to profit mightily by a successful report. The expedition was to have been financed by a rich Philadelphia sportsman. He did advance the greater portion of the sum required. We were to prepare a game trail for him. Something interfered, he relinquished his trip, and did not send the balance of money promised.

The result was that many checks I had given out went to protest. Harper & Brothers had agreed, before starting, to pay me $1,500 for an account of the expedition, whether successful or not. On my return this was paid, and went to meet outstanding debts—debts to pay which I embarrassed myself. Instead of "profits" from this alleged "fake," I suffered a loss of several thousand dollars.

As is quite usual in all exploring expeditions, some of the members of my Mt. McKinley expedition, who did not share in the final success, were disgruntled. Chief among these was Herschell Parker. Owing to ill-health and inexperience, Parker had proved himself inefficient in Alaskan work. Climbing a little peak forty miles from the great mountain, when he was with me, he had pronounced Mt. McKinley unclimbable. Climbing a similar hill, four years later, he stooped to the humbug of offering a photograph of it as a parallel to my picture of the top of Mt. McKinley. This man was so ill-fitted for such work that two men were required to help him mount a horse. But I insisted that we continue at least to the base of the mountain. At the first large glacier, Parker and his companion, Belmore Brown, balked, halting in front of an insignificant ice-wall. The ascent of Mt. McKinley, still thirty-five miles off, they said, was impossible. Parker returned, and in a trail of four thousand miles to New York told every press representative how impossible was the ascent of Mt. McKinley. By the time Parker reached New York a cable went through that the thing was done. At a point four thousand miles from the scene of action, he again cried, "Impossible!" When I returned to New York, however, a month later, and Parker learned the details, he publicly and privately credited my ascent of Mt. McKinley. Nothing further was said to doubt the climb until two years later, when he lined up with the Peary interests.

Using Parker as a tool, Peary's Arctic Club, through him, first forced the side-issue of Mt. McKinley. With the Barrill affidavit, made later, were printed other affidavits by Barrill's friends, who had not been within fifty miles of the mountain when it was climbed. This act, to me, was a bitter climax of injustice. But I have since learned that Printz got $500 of pro-Peary money; that both Miller and Beecher were promised large amounts, but were cheated at the "showdown." Printz afterwards wrote that he would make an affidavit for me for $300, and at Missoula he made an affidavit in which he attempted to defend me.[26] This he offered to sell to Roscoe Mitchell for $1,000.

While easy pro-Peary money was passing in the West, Parker came forward with his old grudge. His chief contention was that, because he had taken home with him in deserting the object of the expedition a hypsometer, I could not have measured the high altitudes claimed. The altitude had been measured by triangulation by the hydrographer of the expedition, but I had other methods of measuring the ascent.

I had two aneroid barometers, specially marked for very high climbing, thermometers, and all the usual Alpine instruments. The hypsometer was not at that time an important instrument. Parker also showed unfair methods by allowing the press repeatedly to print that he had been the leader and the organizer of the expedition. This he knew to be false. I had organized two expeditions to explore Mt. McKinley, at a cost of $28,000. Of this Parker had furnished $2,500. Parker took no part in the organization of the last expedition, had given no advice to help supply an adequate equipment, and in the field his presence was a daily handicap to the progress of the expedition. Heretofore, this was never indicated. But when he allows himself to be quoted as the leader of an expedition upon which he attempts to throw discredit, then it is right that all the facts be known.

In the press reports, when Parker was first heard from, came the news that on the Pacific coast, at Tacoma, a lawyer by the name of J. M. Ashton was retained by someone. To the press Ashton said he was engaged "to look into the McKinley business," but he did not know by whom—whether by Cook or Peary. He was "engaged" in a business too questionable to tell who furnished the money.

In the final ascent of Mt. McKinley there was with me Edward Barrill, the affidavit-maker. He was a good-natured and hard-working packer, who had proved himself a most able climber. Together we ascended the mountain in September, 1906. To this time (1909) there was not the slightest doubt about the footprints on the top of the great mountain. Barrill had told everybody that he knew, and all who would listen to him, that the mountain was climbed. He went from house to house boastfully, with my book under his arm, telling and retelling the story of the ascent of Mt. McKinley. That anyone should now believe the affidavit, secured and printed for Peary, did not to me seem reasonable.

Parker, filling the position of betrayer and traitor to one who had saved his life many times, had decided, as the Polar controversy opened, to direct the Mt. McKinley side-issue of the pro-Peary effort.

The first news of bribery in the matter came from Darby, Montana. This was Barrill's home town. A Peary man from Chicago was there. He frankly said that he would pay Barrill $1,000 to offer news that would discredit the climb of Mt. McKinley. Other news of the dishonest pro-Peary movement induced me to send Roscoe Mitchell, of the New York Herald, to the working ground of the bribers. Mitchell was working under the direction of my attorneys, H. Wellington Wack, of New York, Colonel Marshal, of Missoula, and General Weed, of Helena, Montana.

Mitchell secured testimony and evidence regarding the buying of Barrill, but was unable to put the conspirators in jail. At Hamilton, Montana, there had appeared a man with $5,000 to pass to Barrill. Barrill's first reply was that he had climbed the mountain; that Dr. Cook had climbed the mountain; that to take that $5,000, in his own words, he "would have to sell his own soul." Barrill's business partner, Bridgeford, was present. He later made an affidavit for Mr. Mitchell covering this part of the pro-Peary perjury effort.

A little later, however, Barrill said to his partner he "might as well see what was in it." Five thousand dollars to Barrill meant more than five million dollars to Mr. Peary or his friends. To Barrill, ignorant, poor, good-natured, but weak, it was an irresistible temptation.

Barrill now went to Seattle. He visited the office of the Seattle Times. In the presence of the editor, Mr. Joe Blethen, he dickered for the sale of an affidavit to discredit me. He knew such an affidavit had news value. Indefinite offers ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 were made. Not getting a lump sum off-hand, Barrill, dissatisfied, then went over to Tacoma, to the mysterious Mr. Ashton. That all this was done, was told me on my trip west shortly afterward, by Mr. Blethen himself.

After visiting Ashton, Barrill was seen in a bank in Tacoma. Barrill had said to his partner that to make an affidavit denying my climb would be "selling his soul." Barrill, ill at ease, reluctant, appeared. It is a terrible thing to lure a weak man to dishonor; it is still more tragic and awful when that man is bought so his lie may hurt another. The time for the parting of his soul had arrived in the bank. With the sadness of a funeral mourner Barrill was pushed along. The talk was in a muffled undertone. But it all happened. In the presence of a witness, whose evidence I am ready to produce, $1,500 was passed to him. This money was paid in large bills, and placed in Barrill's money-belt. There were other considerations, and I know where some of this money was spent. His soul was marketed at last. The infamous affidavit was then prepared.

This affidavit was printed first in the New York Globe. The Globe is partly owned and entirely controlled by General Thomas H. Hubbard, the President of the Peary Club. With General Hubbard, Mr. Peary had consulted at Bar Harbor immediately after his return from Sydney. Together they had outlined their campaign. General Hubbard is a multi-millionaire. A tremendous amount of money was spent in the Peary campaign. In the Mt. McKinley affidavit of Barrill we can trace bribery, a conspiracy, and black dishonor, right up to the door of R. E. Peary.

If Peary is not the most unscrupulous self-seeker in the history of exploration, caught in underhand, surreptitious acts too cowardly to be credited to a thief, caught in the act of bartering for men's souls and honor in as ruthless a way as he high-handedly took others' property in the North; if he, drawing an unearned salary from the American Navy, has not brindled his soul with stripes that fit his body for jail, let him come forward and reply. If Peary is not the most conscienceless of self-exploiters in all history, caught in the act of stealing honor by forcing dishonor, let him come forward and explain the Mt. McKinley perjury.

Now let us examine the others who were lined up in this desperate black hand movement. In New York there is a club, at first organized to bring explorers together and to encourage original research. It bore the name of Explorers' Club; but, as is so often the case with clubs that monopolize a pretentious name, the membership degenerated. It is now merely an association of museum collectors. Among real explorers, this club to-day is jocularly known as the "Worm Diggers' Union." In 1909 Mr. Peary was president. His press agent, Bridgman, was the moving spirit, and one of Colonel Mann's muck-rakers was secretary. Of course, such a society, committed to Peary, had no use for Dr. Cook.

In a spirit of helping along the pro-Peary conspiracy, and after the Barrill affidavit was secured, the Explorers' Club took upon itself the supererogatory duty of appointing a committee to pass on my ascent of Mt. McKinley. There was but one real explorer on this committee. The others were kitchen geographers, whose honor and fairness had been bartered to the Peary interests before the investigation began. Without a line of data before them, they decided, with glee and gusto, that Mt. McKinley had not been climbed. This was what one would expect from such an honor-blind group of meddlers. But Mr. Peary's press worker, Bridgman, who himself had engineered the investigation, used this seeming verdict of experts to Mr. Peary's advantage.[27]

Still all these combined underhanded efforts failed to reach vital spots and to turn the entire public Mr. Peary's way. Something more must still be done, Peary's press agent offered $3,000, and the cowardly Ashton, of Tacoma, offered another $3,000, to send an expedition to Alaska, to further the pro-Peary effort to down a rival. The traitor, Parker, responded. He was joined by the other quitter, Belmore Brown, who has conveniently forgotten to return borrowed money to me. This Peary-Parker-Brown combination went to Alaska in 1910, engaged in mining pursuits and hunting adventures. They returned with the expected and framed report that Mt. McKinley had not been climbed, and that they had climbed a snow-hill, had photographed it, and that the photograph was similar to mine of the topmost peak of Mt. McKinley. Mt. McKinley has a base twenty-five miles wide; it has upon the various slopes of its giant uplift hundreds of peaks, all glacial, polished, and of a similar contour. No one peak towers gigantically above the others. On the top are many peaks, no particular one of which can with any accuracy of inches be decided arbitrarily as the very highest. The top of a mountain does not converge to a pin-point apex. One looks out, not into immediate space on all sides, but over an area, as I have said, of many peaks. My photograph of the peak, which loomed highest among the others on the top, possesses a profile not unusual among ice-cut rocks. The Peary-Parker-Brown seekers tried hard to duplicate this photograph, so as to show I had faked my picture. The thing might have been done easily in the Canadian Rockies. It could be done in a dozen more accessible places in Alaska; but, without real work, it could be only crudely done near Mt. McKinley. The photograph which Peary's friends offered to discredit the first ascent is one of a double peak, part of which vaguely suggests but a poor outline of Mt. McKinley, and in which a rock has been faked. Who is responsible for this humbug? Where is the negative? The photograph bears no actual semblance to my picture of the top of Mt. McKinley whatever. But why was the negative faked? Parker excuses the evident unfairness of the dissimilar photograph by saying that he could not get the same position as I must have had. But is laziness or haste an excuse when a man's honor is assailed.[28]

Let us follow the Peary high-handed humbugs further. To the southeast of Mt. McKinley is a huge mountain, which I named Mt. Disston in 1905. This peak was robbed of its name, and over it Parker wrote Mt. Huntington. To the northeast of Mt. McKinley is another peak, charted on my maps, to which Peary gave the name of the president of the Peary Arctic Trust. To this peak was given the same name, by the same methods of stealing the credit of other explorers, as that adopted by Peary when, in response to $25,000 of easy money, he wrote the same name, "Thomas Hubbard," over Sverdrup's northern point of Heiberg Land. Can it be doubted that the Peary-Parker-Brown propaganda of hypocrisy and dishonor in Alaska is guided by no other spirit than that of Mr. Peary?

Many persons say: "We will credit Dr. Cook's attainment of the Pole if this Mt. McKinley matter is cleared up." I have heard this often. I have offered in my book proofs of the climb—the same proofs any mountain-climber offers. To discredit these, my enemies stooped to bribery. I have in my possession, and have stated here, proofs of this. Such proofs are even more tangible than the climbing of a far-away mountain. Is any other clarifier or any other evidence required to prove the pro-Peary frauds?